Back when I was making the big switch from the safe nine-to-five desk job into the overwhelming world of business ownership, I was eager to take on any task, regardless of the proposed “return on investment”, let’s call it. I don’t think the word ‘no’ was present in my vocabulary.

Naively, I took everyone at their word. The nature of my own well-meaning and fairness-oriented personality made dealing in the often cut-throat world of business somewhat challenging.

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A catalog is a highly specialized marketing collateral piece that, when designed and produced correctly, will drive customers to complete their purchase with your company over other alternatives. By presenting a tempting display of appealing products in a clear, carefully considered fashion, your catalog can become one of the most powerful calls to action in your sales arsenal – particularly when paired with a niche marketing strategy.

Packaging. It’s something most people don’t necessarily think about, perhaps partly due to the fact that it is so overwhelmingly pervasive. Even just picking up groceries for the week, in a single forum we are subjected to the end results of thousands of individual design and branding endeavours; some good, some bad, and the rest forgettable.

If ever there were an overly competitive industry with little to no regulation, it would be the commercial design industry. Any child with a computer and some basic software can market themselves as a designer, while the true industry suffers wide scale devaluation and thousands of business owners are taken for a ride by unqualified or even unscrupulous “designers”.

As a consumer, how do you protect yourself and your company? The answer is more simple than you may think – all you have to do is a bit of homework.

The concept of creativity is an abstract one, at best. The dictionary tells you that when you ask for creativity, you can expect to see “the ability to use the imagination to develop new and original ideas or things, especially in an artistic context.” This is all well and good if you’re in the market for something astonishing to frame and hang on your wall, but in the context of business design it falls somewhat short of adequate

With brand revitalization and product redesigns rolling out more quickly than ever before, it’s clear that design and innovation are becoming the hot topic for business. Apple is a prime example, constantly pushing the envelope and driving the market, the iPod has become an icon of fanatic consumer loyalty and yet, the increasingly rapid rollover to bigger (or smaller) and better models is met with pocketbooks held wide open and the competition struggling to keep up. Apple has brought the impact of effective design in business to the forefront.