Traditional and educated

Take a law firm that are looking to produce promotional products for their clients, how do they represent their identity across their branded merchandise? Obviously we could keep it simple and just have a 1 colour print across all the items, but with so many branding techniques that could represent the brand in a more premium and prestigious light, why go simple? So consider this our insider’s guide to making promotional products for a traditional and educated brand.

DESIGN

The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to branding is the design. When making your design there are plenty of aspects that should be taken into consideration. Straight lines and defined shapes put across an image of professionalism and efficiency and give the viewer a clear image of what they are looking at. All of these attributes are likely to relate to your business and using this design will embed these ideas in your customers minds.

You’ve got your design shapes down, now time for the text. If you’re looking for something to represent your traditional and educated brand, your best type font style to go for would be either a transitional or old style font. Examples of these are fonts are Baskerville or Times New Roman for transitional fonts or Bembo or ITC Berkeley Oldstyle for an old style font. Both styles are serif fonts but their classic and historical background cements your branding in the idea of it being an established, educated and well-versed company.

Both styles are serif fonts but their classic and historical background cements your branding

BRANDING TECHNIQUES

Now, an insider’s look to some premium ways you can brand your products. 1 colour prints may be the most cost effective, most of the time, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t more premium ways of branding your products. In particular, foil blocking and embossing. They are both done via the same process but they leave different finishes. Embossing leaves a subtle, pressed in look that condenses the material to leave a darker imprint and foil blocking leaves a shining foil print on top of the product. Foil blocking is perfect for a premium finish that you want to get noticed and, on the contrary, embossing is ideal for having a subtle, retail finish branding to your product.

PRODUCTS

So you’ve got the design and typography down. Now it’s time to go into picking the products, but with 1000’s of different products in any one given range, what best represents your brand? Well, here’s a few suggestions that we here in the team like. Pens make the basis of any contract, how else would you sign it? So our suggestion is the Prodir DS8 Metal Clip Ballpen. You can engrave to the clip and it comes in a huge variety of colours plus it breaks away from a traditional metal pen - just because you want to represent traditional doesn’t mean you can’t break moulds. Or maybe you want something a little more premium to carry your legal documents in? What about a full leather hide, unlined, retail quality envelope case that is blind embossed with your design? It screams both retail and high quality whilst keeping with that traditional style.

By themselves, these techniques can give off the impression that you are a traditional and well educated company. But, combined, these techniques will not only give off the idea, they will drive it home. If you’re going to produce promotional material, you might as well make the most of your branding so you can leave a lasting impression.