How Ugly Are You? Redesigning Our Business Image

Reeling and celebrating after a great win with Idea Café’s Small Business Grant, the All-American Fencing Academy felt empowered! We thought, “There must be other small business contests out there! We can harness the power of our loyal followers and win more!”

What did we find next? Businesscardproject.com’s Business Card Makeover contest. The premise was simple. Send them an image of your business card, and if it’s horrid enough, their designers will redesign it for free and send you a free pack of newly redesigned business cards. Would the Al-American Fencing Academy be willing subject ourselves to this little bit of humiliation for free stuff? Of course, we would.

The All-American Fencing Academy prided ourselves in having North Carolina fencing’s most creative and innovated graphic design and marketing team. Our flyers were top notch, they made sense, they had a common template that immediately said, “This belongs to the All-American Fencing Academy.” We had a simple and unique logo that spoke of our business and where we are located. Our website was informative, professional and pleasing to the eye. Our shirts were even design inspired with fashion in mind.

The All-American Fencing Academy took notes from Jim Krause’s books, especially “Design Basics Index”. If you’re staff or you, amongst your “other duties as assigned”, are hack designers for your flyers, website and other brochures, then you need to check out Krause’s book. It gives you simple layout and color ideas to use for your projects that quickly and easily catches your audiences eye. It helps you identify why your target audience may not give your marketing and advertising material a second look. And it helps you identify what designs you have that just make everyone say, “Haaayyyylll no.”

The All-American Fencing Academy was fighting the evil axis of bad designs in the fencing community and our local businesses. No more bean people in presentations! ZAP! Flyers that attract both the fencing community and potential clients! KAPOW! Website that is both functional and design friendly! WHACK! A business card that….A business card that….AHHHHHH!!! No! Not the dreaded business card! Our weakness has been discovered! Energy depleting…our kryptonite…business cards with the logo in the top right, name in black Ariel font in the top left, address on the bottom, can’t get anyone to want our business cards…

Oh no! A second wave of attacks…it looks like it was made by a free online design tool using a gawdy background! GASP! It says you can get free business cards from Vistaprint on the back. It’s a good thing they didn’t bring out our greatest weakness…EGADS! They did! Business cards with perforated edges that look like you designed and printed them yourselves on your computer…’cause well, we did.
Yes, the All-American Fencing Academy of all those business card clichés. We’ve had business cards from Vistaprint with the template backgrounds. And when we ran out of those, we made our own with Wal-Mart business card paper with the perforated sides (yes, we know, they make kinds that don’t have the perforated edges). And when you hand those cards out at information tables and special events, people walk away thinking, “Awww, they made their own business cards, they’re so cheap.”

So we scanned our business card and sent them to Businesscardproject.com pretty confident that the All-American Fencing Academy will be voted as ugliest damn business card. Did we win? When your business card turned the other business cards to stone, we were a shoe in. Our business card was such an eye sore that Moo.com pity upon us and utilized their best designers to help pity us even more and created an awesome new design that the All-American Fencing Academy can once again fight evil design and marketing with.

“What do you want?!” said Businesscardproject.com.

We wanted pizzazz, simplicity, Americana and people knew at first glance that this was a business card of a fencing academy! And that’s what we received. Simplicity with a touch of pizzazz, an Americana theme and it portrayed fencing. But now we had a new problem. It looked good. More importantly, it looked like nothing else we had.

So here’s another design hint: Business image design unity. Whatever graphically represents your business, it should all relate to each other and your business. That is, at least, what we believe at All-American Fencing Academy. You want people to have your business card, and when they look for your business location, they can immediately identify your sign because it’s like your card. When they look at a billboard of flyers, they want to immediately identify your flyer because of that unifying design. Your business letterheads, envelopes, websites, brochures, should all have some kind of unifying design that builds upon your business graphic identity.

Your advertising and marketing material speaks for your business when you’re not there. If there’s no uniformity, your audience will find it difficult to easily remember and identify your product and business. Furthermore, it may give your business the appearance that you don’t have a direction. The All-American Fencing Academy, by far, are not expert marketing theorists, but you see it in all major business enterprises, their business image and theme all relate to each other and gives their designs uniformity.