Lucy Takes Root

Brand ID for New Napa Valley Restaurant

Reflecting Executive Chef Victor Scargle’s locally-sourced organic approach, the modern logo is simple and stunning. The menu system’s natural wood textures and elegant typography enhance the restaurant’s farm-to-table style. With the fresh menu changing often, all restaurant menus are kept up-to-date by utilizing a Word template system, then printing in-house on preprinted stock. Experience the brand first hand by stopping in at Lucy Restaurant and Bar in the Bardessono Hotel, Napa Valley.

Building Your Multi-family Brand

With the uptick of new apartment buildings in the Puget Sound region, competition for those signed leases will be high. To capture your market share, there are a few things you should know about renters.

Apartment renters are historically fickle, moving to the latest hip new apartment at the end of every lease. They love the carefree lifestyle of renting – and enjoy being a part of what is new. Consequently, apartment marketing must appeal to their gypsy souls. This is where the fun begins.

Start building a brand with the right name and brand identity that differentiates your apartment community from the competition. Each community has its Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This might be building amenities, location, transportation access, architectural style, luxury, sustainability, views and more. We dug into our archives to share a few favorites that really delivered on their USP.

The Bravern — modern luxury lifestyle
Island Square — classic Mercer Island style
Equinox — South Lake Union living
Site 17 — funky, old time Belltown vibe

Great branding and design as the foundation of a robust marketing program quickly delivered signed leases for these communities.

Who is the one-stop design firm for naming, branding, web design, mobile sites, SEO, social media, blogs, online ads, eblasts, newsletters, and events? It’s Effective Design Studio! We are creators of robust marketing programs that get the word out and the renters in. Find out more by contacting us today.

Thinking of starting on your Annual Report for 2011 - is yours pretty enough?

We found the following study quite interesting. The design of your Annual Report does matter!

via the University of Miami School of Business website:
A Prettier Annual Report Makes Investors Value a Company Higher, Says Study from University of Miami School of Business
As firms begin the 2011 annual report process, which many do at this time of year, they may want to pay closer attention to the way those reports look. A recent study out of the School of Business Administration found that investors, regardless of their experience, place a higher value on firms with attractive annual reports than they do on those that produce less attractive reports. The study found that annual reports that utilize more color are perceived to have at least one percent higher annual revenues than those with lackluster designs.

“The role of aesthetics in consumer goods like those you’d find on store shelves has been widely studied, but our research is novel in that we look at this effect in the extreme context of financial decision-making and what we find is just how boundless the role of aesthetics can be,” said Claudia Townsend, assistant professor of marketing at the School of Business, who conducted the research with Suzanne Shu at UCLA. “Better-looking documents produce increased pride of ownership for a company, and this pride increases valuation. People are not aware of the effect of aesthetics on their financial decisions and we found that when their attention was drawn to this issue they were able to overcome the bias and make wiser investments.”

Researchers conducted a series of three studies: one with finance students, one with members of the general population, and one with more experienced investors. Respondents in each study indicated that the design of a firm’s annual report would be of little significance in their valuation of a company. But after reviewing the first few pages and/or a sampling of annual reports, participants rated firms with more attractive reports higher than those with less attractive reports.

Specifically:

In the student study, in which participants were given the first three pages of two annual reports with the same financial information, the students priced the stock shares of a firm with the more attractive annual report nearly 70 percent higher than shares of a firm with the less attractive report.

In the general population study, respondents gave the product of a company with a more attractive annual report an average rating of 5.08 on a seven-point scale versus a rating of 4.79 for the product of a company with a less attractive annual report.
In the study involving experienced investors, in which participants were asked to rank companies based on how likely they would be to invest in those firms, the findings suggested that including an additional color throughout a firm’s annual report would have the same impact on an investor’s firm ranking as a 20 percent improvement in revenue from the previous year.

“The implications of these findings should point firms in the direction of good graphic designers,” added Townsend. “After all, it is a lot easier to add color to a printed piece of paper than to add revenue to a company’s bottom line.”

The research paper can be found online at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057740810000677.

Here is the Annual Report e! recently designed for Plymouth Housing Group:

Contact Effective Design Studio today with any Annual Report design needs.

High Style for a High Rise Collateral System

With heightened competition in office leasing, Beacon Capital moved to maximize their lease conversion ratios. To successfully achieve this goal, they brought in Effective Design Studio to design a new marketing collateral system for their West Coast portfolio, which consists of Class A buildings and landmark properties.

Effective Design Studio collaborated with the client and the leasing teams for each property to review their research and utilize their experience to develop a distinctive voice for all marketing communications. e! designed powerful graphic elements including maps and plans, and presented a 2-tiered collateral system to embrace the breadth of their portfolio of properties. The final result showcases their world-class portfolio in enduring style.

Visit our project profile for more photographs.

Effective and ColorGraphics Win Craftnet Award

Our very own Kristine Svehla-Brown was recognized for her unique folio design with a 2010 Gold Award & Gold International Award from Craftnet. The system featured a folder with magnetic closure which housed a custom spiral bound tab set. It's a beautiful piece that was made possible by the expertise of our friend Mike Fitzgerald at ColorGraphics in Seattle.

ColorGraphics has been winning Craftnet awards for years and we were happy to partner with them for this project. Congrats to Kristine and Mike!