Got DNA? Identifying Brand Value for a Diagnostics Company.

PathoGenetix is using Genome Sequence Scanning to rapidly type thousands of bacterial strains in a single test. Our logo for the company communicates the concept of DNA being converted into genomic barcodes for rapid identification.

Working with the client and RMG Associates, we identified the key messages: Speed, Simplicity, and Diversity, to communicate their unique advantage and designed a website that is visually striking,  showcases their technology, and illustrates market applications.

Link to live site

Just Doing It. The Social Media Checklist for Small Business.

Every day I get message via a blog or website about using social media to promote business. You probably do too. And, if you are like me, while it all seems nice and you know it is really good for you, it is the last thing that you actually want to do. To be effective, social media promotion needs to be consistent and maintained over time. You don’t have to bombard people with every thought in your head. You do have to put out some content that is informative on a regular basis.

To get myself to “just do it”, I have put a space for recently completed projects on our weekly status report so that each week we can decide what to talk about. Then I have created a short checklist of the steps to take to promote a new project or blog post. The list is broken into sections for website, social media, blog, and constant contact outreach. Getting through it takes about an hour per week.

It is not as scary as I thought and having the 5-6 steps posted on the wall in front of my face means that I can’t forget and that I can see that it is really not that bad.

Otherwise, I never would have gotten around to posting this.

Fassino/Design Furnishes a New Site for New England Lab

Working in partnership with Skyworld Interactive, we recently designed a customer-focused site for New England Lab – a laboratory furniture specialist focused on quality, service, and value.

The site projects these attributes through focused messages and high-quality photography of their installations. Users can navigate through products, see case studies by industry, learn about services, easily connect to a sales office or rep, and even ask a specific question to a specialist.

Designed with architects, lab planners, contractors, and end-users in mind, this site is the core of a new communications program for NEL that delivers content in a branded and elegant manner.

Holiday Greetings: Don’t “Decorate” Your Brand, Leverage It.

Now that November is here, and someone at your office is thinking about the company holiday card, remember to think about your brand as well. I’ve noticed that when holiday greetings  start rolling in the door in December, it is amazing how many marketing-savvy companies will forget all about brand because they like elves or snowflakes or it was easier to run out and buy a generic card in a foil-lined envelope.

The holiday season offers a real opportunity to connect with your customers and AND reinforce your brand.

A few things to keep in mind:

• A simple card that is designed around your look is more effective  – and usually less expensive – than an off-the-shelf winter scene.
• If you are going for a clever e-card make sure the production values are flawless unless one of your brand attributes is “cheesy”.
• Customers and contacts always appreciate a donation to a good cause. Especially if it is related to your business. For example, a company working on a cure for Alzheimer’s might make a donation to a related foundation. Or a company involved in construction might donate to a homeless shelter.

Fassino/Design Launches New Website for Foundation Medicine

Foundation Medicine is on the forefront of cancer diagnostics, using genome analysis to help physicians tailor cancer therapies to individual patient tumor types.

Fassino/Design created an interactive site to illustrate this unique approach through a series of individual profiles that are robust enough to give oncologists an overview of the Foundation approach and direct enough to communicate the concept to patients. We had previously completed the company’s corporate identity and overall color system.

Hunting, Gathering, and Visual Memory. Why Identity Design Works.

I was reading an article by Joshua Foer this spring in the New York Times magazine about training for memory competitions. Making the point that visual memory is a much older skill than verbal memory, he noted, “Our hunter-gatherer ancestors didn’t need to recall phone numbers or word-for-word instructions from their bosses or the Advanced Placement U.S. history… What they did need to remember was where to find food and resources and the route home and which plants were edible and which were poisonous. Those are the sorts of vital memory skills that they depended on, which probably helps explain why we are comparatively good at remembering visually and spatially.”

I had a bit of an “aha” moment because this helped explain something a little intangible: why companies and organizations need to bother with creating a visual identity: Because humans can recognize and remember pictures much easier than words.

Your audience will have a quicker and more lasting reaction to a visual embodiment of your name than they will to just the words. And they will make unconscious evaluations of the form and personality of your identity that they may not be able to articulate. Think about the cheerful smile on the Amazon box, The FedEx truck (would it be the same if it just said Federal Express in a plain font?), and the instant need for coffee when you see a Starbucks sign.

The process to do this properly requires thought a lot of distillation (describing it in more detail is a blog post for later). You don’t have to be a huge corporation to have a good identity. A little planning and the right partner will have fewer people hunting for your company and more gathering insight into what you offer.

It’s ALWAYS the content. How to have your website launch on schedule.

Not 99% but 100% of delays in launching web sites are due to content not being ready. Why? And how can these delays be avoided?

1. No one wants to write website content. We know this so divide and conquer. Once you have a site map, assign specific pages to specific people and make specific deadlines. And then think about hiring an editor to bring it all into one voice.
2. “We can just use what we have from the annual report”. No. You can’t. Reading on the web is different from reading in print. You need short “chunks” of copy separated by headlines and subheads to draw the reader in rather than repelling them with large swaths of dense text.
3. It has to be approved by x, y, and z. It is the web, not a stone tablet. If there is a mistake it is easy and immediate to change and fix. Think of all the lost opportunities that happen because you have something so outdated that it is more incorrect than anything new you have to say.
4. I don’t have time. Not if you wait until the last minute. Make an outline, do a little bit each day. Remember term papers?
5. We can’t figure out how to do it. There are many talented writers looking for work who would be happy to help you with this. If you think it will be expensive, go through the exercise of putting a value on your own time and see what it really costs to do it yourself.