Build your professional image carefully because it says a lot about your business.

What is the message that you want to convey to your customers? Your business image is a package that includes your business name, your logo, your signage, business cards, brochures and any other materials that you use to communicate with customers, both established and prospective. Related to this image may also be your mission or purpose, your business values, and what type of business you are engaged in. You’ll want to have a consistent image so that when your customer sees your logo on any of your products they will know right away that this is something you produced.

While there are no hard and fast rules about design features you should be aware that the decisions you make about style, color, typeface, images and shapes will send some message about your business. It is worth a little time and effort to be sure that you are sending the right message before you spend a lot of money on producing materials.

Your business name should be simple, relatively short and say something about your product(s). For example, Steep Mountain Farm doesn’t say much about what type of farm it is. Customer’s seeing this farm listed in a directory or an advertisement wouldn’t know whether they should be interested or not. If you are relying on direct marketing you will want to be especially careful in naming your farm. For example, Steep Mountain Farm Quality Meats or Steep Mountain Greenhouse or Steep Mountain Farm & Guesthouse all inform customers a bit more about the type of business without being too long.

Logo’s can be images, colors, text or a combination of all three. When you think of John Deere what comes to mind? Most of us probably think “Green”. When you think of Apple Computer you probably think first of their icon – the apple with a bite missing. You should try for a logo that is just as memorable to your customers.

In general, simple is better. Your logo should have clean, uncomplicated lines that reproduce easily. Stay away from designs that contain a lot of fine detail or excess text; these will be more difficult for people to recall and will be hard to read when they are printed in smaller sizes.

Use color with care. A well-designed logo should reproduce well in black and white because there will be times when that is your only option. When you do incorporate color limit the number of colors that you use – one or two colors is usually plenty. Another caution about color is that if you plan to send people materials that they will be printing out be aware that their printer may not reproduce the exact color that you intended. As a general practice most farm businesses usually do well by selecting earth tones and limiting colors to those found in nature.

There is a lot of information related to the science of color and typeface. Unless you have a real interest in the topic, and the time to pursue it, your common sense will provide you with all that you need to know. It is a really good idea to show your design ideas to a variety of people before you make any final decision. Select people that are similar demographically to your target customer. Ask your test group what they think of when they see the logo, ask if the design or color reminds them of anything, ask how likely they would be to remember the farm name from seeing the design. This information, while not perfect science, will at least give you some perspective about what others will think when they see your materials.

Remember that your business image should stay constant over time. While you will (and should) change your marketing strategy and may even expand or contract your product line your business image should be something that can stick with you for the long haul.

Prepared by Mary Peabody, University of Vermont Extension for eXtension