Branding, at least in how we approach it, is to create an identity for your product or service. Notice we focus on the product/service and not on your company. The reason for this is that your goal should be to get clients to consume or use your product or service. Too many companies focus on owner egos or corporate culture in their branding forgetting that if consumers aren’t buying the product, then the company is failing. Corporate culture is for the established company and not for the newly minted one. A great example of successful branding is McDonald’s and their “golden arches.” The golden arches is the symbol of McDonalds. No matter where the consumer sees them, they know exactly what to expect. You won’t build a “golden arches” overnight because that takes time. However, getting the right brand at the start provides you a blueprint for your startup and gives potential clients and investors a sense of professionalism.

Our branding design service fills a valuable niche, that of the professional design service for limited-budget needs. Unlike traditional advertising agencies, our branding and logo design service fills the need of a startup with a limited budget to cement a brand identity during its startup phase. A traditional advertising agency provides the necessary branding expertise to a company that has graduated from the startup phase and is ready to gain traction by reaching a wider audience.

There are many foreign designers offering affordable logo design, some as low as $20, to new companies. Although many provide good work, the problem is accountability. The last thing a new company needs is to pay for a federal lawsuit for copyright infringement or to fail the due diligence required from an investor who asks that the company’s intellectual property be properly registered.

An American-based company is accountable because should the need arise, you can litigate a disagreement in court should it be necessary. It is extremely difficult and cost prohibitive to sue in a foreign court. An American-based company is accountable to you for the work it produces.

The problem can be as simple as using a template to design your logo. It is legal. But consider what happens if a competitor uses a logo that looks exactly as yours. You would consider demanding they stop using it only to find out you do not have exclusive rights to it because the template does not provide the exclusive right for you to use the logo you paid for. Read our case study on what happened to one company and how we fixed it for them.

A brand only works when it is used consistently in all your communications. The colors and the fonts are an important part of your brand. Whether it is print, digital, video or any form, your brand should be foremost and consistent every time. Our Brand Style Guide is a one-page cheat sheet providing color codes to use for your brand colors, your logo and the avatar or profile to ensure consistency. You can provide the style guide to your print shop, graphics designer and anyone working on creating content for your company to ensure consistency everywhere.

We provide you with high-resolution, print-ready files of your logo, both in full color and black-and-white. The files we make available to you are .png files with a transparent background. This file can be used in any word processing program and provided to your printer to print. The file can also be added to any picture or image. We also include a .pdf file that can be used by any print shop or graphics designer.

We make the logo we provide to you to use without needing the fonts. We also include the font type name we used in your brand style sheet. However, due to licensing requirements, we cannot transfer the fonts to you. You must purchase them or acquire them on your own. You should also note that we often modify a font in your logo or create a new font for your logo. Because these are customized for your logo, we do not have a complete font set to make available to you. However, we include the names of complementary fonts in the style guide we provide you.

Yes, Cognent can manage your online advertising including connecting and managing your Google Analytics and running Google advertisements. Cognent charges a flat rate of 15% of your advertising (ad buy) plus production fees for the advertisement.