1Any successful branding project, marketing campaign or communication design requires both creative thinking and business decision making. It begins with the understanding of the organization or the product: its mission, vision, long and short term goals, target markets, culture, strengths and weaknesses, competitors, competitive advantages, future challenges and other information. Hence each project begins with research.

Internal research begins with the key stakeholders of the project and continues down through the key staff members to documentation. External research can include a variety of sources including the studying of trade publications, intelligence gathering on competitors, among other resources. Finally consumer research is undertaken to see the project from the target consumer’s perspective using tools such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, etc.

2Once all the data from the research process is compiled, it is dissected into usable information. This valuable information is utilized to better understand or reiterate the initial ideas of the project. More often than not, this process helps to identity potential challenges and problems. The goal here it create and clarify a detailed strategy for the project, leaving as little risk as possible and have a better understanding on the ROI (Return On Investment).

3Once research has been conducted and analyzed, and a strategy devised, we then turn our attention to communication design. Our designs are created to communicate a message, not to simply make something appealing. Sometimes we need to make the difficult decisions to have form exist in harmony with function.

Our team of designers use their strategic imagination, intuition, and experience package it with their design excellence to produce their work. Their understanding of shapes, patterns, colours, typefaces are essential to the success of the project. Since our production department and area are in the same building, our designers have several distinct advantages, they are able to not only test and see their work in final form, but they are also able to manipulate their prototypes and proofs to create a much better final product. Our designers are well versed in the different nuances in production, some which can not only aid a project stay on schedule and budget but also even recommend alternatives to save our clients’ dollars.

4There are printers and there are printers. Some are good and unfortunately some are substandard. We decided one day that best way to ensure timeliness and quality was to directly integrate the print shop into our premises. Our clients benefited greatly from this integration. Deadlines are not only met, projects are completed ahead of schedule. Delays in the design phase didn’t necessarily result in an extension of the deadline, it simply meant accelerating the production phase.

Our production facilities specialize in digital print technologies allowing us to produce low quantity prints with fast turnaround times, but also allows us to utilize variable data to customize each print. We tried and tested a whole slew of equipment; sometimes flying all over North America to ensure we were investing in the right machine and the right technology. We knew that in order to satisfy our clients, we had to be the biggest critic, valuing not only speed, but also we were unwilling to compromise print quality.

5The final piece to our process lies in our fulfillment services. Our clients can choose from a number of options on how to receive their product, they can simply pick up their product at our office, or have it delivered to their door. For clients in our own industry, we can drop ship their goods pretty much anywhere in Canada.

As an added incentive for some of our larger corporate clients, we can create a centralize ordering website that once an order in placed, we can have the customizable items such as business cards created, stocked items picked, packaged together and shipped directly to their branch offices, distributors or clients across the globe.