New Client Launched : Cristen & Co.

TYPE: Branding, Logo, Site & Blog CLIENT: Cristen & Co. Website: cristencandco.com Date: December, 2015

Cristen & Co. is a New England wedding design and planning company based in Massachusetts. Cristen approached us for marketing help and through the process we realized that a new brand was needed. Since we had already been working with her and her team, we had a good grasp on her work and ideal client.

Tide Creative came on board to provide 360° Marketing support in the fall. {Brand, Logo, Website, Blog} Tide rebranded Captivatinly Chic to Cristen Co. and designed a new logo, website, blog and marketing materials. {Ad Buy} Under Tide’s management Cristen & Co. will be launching with ad campaigns on Facebook and Adwords.

Cristen summed up the experience on a new blog post: We worked with Tide Creative on this fabulous project and they really captured exactly how I wanted to portray Cristen & Co.. The logo design was on-point and our new brand color palette is amazing, lots of grays, slate blues and just the perfect pop of coral! And, I am going to be completely honest, J from Tide Creative and his team created our new brand, logo and website in about 1 month! YES, 1 Month! We fast-tracked our process because engagement season was right around the corner!! When we first started the discussion of the possibility of changing our business name we wanted to make sure if we went through with it that it would be completed around Thanksgiving! And, Tide Creative made that happen, I’m so thankful because I wouldn’t have been able to do it without them!

New Client Launched - Beech Hill Barn

Hardy Farm Updated Site Launch

The last time we spoke about Hardy Farm on the blog we were just getting started with them Wedding Venue Marketing Success : Client Hardy Farm Books 20 Wedding In First 6 Weeks Since, they have continued to roll and get some amazing coverage on Martha Stuart, 100 Layer Cake, Maine Magazine, Rustic Weddings and numerous others! The owners, Greg and Deborah Link have done an amazing job of continuing to improve the grounds with a woodland chapel and addition of a 103 ft sail clothe tent. They have also been great ambassadors for the brand with every couple that has toured or been married there! You can see from their availability calendar that they are completely booked out for 2016 (have been for some time) and are now filling up for 2017!

The property and brand have come such a long way, we felt a brand refresh to just Hardy Farm and a new website was in order.

The Importance of Mobile-Friendly & Responsive Design

<Originally published on June 3rd, 2015 - have updated some number and republished today> A couple of weeks ago, Google announced that mobile search finally surpassed desktop search. Recognizing an obvious trend, Google announced that it is now ranking and promoting sites based on how "mobile friendly" they are. This means, at the very least, your website should be mobile friendly. Best case scenario? Your site employs "responsive design".

So what the heck is the difference between mobile friendly and responsive? According to Signal Fire, "Mobile friendly refers to a site that displays accurately between your desktop/laptop computer and a mobile device...While it will appear smaller on a phone and may not work perfectly on a touchscreen tablet, a mobile friendly website will be perfectly functional." Responsive design is very similar, however rather than a smaller design that works fine on any device, each page is designed three different ways: one for desktop, one for tablet and one for mobile, with the end result being a perfect experience no matter where viewed.

While mobile-friendly is fine for now, responsive design is more easily adapted to future technologies (yes, eventually we will all have to learn yet another technology!). As you can imagine, it takes work to make your current site mobile friendly, and a whole new site to incorporate responsive design, but the importance cannot be emphasized enough.

Google will rank a mobile-friendly or responsive site significantly higher than a website that only works on a desktop computer.

Still not convinced? The average American citizen surfs the web on their phone at least 2 hours and 42 minutes per day! That equates to 41 days each year! We can guarantee this trend is only moving upwards, so if you're not mobile friendly, it's time to jump on the band wagon.

Wondering if your wedding website is mobile friendly? Google has made a helpful tool for us all to test our sites: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

You can also Google your business name on your mobile device and you should see the "Mobile Friendly", see image below. For some awesome examples of websites employing responsive design, check out: http://www.fpmaine.com/, http://www.cairnevents.com/, http://www.thefritzfarm.com/. A great example of a mobile-friendly designis: http://www.loveandlobster.com/

Ready to take the plunge into updating your site? Tide Creative is here to help! Contact us today to schedule a free consultation!

Why Your Brand Needs A Style Guide

With branding, consistency is key. Establishing a visual brand identity gives your company a voice in the world. That voice should sound (and look) consistent across all media platforms, not only to make your brand easily identifiable, but to also to build up trust between your business and the consumer. The easiest way to keep things visually consistent, especially as your business grows, is having a brand style guide. Listing all of your basic brand elements and acting as the singular point of reference for any future design projects and the designers that might be work on them. Having a style guide can save everyone time, money and frustration.

What’s included in a branding style guide can vary a lot depending on the size of the company.  Most small businesses can benefit greatly from just having a simple, visual one-page reference, while larger companies require more robust corporate identity guidelines.

At the most basic level a style guide should include these elements:

Your Logo & Tagline/Slogan

Include all versions of your logo: color, reversed, black and white. Also include any approved alternate logo arrangements such as stacked vs. one line, or a shortened or iconic version used for social media perhaps.

Color Scheme

The colors used by a brand should be spelled out with as much detail as possible. That means offering up not only hex codes for web use, but also equivalent CMYK and even Pantone color values for print projects.

Fonts

Every brand should have a consistent set of fonts being used in all of their marketing materials, online and off. Listing out these fonts, with examples and character sets, is hugely important. This should include the fonts used in your logo, font’s that should be used as header/body copy and any suggested web fonts.

Photos, Textures/Patterns, Icons, and Other Imagery

Here you will want to include any custom textures, patterns or graphic elements that have been designed to be used in association with your brand as backgrounds or highlights through places on your website and/or marketing materials. You could also include any specifics about the style of photos and imagery that you would like associated with your brand. That way if any stock imagery is needed for marketing down the road it will have the same look and feel as the rest of your imagery does. We are happy to give your existing brand a style guide of it’s own or help you with a whole new branding package! Take a look at our work and contact us today!