Any relationship is based on first impressions, so making a powerful impact from the get-go is key to any brand’s success. Your business name is the first thing your customers see and should convey the expertise, value and uniqueness of your product or service. We’ll look at examples that stand above the rest.

A) Rules and restrictions of company names under Swiss Law
B) Researching the Swiss company registry
C) Researching the Swiss institute for intellectual property

We’ll explore different naming methods and will come up with a name for a company, service or product by using a simple technique and worksheet.

What’s the difference between a claim, a slogan and a tagline? A brief excursion into smart and successful claims and taglines and some truly awful ones.

You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to create a powerful claim for your business. Based on the company naming exercise we’ll tackle a cool claim for your company.

An excursion into the possibilities and costs of protecting your intellectual property in Switzerland and beyond its borders.

Your brand needs to be consistent in its message, and this is where corporate identity comes into play. We look at all the elements the CI from style guides to branding materials and beyond.

You logo is the chief visual component of your company’s overall brand identity and as such the single most visible manifestation of the company and it’s message within the target market. We’ll check out a variety of logos and their adaptations through the decade.

Not everybody has the means to hire a graphic designer to develop a great logo. We look at a variety of affordable options  but also at the benefits of investing in hiring a professional design company.

Colour is a super important factor in branding and for a business to effectively ‘own’ a colour in its sector can provide an enormous competitive advantage. We’ll look at colour emotion guides and check out how you can best combine the shades that fit your brand. So you can conquer your market, with flying colours.

Any brand should have a consistent set of fonts to to convey its message in all of its marketing materials. Defining these fonts is hugely important. We’ll look into which type of fonts are best suited for your kind of business and how to use different fonts for screen and print.

Designing for screens (computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones) is very different than designing for print products. In this section we’ll cover the most important things to know when creating for screens incl. screen resolutions, colour definitions, rich media integration problems, browser display differences, fluid layouts, web typography and user experience.

With many user friendly print production services available online, affordable digital print technology to produce your own physical marketing materials such as flyers, business cards and brochures, has become accessible to anybody. In this section we’ll look at the fundamentals for design and production (print resolution, print colour formats, above the fold layout, bleed and trim marks, paper weights etc).

No matter how much of your business is online: You’re going to want to have shiny business cards in your pocket and a spiffy looking letterhead for your correspondence and invoices – even if you’ll only need the latter in digital form. We’ll look at easy do-it-yourself business card producers in Switzerland and how to create a letterhead digitally or old-school paper-style.

Closing out the branding module, the print production section will cover some handy tips (such as scheduling and realistic deadlines, data checking services, bleeds, print sizes etc) and highlight a few local service providers.