After an epic 7 months, I am finally able to say that my new business logo and a new website are here.
I have definitely learnt some things along the way. I think the biggest take-away from this is seeing that it is much harder making decisions about my own design than it is for my clients. I am the definition of a procrastinator. Do the colours look good? Does it portray the right message? Will it make sense? The list goes on.
I certainly did not think it would take this amount of time. But in reality, I had a bit of a false start to begin with. When I began this process to have a new business logo designed I wanted to support a local small business with a work-from-home designer, a similar situation to myself. I have worked from home in my own small business for 11 years now and know the struggles that you can go through.
In my quest to find a graphic designer I searched Facebook recommendations, I Googled till I could Google no more. I made contact with at least a half dozen designers with no luck on even getting a reply. The frustration was high. I was seeing things from the “other side of the fence”. But, I finally received a response from someone. We had a brief chat over the phone and I provided a detailed design brief. Sadly though the process was longer than I expected, and the graphic designs I was given did not give me goosebumps. Two months later I was left with a logo that really did not wow me. I made the decision to not proceed with the new design. Ultimately I think it was the right decision but at the time I didn’t want to appear rude or essentially “poo poo” someone’s work. I know that it probably had nothing to do with the designers ability, I’d seen their work online and it was great. But I know now that there is a definite need to match yourself with the right partner for these types of projects. Lesson learnt! I realised that I needed a designer who understood me, what I wanted, and what my business was.
So on the search again I decided to stay local but look outside the “work-from-home” designer. I found Alison @ Concept Factory. We met in person. She asked lots of questions. She gave me honest feedback. She promised I would end up with a logo I loved. And guess what? I did!
My logo shows that I am people-focused. I want to provide the highest customer service I can and build a relationship with every one of my clients. There is no computer monitor, there is no mouse, there is nothing in the graphical element of my logo which identifies I work in the Training or IT industry. What it comes down to is that I want to help people. I want to make the day to day work life of my clients easier. Yes, sure I do that by showing them how to better utilise their computer systems. Yes, sure I help to make their website more efficient to drive traffic or design a website which provides their clients with a great user experience. But it still all comes back to the people.
I feel like I got a bit passionate in that last paragraph and that’s ok.
So now I had the new logo and off I went with the website redesign. This part was all in my hands. This is where the longer time frame kicked in. Trying to fit this into my schedule alongside training sessions, other web design, website maintenance, admin duties, mum duties and the such proved interesting. Add some procrastination into that mix and many times I sat for hours playing with one little component on the site trying to change it ever so slightly.
Last week I finally decided enough was enough. Let’s go with a soft-launch! Kind of a launch without any fanfare. Let’s put the website up and continue to tweak it. And that is exactly what I’ve done.
I am still going to continue to change things. I have many ideas of what I’d like to add and what I could still adjust. But all in all, I wanted to make the new website available online.
If you are new to my website, I LOVE feedback. What worked for you? Were you able to find the information you wanted? Was it clear? Are you left with questions? You can send me feedback through my contact page here.