The best SME (Small/Medium Enterprise) branding I’ve seen in a long long time is …..drumroll….

Trolley Car Diner

Philadelphia based cafe/eatery ‘Trolley Car Diner’ offer their customers a very consistent brand image, and a very compelling brand it is.

Not only is their brand imagery extremely appealing to the eye ( yes of course I’m being swayed by my love of all things retro and vintage, but lets not dwell on that ), it seems from my findings that they take their brand ethos behind the image very seriously also. And that’s what branding is all about.

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A short while ago I answered some questions for a graphic design student for their project, and posted the questions and answers on this blog. This week another blog reader (a designer who wants to move into freelancing at home) had some questions for me, their questions and my answers are below.

How many hours, on average, do you work per week?
Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to (because I really enjoy my work/business) I don’t work crazy hours because I have a family to look after and spend time with also, so I’d say I work about 45hours a week.
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Whilst logo designs are, in theory, all different and unique, you will find that most belong to one of the following 3 groups; typographic logo design,graphical logo design, illustrative logo design.
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I created a nice funky little greeting card design last week for a company called Active Dental that provides marketing services to dental surgeries, and high end dental products to surgeries and the general public.

Now the idea behind this greeting card (birthday card) is to provide something for Active Dental to offer to the dental surgeries that they can in turn use to maintain a good relationship with their customer base whilst at the same time provide advertising for Active Dental. So it’s a win win situation for both parties involved.
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I’ve recently completed design works on a redesign of a website for Music Bus, which are a company offering a “Fun Filled Hour of Music and Play” and offer this across the West Sussex area to preschool babies and toddlers from 5 months to 5 years.
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Recently a design student came to me with a questionnaire to assist them in a college project relating to their graphic design course and I was of course happy to oblige.

You may find their design project questions and my subsequent answers interesting:
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Aspiring or established graphic designer or brand designer? Aspiring or established illustrator even?

A list of 20 design competitions for 2009:
These are real competitions I have sourced, rather than glorified spec work.

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I completed my first good deed of the year today - the logo identity design and website front end design for Save The Zulu, which is a new venture by highly respected philanthropist Kevin Allen.
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