STRENGTHEN BRAND IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT

BRAND IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT FOR JEWELERS - THE BASICS:

There is no getting around effective branding, and undoubtedly, several large companies have been leaders in utilizing branding to attract customers. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if a customer looked for “xxxx” – your brand name, rather than just a ring or necklace?

A story around your product is usually a good brand recognition step. A sensible introduction induces brand recall. Recite the story of your jewellery brand and how it came to fruition. Articulate the bliss your customer experiences while wearing your jewellery. It is not about a “sleek looking” piece of jewellery. It must entail more than that to reduce price sensitivity and increase customer loyalty. All of this begins with brand development for jewellers.

So if you want to reflect about your own jewellery brand, several factors must first be determined. Brand Identity  development for jewellers are like any other business. You need a good name, a perpetual logo or image, and a catchy slogan. It may not be necessary to hitch a tune to your jewellery company in order to make your brand memorable, but there are some things you should “not do” to make your brand unforgettable!

BRAND DEVELOPMENT – KEY STRENGTHS or the DO NOTS:

Advertisement alone cannot take you to the stratosphere. Brand is developed with satisfied customers, trustworthiness, structured branding strategy, branding design and strong passion for your product.

Old is Gold – a well versed saying lies in various expects. Jewellers usually target at maximizing reach and new customer fan following. However, they often miss their existing customers. No business should disregard existing customers, because they are already familiar with your jewellery brand and they will likely buy from you again. Make sure you reach out to them often, and don’t forget that word of mouth endorsement is still vital in any industry. Thus, the key to brand development for jewellers is – DO NOT ignore your loyalists!

Websites are still considered a parking space online. However, lot of jewellers do not give due importance on website design and development. Do NOT hold back on your online site. Bear in mind that your website is a “bargaining tool” to some extent. Those that find your jewellery online will have an estimation of your collection based on the appearance of your site. If your site is difficult to navigate, shoddy, looks cheap, and outright chaotic, visitors to your site will view your jewellery along the same lines. As a result, you can forget about any visits to your brick ‘n’ mortar store, or, any customers asking for your brand at retailers!

Social media is another marketing tool, but it can easily work against you. It is important to watch the “trends” of social media to determine whether it fits into your jewellery brand concept. For example, Pinterest and Instagram are probably better social media-marketing tool for a jewellery brand. Stunning photos are very important for selling jewellery, in addition to the proper text, which can lead a potential customer directly to your website.

Logo Design Trends

The fact that an e-commerce giant like Flipkart looks for a change in its logo design, clearly states how important branding is to strike the right cord. Once an abstract concept used by marketing managers, branding is now a board-level concern and a major consideration during business valuations. The brand is in its golden age and one of the primary reasons to look for a change is totally App influenced. App design has become so popular that it's not surprising to witness companies with elegantly crafted slick icons, which dominate the app store and populate your digital devices, have moved into branding, specifically, logo design. This is the reason why Flipkart called for yet another change in its logo design.

If you are also planning to change your logo design or refresh your existing brand like Flipkart, then this quick analysis of latest trends from a Branding Agency in India will be of great help. You don't have to follow them, but you need to be aware of these trends. We reveal the latest trends in branding, identity and logo design, which are compatible to app stores:

1. Polygon Design: Polygons represent multi-faceted view of an organization. Polygonal logos seem to be more balanced with external environment and harmonizing internal environment. Such logos define long term vision and provide Solidarity to any company. 

2. Overlapping Technique: Very Archaic, it is mostly tried and tested by majority of the Graphic designers. Overlapping resurfaces in various forms such as transparent states/forms or fonts. An idea behind using this technique what most of the organizations perceive is to show transparency in their businesses and a corporate structure that they follow.

3. Sparkle: The proverbial icon for bling, sparkle is used to depict things that glitter, twinkle or sparkle. Hence, you would see most of the jewellery logos with a sparkle.

4. Moiré patterns: These are a kind of optical illusions created by converging and colliding grid-like patterns. These are becoming more and more popular within branding and identity design.

5. Contours: Designers set on finding a hybrid between simple one-color iconic symbols and a more complex descriptive illustrative mark have landed on a solution with contours.

Logo designs are wonderfully transformed, adapted and re-shaped in the current trends. What still goes on without saying much is emphasis on font. Typography is one of the core elements, which has a revolutionary transformation. Adapting to incomplete fonts to stacked ones, the razer blunt finishes or the mirror reflection, Fonts are in Vogue and here to stay.

The second observation is relative importance to symbolism. Symbols are the first syllables of human communication. While trends can get extinct, functional symbols are used even today and have an everlasting future.

Designers and clients are always seeking ways to make logos better. After staring at the same logo year after year, even the greatest design would begin to feel stale. The whole idea of putting up this article together with focus on trends in logo designing is to pitch a thought of integration of the elements in more functional form. The dynamic use of logo elements is what determines the trend in logo designing.

Jewellery Photography Tips

Jewellery is very difficult to photograph as it reflects maximum light that it receives due to its shiny high-finish glossy surfaces, gemstones and diamonds. Taking good quality pictures of jewelry for most is an unsolved mystery.  The key elements of table top jewellery photography consist of sharpness, lighting, maintaining white balance, elimination of unnecessary shadows and creating some sparkle in case of gemstones. There are some simple techniques used by the professional photographers to obtain dramatic results with minimal effort.

The set-up: The solution to Jewellery photography is the use of an enclosed lighting system. The enclosed system wraps even and balanced light around the entire product you’re photographing. The advantages include an even distribution of light, consistent natural lighting, elimination of glare, and illumination of hard to reach spots. Accessories such as true color daylight balanced compact fluorescent bulbs, a special diamond dazzler LED bulb to light up the diamonds and faceted stones, a tripod, Mx- Photo Box are key to sharp images.

Diffused Lighting: When illuminating jewelry, you have to make sure never to expose it to light directly, as direct light will be reflected on the jewelry, and will create hot spots and shadows. You have probably already discovered that an on-camera flash does not lead to good jewelry photos. Not only is the camera's flash too bright at such a close distance, but it is probably in the wrong position to actually light up the jewelry properly. On camera flash will also create harsh and distracting shadows. Rather than flash, we like to use continuous lighting for product photography. Using continuous lights makes it easier to visualize what the final image will be like.

Continuous natural daylight lighting: The key is to use continuous natural light which has the ability to evenly and accurately reproduce all the spectacular colors found in the different elements of jewelry. Therefore, for photographing jewelry use fluorescent daylight light. Fluorescent compact bulbs provide nice, natural-colored light and they produce very little heat so they can be left on for long photo sessions without over heating the photographer.

White Balance: Maintaining white balance can be a much of a task but a definite way out to successful product photography. You need to be able to program the white balance setting on your camera. Although many cameras will come with pre-program options or presets you need at least one custom white balance option. This means that the camera can "read" and self-adjust itself to be able to take pictures under many light conditions. If your camera cannot perform this custom adjustment, it’s very likely that you’ll end up with badly colored product pictures, especially if you are trying to take pictures of products against a white background. You’ll likely end up with all kinds of color variations: yellow, blue, magenta, green etc.

Avoiding unnecessary shadows and reflections:  When photographing jewelry, there are certain shadows and reflections that might be necessary to create a three-dimensional look. Yet, there are other reflections and shadows that are unnecessary and that you want to avoid in order to have a photograph that presents your jewelry in the best way possible. The first thing you need to understand about reflections and shadows is how they are produced and why they appear or exist and then work on lighting to have the desired effect.  

 Positioning your jewelry - using different jewelry accessories: There are many accessories you can use to hold jewelry items while photographing. Jewelry accessories will help you position rings, earrings, pendants, loose stones, diamonds and other pieces in various positions and angles in order to get a photograph from the perspective you desire.