Over the past 3-4 weeks it has been hard to blog because of how busy I have been with my online custom t-shirt company, Coed Monkey. It all started last October when I got an idea for a brand new ordering system that would revolutionize the way people order shirts online (I’ll tell you more about this in another post sometime), then it continued when I interviewed 15 web companies to find the right fit and now with re-branding and re-positioning my company for the new website in November. Following the tried and true branding methods of branding/positioning guru Al Ries, here’s a sneak peak at what will be coming in the future of Coed Monkey…
This is our “Big Face” logo that is our main logo, but I don’t like how intricate the design is or how many colors are in it. The text get’s lost and I wanted a fresh face for the new site, so you can see the difference on the right… You’ll also notice the color change. This will look cool on our site and also as a Favicon next to the web browser.
This is our “Ice Cream” logo, which earned that name because it reminded me of an old school ice cream shop sign. This will be the main logo that is on the top left of our site from now on as we try to position our company as a trusted and hassle-free online custom t-shirt company… so the Big Face logo will be secondary to this so that people constantly see our company name instead of a monkey face that they might forget.
We used to emphasize Trust by having this logo to the left, but to increase our branding with the monkey we’ve put it in the new monkey face to reiterate the statement that we are trying to convey.
Our old tagline was cocky, bold and arrogant… but kind of the tagline that you are taught to make in marketing classes. However, what did it do for us when you compare this tagline with our biggest competitors that people actually recognize? People don’t assume that we are the best because we say it… in fact, it doesn’t help us because we are not positioning ourselves any different from our competition besides saying “we’re the best…” but what does that do? now we are emphasizing “Hassle-Free” which our competition does not emphasize.
This is going to be the standard shirt design that we give away at Residence Life conferences from now on… instead of giving away a shirt with our logo that no one really wants to wear past that day or at the gym.
Well, there you go… about 3 months of work condensed in one blog post. What do you think?
Bill,
Another great post. I absolutely love the branding you’ve done here. I really believe this, along with the redesign of the website, is going to easily propel your business. I’m so excited to see what comes of it!
Thanks Sam! I really appreciate the feedback… it’s been fun re-branding everything, but it’s taken a lot ore work than I ever thought… 2-3 months actually! I can’t wait to see the impact as we re-release with the new site in November.
Love it, man! That’s some really good work
Thanks Jonathan! It’s been fun working on it and I can’t wait to unveil it on the new site… I like the new colors more too!
Bill–I think you have a real winner with your tag line “hassle free custom apparel” (although I’d probably write it with a hyphen between “hassle” and “free” as in “hassle-free custom apparel” –generally you hyphenate two adjectives that act as a single idea). But, I have seen it both ways.
I am curious how you chose the color. . . do you explain that somewhere?
Thanks Diane, on our new site there will be a hyphen in the tagline, so thanks a lot for bringing that up! As far as the orange color, I’ve been following Al Ries’ branding techniques and he runs through the uses of color in the logo, but the biggest reason for me to use orange instead of yellow and red was because I wanted to switch the feel of the site to a more contemporary look and orange is a very popular color… I’ve realized that people don’t necessarily work with us based on our logo, instead it is based on referrals so instead of trying to have a logo that is bold and the brightest colors, I wanted to make it a bit more subtle to make people feel more welcome instead of yelling our branding at them. That’s a long explanation all to say that the orange will actually be a better fit for our new site, haha. Thanks for the comment and I hope you’re doing great!