Consistent Branding: More Effective, Less Expensive

I like to commute by bike. We chose to live in Portland, Maine because it is an easy place to live without relying on a car. We chose where to buy our house within Portland and where to locate my business within Portland so that I could have a short, easy-to-bike (or walk) commute.

There are quite a few miles of marked bike lanes in the city, and I can hop on one right from my house. Every year, about this time of the summer, the city spends a lot of time re-striping the roads and repainting the bike lane graphics.

Apparently, there are multiple bike graphics in the shop over at City of Portland’s Department of Streets & Utilities.

You can see (photo left) where they went over the faded graphic with another stencil that didn’t quite match.

However, there were even places where they had to go to more trouble to update the bike lanes. Here (at right), they ended up using black paint to cover up the old bike rider logo and then repainted it again a few feet farther down the road.

I don’t know why they had to bother painting over the old one, but they did.

Now, I don’t think of these bike lane graphics as branding. I actually think there would be an opportunity for Portland, Maine to create some wonderful bike lane graphics, but that is not what I’m suggesting with this blog post.

My point is to show how having multiple iterations of your key graphics just makes things look messy, can cause confusion, and make for more work, effort and expense.

Keep your logo files simple and your branding will be easier for you to maintain.

A consistent brand identity makes your business, product or service more memorable to your clients and prospects. Remember, we buy from brands we know and trust. If you change your brand elements, it makes it harder for people to recognize and trust you. And, it can make for more work for you!