I’m all into making things easy. As a business owner, you’re very busy. You haven’t got time to spend hours perfecting your website banner. Nor can you afford to take time away from working on your business. I totally understand that. After all, I’m a business owner too.
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As a graphic designer, it’s my job to create graphics for your business. But I’m not here to make extra work for you. It’s the opposite in fact because my job is all about giving you back your most precious commodity; your time. I’ll take care of all your graphic design needs, big or small. Here’s how it works …

Benefits of Using a Professional Graphic Designer
You’ve decided you need some graphic designs created. It may be a logo, a Facebook cover page image, social media templates or a website header. You may know exactly what you want, or are not quite sure yet. You could go and spend five hours trying to create it using free software online. But chances are you are not going to be 100% happy with it. Nor will it look highly professional.

​Here’s what you should do instead
Contact me. Send me any graphics you already have, such as your logo or product images. I then create exactly what you want to your specific size requirements. It’s delivered to you via email in a file which is all ready for you to upload to wherever you want it to go.

Let’s nail down the exact benefits of having me do your graphic design work:

• Saves you time and money – you can use your time to do what you do best – grow your business!
• Quick and easy – I do all the work for you
• Your graphics look professional, providing positive first impressions to your customers or clients

First impressions matter. The way your business looks is often the first thing customers and clients decide on as to whether they will buy from you. This was especially true for Sharon from Totally Balmy. She hired me to help her design a new logo and the result was a fabulous and exciting logo which represents her brand so much better. You can read about her story in my article titled Experience the Benefits Professional Graphic Design Brings Your Business.
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Another client I’ve helped is Zoe from Forget Me Not Photography. Zoe needed a complete overhaul with her branding. We started with creating a new logo and from there we moved onto business cards and flyers. Here is an example of her old branding verses the new branding and logo she now uses.

​“Helen was right there with my ideas. Everything I suggested Helen discussed with me and made sure that I was comfortable with. I can't recommend One Bite enough, you won't be dissatisfied if you contact Helen. Thank you for everything, I can't tell you how pleased I am” - Zoe
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I’d love to help you raise the profile of your business too,
​so send me an email and let’s get started!

So you run your own business, you want all your clients, new and old, to instantly know what is yours out there in the market place…. but how do you transfer styles from your business to accentuate your brand presence? What you need is a Brand Style Guide. You may be wondering some ‘what’ and ‘why’s’ about Brand Style Guides, let me see if I can put your mind at ease by providing you with some information about it.
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1. What is a Brand Style Guide?
   www.executionists.com explains it really well “A brand style guide is the primary visual DNA of your company’s branding, though it can also reference grammar, tone, word usage and point of view. Essentially, it’s a document that describes, defines and presents examples of what your brand looks like in various visual media such as print, Internet and broadcast. To be effective it must clearly define the rules around your online presence in all channels such as websites, landing pages, mobile sites, online ads, blogs, social media channels and email communications (including email signatures!).”
   
   
2. How do you Create A Brand Style Guide?
   You  can begin to work on getting a name, logo, colours, fonts, copy and all the tangible items a brand needs to promote itself. These things will be seen by the world, so need to be perfect from the date of launch. It is well worth investing in some expertise to do this. Outsourcing your logo creation to a graphic designer ensures that the visual face you present to the world is professional, well thought out, unique and easily recognisable. Key to remember is that it is important to do what you know you can achieve great results with, as this is the best use of your time. Outsource those jobs which you know you have limited knowledge about and if one of those is your graphic design work, I’ll be happy to do it for you! You can learn more about how I can help create your brand at my website, One Bite Design. 
   
   
3. What are the benefits of a Brand Style Guide?
   When you engage the services of a virtual assistant, graphic designer, web designer, copywriter, coach/mentor or employ a new team member, being able to hand them a copy of your brand style guide will help them understand and represent your business effectively and efficiently. Your brand represents your business. It tells the world who you are, what you do and why you do it. Your brand is more than a marketing tool, it becomes an important part of people’s lives. Customers search for products or services labelled with your brand and pick your brand over others. Great brands remain focused on achieving their goals, with a clear focus on the ‘why’ they are doing something.  It is every business owner’s dream to create a brand that remains on the lips of the world. Yet so many owners struggle to look past a logo or the colour of our packaging. A great brand is more than a name.
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Check out this basic brand style guide for Cute Cuddles New Zealand

The Final Step in Creating Your Brand Style Guide
First up, do some research and find examples of brands you like. What does their styling tell you about their brand? What is it that you like about it? Next think about your brand. What colours and images does your brand suit? What do you want your brand to make your customer think about when they see it? Once you have answered these questions, the next step is to contact a professional graphic designer. They will take your information, ask a few questions of their own and begin the creative process!

​If you are looking for a branding solution, get in touch with Helen today!

Many business owners are hesitant to hire a professional graphic designer. Not because they doubt the quality of the work, but because of the cost and the belief that they can do the same level of work themselves. Unfortunately, the result is logos and other graphic images which portray their business in a negative light, losing them money and customers.

Recently I created a new logo for Sharon from Totally Balmy. She was clearly unhappy with her old logo, with feedback from her clients that her logo just didn’t really match the image she was trying to portray. Sharon focuses on selling natural products, yet her old logo had dark and bold colours, totally counteracting what she wanted clients to feel about her business.

Making Contact with A Graphic Designer
Sharon and I are members of Network NZ, a business networking group. Sharon had seen the design work I had done for other businesses within the group and liked what she saw. She contacted me to engage my graphic design services to create her a new logo. As she was still in the start-up phase of her business, keeping her costs down was important.

“Helen's prices are incredibly reasonable, and her service is impeccable. She ensures you receive the best service, and keeps you informed along the way.” Sharon, Totally Balmy

Once Sharon made contact, I emailed her a list of questions. This small questionnaire is a great tool for both my clients and myself, helping me create the specific designs they require. By giving me a detailed explanation and examples of the type of image you want to portray, it helps me create the exact type of images you require. From here, I shared with Sharon a range of ideas and together we worked on perfecting the best choice for her and her business.

“The end result? Fabulous. I'm so incredibly happy with it. So much so, I got Helen to design me a business card too!” Sharon, Totally Balmy

Life After a New Logo
Sharon absolutely loved her new logo. So much so that she said, “I'm now proud to have my logo out there! I wear it on t-shirts, have it on the side of both our cars, and am delighted to be recognised in our community. People now spot me everywhere, so there's no hiding!”

I am so thankful that Sharon gave me the opportunity to revitalise her brand. It is an exciting part of my work that I can change how clients and customers see your business for the better. My work has given Sharon the confidence to place her business amongst others and actively compete with other small businesses.

“The new logo makes me feel more professional, more trustworthy and it just fits my business so well. People can now look at my logo, and have a good idea about what I do. I don't worry about my image at all now.” Sharon, Totally Balmy

Sharon’s new logo has completely transformed the way her business is seen by her clients. Her old logo did nothing to demonstrate her passion for creating natural merchandise. 

It’s a new year and you want your business to start off with a bang!
You’ve created a business plan, identified which products and services you’re going to sell this year, organised your blogs, worked out your social media posts and are ready for a fresh new start, right? Wrong. You’ve forgotten to revisit one of the most important aspects of your business, which is your brand.

Your Brand Needs Professional Graphic Design Work
Your brand is your face to the world. It is what people use to decide whether to purchase your products or services. It is a way of creating customer loyalty and growing the instant recognition of your brand.

As your brand contains a lot of visual information, it is important that it looks fantastic.
That means creating a DIY logo, Facebook cover, social media template or website banner is not a good decision. Unless you have a background in graphic design, you are unlikely to understand about colour matching, pixel sizes, fonts and using images correctly. Sure, if you create your graphics yourself you will initially save money, but have you considered the big picture? A poorly designed brand or business image results in fewer customers, which means less income in the long run.

4 Reasons Why Businesses Should Prioritise & Outsource Graphic Design
Outsourcing your design work to a graphic designer is a smart move. Not only can they create from scratch a unique and attractive brand image, but they are also experienced at refreshing old ones too. Here are my top four reasons why you should hire a graphic designer like me:

1. Your business will look professional. First impressions do matter and having sharp, well thought out and presented graphic design work gives credibility to your brand.
2. Your brand tells a story. A graphic designer will be able to portray in images instantly what it would take many words to describe.
3. Great design gets more sales. If your business graphics have been professionally designed, you are more likely to attract new clients or customers.
4. Outsourcing saves you both money and time. Hiring a graphic designer lets you concentrate on the work that you do best. It lets you earn more money than it would cost to have hired the designer in the first place. By getting it right the first time, you avoid wasting time and rebranding or redesigning something that could already have been making you money.

​Now is the time to act and create your brand image or revitalise your existing one. Look through my design portfolio to see some of the work I have done to create amazing looking brand images.  Now send me an email and let’s arrange a time to chat about how I can help improve your business image this year! 

Hello again fellow One Bite blog readers - Helen here. Well I have just come back into my office after being out this morning to the Network NZ Tauranga face to face catch up. What an amazing bunch of people, so open, honest and encouraging.

If you have not heard of Network NZ, it is all about supporting New Zealanders in business. Their job is to help other New Zealand based businesses to grow through providing a networking platform to connect with other businesses, as well as giving plentiful opportunities to discuss and learn new ideas to sky rocket their own business! I have been with Network NZ for a year now and I am hooked for life. I have the privilege of being endorsed by Network NZ for my graphic design work. Check out the website: www.networknz.nz

So let me tell you 3 reasons how networking can help you and your business. 

1. You are not alone in the world of business success or even business challenges - so why keep to yourself? Why struggle alone!? There are people out there who know how you feel and can relate to what you are going through. They can support and encourage you from a place of actually ‘having been there’. We all know that our friends and family, can more often than not, not fully understand what we and our business is going through. Networking with other like minded kiwi people is the best way to get an encouraging lift or challenge to help you and your business get an often much needed boost. 
2. Outsourcing seems to be a popular term at the moment and actually a topic I wrote a blog on a few weeks ago. You can find it here The Benefits of Outsourcing Your Business. When you go out and network with other people you find ways that you can outsource some of your business needs to other people. This not only helps you out by giving you time to work on your own business, but it also helps the other persons business. Meeting and getting to know someone and their business can help build a strong working relationship where you can work together to get you and your business the best they can be.
3. For my final reason on how networking can help you and your business, lets talk about referrals. Getting out of your comfort zone and networking with people means that you and your business name gets advertised. The more people that you know the more chances you have of getting business. If you get a referral from someone else it is so encouraging and really gives you a boost. It is much easier to refer someone and their business if you have been in contact with that person for yourself. So the more you go out there and network the more referrals you might get. Sounds like a win to me!

So let’s wrap this up - if you are not networking, you are missing out on loads of opportunities that not only benefit you, but benefit your business, other people and their businesses. If you need to outsource any graphic design needs, I am your person. I look forward to networking with you! You can find out more about me here: Meet Helen. You can also email me by clicking the button below!

Hey Business Owner! Do You Outsource?
It’s no secret that I am a graphic designer and that clients hire me to create graphic design work for them. But right now I am not trying to convince you to hire me. Instead I am asking you to think about the flow on effect of outsourcing your work to another business.

Say you hired a virtual assistant to send out your emails. You pay them some money for their time and they in turn now have some more income. Do they take it down to the local shops, pay their kids tuition fees or put it on their mortgage? Maybe they use it to hire a marketing professional to help them get new clients to earn more money? Then the marketer feels they need to rebrand and focus on a niche market, so they use the money they got from the VA towards hiring a graphic designer. 

The Business Circle Of Outsourcing
Okay, so I’ve made that term up, but I feel it could be a real one. By outsourcing your job to another business owner whose talents are more suited to it than yours, you are supporting other business, like they did yours. Just think about what you have done with income from your business? How did you use it?

Benefits Of Outsourcing Business Services
I mostly work with small to medium sized business and being honest, I know that money can be pretty tight sometimes. In fact, it can often lead to owners thinking that they should do everything themselves to save money, with the old Kiwi saying “she’ll be right” featuring strongly in their thinking. 

But in reality, the time you spend working on something which is not your strong point or even doing something you have no idea about at all takes time away from your business. Yes, it is your time, but it is time you could have spent growing your business. It is time you could have spent seeking new clients. It is time you could have promoted your products. It is time you could have earnt more money than you would have paid to outsource the job in the first place.

Time is the business owner’s most precious commodity and that is something that both I and other service providers can give you back.

One of my clients, Danni Winmill from Winmill Creative, recently took the plunge and hired me. I asked her why she did and if you want to know what she said, head over and read her interview on The Impact Of Professional Graphic Design. 

And you know the drill….
​If you want some graphic design help, just get in touch and we’ll get things started! 

Hello! I recently decided to interview one of my lovely clients. I wanted to see how professional graphic design work has impacted her and her business. This is a great read! Grab a cuppa and biscuit and settle down to read Danni’s experience. This could be what you and your business needs to get an extra lift, taking your from ho-hum to amazing!

What made you decide to get your logo designed by a professional graphic designer?
It honestly had not been on my radar in the beginning. I put something together in Photoshop that I thought would do and forgot about it. I love to research things, for example the best ways I can improve my business on a budget since I’m still in the start-up phase. After a tonne of research I could see my whole web presence didn’t cut it. It didn’t look professional, it didn’t feel professional. I was overwhelmed with the best place to invest for the best results. Having my website professionally designed was out of the question.

As I was looking for the best first step to take, I noticed Helen from One Bite posting examples of logos she had just wrapped-up designing. I loved the style and colours, they felt well-matched with my business. Her rates were amazing, definitely manageable for my little start up as the best first step into a more professional image. The final straw to making the decision was this post on Helens new blog written about logos (click here to read the blog). I was sold. A logo definitely seemed like the best place to start and the place from which all the rest of my branding would flow.
 
How did you find the logo process?
I contacted Helen and she sent through a questionnaire to fill. Some of the questions were a bit tricky as I hadn’t thought about some of them before. I got my research hat on and started checking through the list. It’s not as scary as it sounds. You know the saying “You only get out what you put it”? I live by that philosophy. So when I commissioned Helen for my logo, I made sure to give her the most useful info I could to help the design process flow smoothly. I was blown away by the variety of the first round of designs. Helen took my feedback and came back with designs that were so incredibly close. Just a few tweaks and I had my logo. The whole process was so quick, friendly and easy. It was exciting to see the logo come together; when I saw the finished product it felt amazing! I then realised just how much my old one did not do my business justice at all. I swapped it out across all online platforms and the desktop on my computer immediately and I felt so much better.
 
How has having a professionally design logo & business card altered the way you advertise your business?
I feel confident putting my business out there now that I have a professional logo.I still have a way to go before I’m totally happy with my online presence, but Rome wasn’t built in a day and it will happen. I’ll be asking for Helens help at each new stage of development of my brand and online presence.
 
How has having a professional designer work for you impacted how you feel about the professionalism of your business?  
Massively! I feel far more professional and like I’m taken more seriously for it. If you’re serious about your business, a logo is definitely the best first step and money well spent. Has it also impacted any other area of your business? I get more work because I’m out there - looking professional!

Here are Danni’s logos - before and after...

Danni from Winmill Creative is the most talented product photographer I have seen... check out her own before and after pics. Before - taken by her client, after - taken by Danni. You can find Winmill Creative by clicking this link: www.winmillcreative.co.nz

In my 20 years experience as a graphic designer I find that getting your logo right is one of the biggest decisions you will have to make regarding your business and branding. 

So much goes in to a logo design; fonts, colours, imagery overall style etc. As a graphic designer, in essence, I am trying to figure out what is going through your head. Some clients have no idea of what they would like in a logo and give the designer ‘free-range’. Other clients are a bit more specific in what they want. Either way there are a few things to think about when you are considering getting a logo designed by a professional graphic designer.

5 Points to Think About Regarding a Logo Design:

1. Make sure that you have a business name that you are happy with. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it is good to be sure of your business name before logo design starts.
2. Think about if you would like an icon or any imagery included in your logo design. If you decide that you would like some form of imagery, have a think about what you might like that to be, even a general theme of what you might like.
3. Consider your colour choices. Do you have colours you really like and others you don’t? 
4. Now onto fonts… There are so many different fonts out there. Script, painted, handwritten, serif, sans serif, bold, italic… the list goes on. Think about what fonts you like the style of and communicate that to your designer.
5. GOOGLE IMAGE search logos. You will get a feel for the logos that you don’t and do like. Copy those images and hold on to them. Look at them closely and try and see what it is that makes you like the logo. 

When you hire a professional graphic designer, like One Bite Design, to work on a logo design for you, you will have a huge head start. Having information under your belt with make the logo design process easier for you and me as your designer. Logo designs are so much fun and are so fulfilling. At the end of the process the main thing is that you, the client, is 100% happy with your logo. Careful planning and thought goes a long way in the success of the logo design process. Have a look at the before and after of this logo design and check out this review from Zoe...

Your logo is more than your business name. It’s your brand identity and without this, your business is likely to fall off your customer’s radar. A professionally designed logo gives your brand the credibility it needs to be successful. It’s a bit like a box of chocolates. All the pretty wrapped ones get picked first, with the dull and boring wrapped ones being left till last. If your business doesn’t look good from the outside, no one is going to take the time to find out more about it.
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If you haven’t already got a logo already or you are after a re-brand get in touch with me today!