Set up a new business in style

So you've decided to set up a new business, the idea is good, the bank has given you the green light and everything is looking peachy. Wait a minute haven't you forgotton something? Yes, thats right - your trousers! With all that excitement you clean forgot to put any on this morning. Anything else you air brained fool? Yes 5 points there at the back - what you need above all else is an unforgettable look to knock the competition dead.

Step 1: The Logo Design
What are the things to look out for when thinking about your new business logo design? Well we could bore you to tears on the subject or we could just get right in there and divulge the secrets every successful company has learnt at some stage about good logo design. What? you want to hear the long, boring answer? All right we'll save the secret to a successful logo design for another tutorial then. The first thing you need to do is establish your market, its no good trying to be all things to all men - it can't be done. Lets say we are aiming at pretty young girls - and thats not a bad market to try and tap. Go for something pink and frilly and your halfway home. Alternatively for boys you might want to pick a blue fat typeface. For a corporate market you'd be a twat to move far away from greys, blues and reds.

Top Tip: Letterspacing - increase the spacing between each letter to a ridiculously large amount. This will then give a standard typeface such as ariel a new dignified gravitas that speaks volumes about your cutting edge new business design.

Step 2: The Business Stationary Design
The holy trinity in the designers canon. Your business card, your letterhead and not forgetting wee little compliment slip hiding away behind his big A4 size wise cracking brother. It's imperative for every new business to order far more business stationary than they can ever hope to use. Typical figures for example might be a thousand double sided matt laminated business cards. You'll be impressed with the quality and feel for approximatly one week. Copiously handing them out at soirees and meet and greets before filing the remainder away in a drawer never to be seen again. As for letterhead and compliment slips, why not plumb for another couple of thousand print run with maybe an embossed logo to impress any blind friends you might have? Key design concepts are to try and make them in some way different from the billions of other designs that have gone before.

Top Tip: Try to avoid using large blocks of flat colour on letterheads and compliment slips. 9 times out of 10 the inks will start to fade on the print run and its going to look a bit shoddy.

Step 3: The Presentation Folder or Brochure Design
Now we're cooking on gas. We've established a profound, daring, yet ultimately affectionate corporate logo design. We've taken the plunge and ordered well in excess of a quarter of a million business cards - sexy. Now comes the pinnacle of our design excitement. The corporate - or if you prefer - laid back brochure or folder design. Opinion is divided on what constitutes the best visual plan of attack on this matter. Some opt for the meat and potatoes style A4 brochure design. It's not particularly clever or innovative but only the most limited retard could fail to work out what your meant to do with it, i.e. turn the pages from right to left and look at the pages, pausing occasionally to read any words or look at pictures. Others are more inclined to go down the less tried and tested folder and inserts route - scary! Just remember to make it look nice rather than ugly and you'll not go too far wrong

Top Tip: Don't allow anyone to persuade you into going for a tailored die cut folder design. It's incredibly difficult for printers to get anything right and you're begging for trouble. Remember K.I.S.S. Keep it simple stupid.

Step 4: The Website Design
Up until now we've been keeping our heads down and getting on very nicely, thankyou very much. that's all about to end. Enter the world of website design. On paper it sounds easy enough - transfer what you've produced in your company brochure design up there on the old gogglebox. An easy mistake to make, what you haven't taken into account is that web design was introduced to the world less by design more by some kind of nerd magic. To get anywhere near close to producing something that looks ok on paper onto a screen takes the kind of patience and understanding not normally found in your typical right thinking human being. Suffice to say you can only have your website based on a three column grid and no you can't have it in your company colours, you'll have it in grey or nothing, alright?.

Top Tip: Please don't ask for a drop down menu. It looks fairly simple to do and your competitors all have them but we still can't get it working right and god knows we've tried, god knows we've tried...

If that hasn't inspired confidence and given you the incentive to give up already then there maybe some hope for you. Just remember design isn't rocket science, although technically speaking the rocket did have to be designed at some stage so blah blah blah etc. etc...