SoMaFusion :: travelogue

getting closer
Originally uploaded by LeLon Is Idea(L)

I mentioned the other day that we found a designer – the talented Mr. Lefteris Koulonis (see his updates on Less Like More and you’ll know) and we are working with him to come up with our logo.

I finished our design brief, Manolis went over it and he’s happy as well so I’ve just whizzed it off to Lefteris.

I just wanted to blog about what a design brief is all about. I could write a lot but I think the picture above says it all (and what do you know, it’s one from Lefteris’ photostream).

A design brief is all about getting closer to your vision, to your designer and to your audience.

It should be a succinct document (not necessarily short. But definitely very clear) which will help the designer understand who you are, what you do, what’s your vision, what’s your market, what are your design preferences. It is definitely not a document whereby you instruct the designer what to do. It is a document that puts your designer in a frame of mind.

Ours includes

• Introduction to SoMaFusion
• Market Position
• Activities
• Main message/ vision
• What the company name means
• Our requirements (in terms of where & how we will be using the logo

I doubt that’s enough but I think that for now they will introduce Lefteris to what we are all about and we will be able to discuss further and find more areas that we want to explore as we go along.

——
Here are some good resources I found on writing a design brief.
- How do you write a design brief? by David Airey
- The Ultimate Design Brief by Shaun Crowley on Freelance Switch
- The Logo Design Process of TOP Logo Designers by Jacob Cass on Just Creative Design

We spent some time discussing the company name today – even though I’ve already noted it down in a previous post.

There are many theories out there about how you should choose your company name and what it should mean. Sure, we chatted about some of them and did the theory swapping.

By the way – check out the Business Link guide to naming a business and considering its structure and also see their very useful guide on branding.

At the end we agreed on one thing. We both know it’s a mistake to think about this on a personal level but we can’t help it. This is our project and we love it so the name needs to be personal and dear to us.

Naturally it also represents what we do.

As I’ve noted before, Sofia (yours truly) is good with content and Manolis is good with code. Hence SoMa.

However we feel that just the mere presence of these two elements (ahem, and people naturally) is not enough. We truly believe that only by combining code with good content will you be able to see results. Hence Fusion.

For us SoMaFusion does not just stand for two people getting together and pursuing some interesting projects (even though, if we didn’t think we could do the interesting projects we wouldn’t have started the company). It’s more than that.

It’s about a deeply ingrained belief that by fusing the content and code one can actually enhance online and offline presence.