Branding Essentia Studios, LLC

12 April 2005 9:31:46

My business partner, Matthew, and I attended a marketing seminar at the local radio group last week and the speaker it started me thinking about what (and even if) there is anything unique enough about Essentia Studios to make it worth continuing even as I pursue other occupations in web design.

When we started the business, Matthew and I had considered the fact that our goal was to create very user friendly, intuitive sites–sites designed for users who don’t understand the web as well as the developers who are coding it. In that sense, we would brand ourselves as usability experts. But are we really? Do we really know what we are doing? Do we have the experience and expertise to label ourselves with such a high and noble title? As I consider my personal areas of expertise, I can state that information design (the structure, order and layout of information on a page) is one of my strong points, maybe even my strongest. However, does (or maybe, how does) that translate well enough into a point to build a business on? I mean, of the information being displayed is poor to begin with, what good is a well developed layout?

I think at this point in our careers, the quality of the materials provided by the client for publication is the number one trouble spot. It has been the case for many of our projects. A client knows he/she needs a website, but they aren’t necessarily sure why. That ambiguity leads to poorly created content (copy, images, etc.) being passed on to me, the designer. When the site is published and isn’t popular or it isn’t getting the results that the client envisioned, it is my fault for creating such a crappy site. But where did the problem actually stem from?

I guess these are just a few questions that have been simmering at the back of my mind. I’m not sure that I can even come to a definite answer on my own. It must be time to do more research.