the Conscious Design™ Blog

Learn about the Peterman Method™, our approach to conscious design, and how you can take the next step in your project.

The Conscious Design™ blog, podcast, and YouTube channel is your guide to understanding the product development process, branding, and starting up a company. Whether inventor, designer, or entrepreneur, we have content to help you be successful. Written primarily by Ian Peterman, our CEO, founder, and Conscious Design expert, this blog pulls from his and our team’s extensive experience and history with startups, products, and brands as we seek to build conscious brands and products. We hope you enjoy this content and learn something valuable through it. Let’s make your vision a reality.

Market Research – 3 Ways to Get It

Market Research is something that everyone should get when launching a new product. As we’ve talked about before in 5 Tips for Market Research & Analysis, there is quite a bit of information that you can get even from a low level Market Research done by people who know what they are doing. What we didn’t discuss was where and how to get this done for your product. Here are the three best ways to get Market Research for your business or product. Yourself This is the lowest cost way to do this if you do it right. I recommend that even if you hire a Firm or a freelancer to do it for you, you should spend a little time doing some yourself. If you catch something that is really bad or looks really great, you can tell whoever you hire about it, and they can confirm or contradict what you’ve found. There are tons of resources online about how to do market research, what things to think about, etc. Start there, and if you feel confident enough in your product, or business, then go for it. The downside of course is that while you can get lots of resources online and do it for “cheap”, it takes a lot of time and as it isn’t necessarily your day job, you are more likely to have mistakes and miss things than a professional. Hire a Firm The best guaranteed way to get all the information you need for your exact projects comes with a price. There are obvious benefits and drawbacks to hiring a firm rather than a freelancer to do the work. However, if you have the funds, a firm’s benefits outweigh their drawbacks, most of which is price. Firms usually have checks and balances to ensure the research provided is exactly as needed. With the additional financial investment comes access to better information and tools. It can also substantially speed up the process as opposed to doing this yourself. For those who may argue this, you have to include the amount of potential errors that will cause wasted time down the line. Both Marketing Firms and Design Firms can most frequently provide this type of service. Hire a Freelancer You might be surprised freelancers are listed here based on my post last year 3 Reasons you Should use a Firm and Not Just a Freelancer. However, they offer the balancing act that many startups need. I should know, I was a freelancer before I established the Peterman Design Firm. Established companies and funded startups look to Firms for help, but not everyone is in that position. While some firms can pull off the work at freelancer rates, they often can’t do it as fast. Freelancers are the in-between area that can benefit someone who’s tight on cash but know they need help. Freelancers skill can vary widely, as well as their cost and delivery time. As a single person they don’t usually have the benefits of someone double checking their work. They also usually don’t have the resources to put toward the best tools and databases for research. If you are bootstrapping, I highly recommend that you at least hire a freelancer to do some basic Market Research on your idea. Even if all they do is confirm how market viable your product is, it’s worth it. You’ll have extra confidence in moving forward. If you have the cash or are more established, spend the extra and do a more thorough Market Research process. Always remember to do a little research on your own. Doesn’t matter if it’s you, an intern, or someone interested in your success. Research before hiring a firm or freelancer will make your initial meeting more productive. That research will ensure you can bring up your concerns or questions to whoever you are hiring and let’s them address those for you. Author Mr. Peterman View all posts

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5 Reasons Your Brand Matters (Even if You Are Small)

I wanted to end the year, now that we’re publicly offering branding, by talking about why your brand matters. Every brand, even if it’s not a big one, has value. It might be small, or it might be large, but it has value. Your brand also matters probably a bit more than you might think, especially if you are just starting. Building a recognizable and valuable brand is part of every business, though we don’t think about it in those terms necessarily. Branding is so important and often ignored by new and smaller businesses. Because of this, I want to talk about five reasons that your brand matters. Branding Improves Recognition Recognition is important to make sure advertising is more effective and people are return customers. Becoming a recognized brand, even if just in a single small niche or your part of town makes you familiar, which is one of the first steps to building trust with potential new customers. Make sure that your brand is coherent across all platforms and conveys your desired message. Doing this ensures customers recognize and remember you the way you want to be. Branding Supports Design When you go to start advertising, build a website, or even make a flyer or business card, having a brand supports all those design efforts and saves you money in the long run. Branding, and the guidelines we create with it, helps make sure future design work follows the same rules and creates the cohesive brand you want. It also saves anyone designing for your company time and effort as they know exactly what your brand is. Branding in product design is also very important, it makes your products more recognizable. Branding is Valuable Examples of this abound, but probably the most easily recognized one is about Coca-Cola. According to Forbes Most Valuable Brands of 2018 Coca-Cola’s brand was valued at $57.3 billion (yes, with a B). You might not be Coca-Cola, but your brand carries value and only increases with time and good stewardship. Managing and maintaining the integrity of the brand and making sure it always is represented well through the business and its employees, will increase its value in the long run. This is also something people look at when purchasing or valuing a company. Creates Stronger Workforce If you have a lousy, or even non-existent brand, it’s harder to get behind the company and product. Think of your brand as your flag, many great movements in history, from civil rights to those of battle have had something that people rallied behind. Now, brands are the new flags people rally behind. Presidential candidates create brands when running and so do social justice groups. Creating it when you are small makes it easier as you get larger. Makes Better Marketing Branding always makes for better marketing. The key is everything matches and makes sense. When you create a brand you are really putting into graphics, and words, the story of the company. It’s who and why, which makes the job of marketing easier and more effective when you do something. Having an ad with unicorns on it when your brand is gothic vampires doesn’t usually go well (though I’m sure there will be some ad campaign using this effectively). No matter your size, your brand has value and should be a tool and asset you use to bring more success to your business. Here at the Peterman Design Firm, we understand that value and help our clients to not only see it but create it. Hopefully this list has helped you see some more value in your brand and see where it can be when created thoughtfully and with purpose. Contact Us today and see what value we can bring to your brand! And don’t forget, YOUR brand matters. Author Mr. Peterman View all posts

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Product + Branding

It’s always been the goal to offer complete design services to our clients. Because of this, we have expanded our services to include Product + Branding to help you be as successful as possible! While we started out in Product Development, the time has come to add the next part to the equation. We can more fully help you develop your successful companies, not just products. We’re doing this through Branding. While we’re still building our own website, seems all design firms are behind the times on that one, we’ve been putting together years of projects that our team has completed for branding clients to showcase what we are capable of as a firm. Expanding Team We’ve added a small team of graphic and brand designers to be able to offer this service. Their experience covers many industries, from restaurants to healthcare, cannabis, and manufacturers. Our amazing designers can create a cohesive brand for a company or a product. Because of this, we’re able to create websites, marketing material, and every other area that needs branding in your business or product. This dovetails nicely with our current services and we are excited to work with our clients in the new year in creating amazing brands and products. Complete Design Services If you are looking for complete design services to turn your idea into reality, we would love to help. With our expanded team and our history of success, we can make your vision a reality. We help with both physical and digital products and companies. Follow this blog to see tips and learn about Product Development and Branding. We’d love to help you with your product or brand needs. Contact us to start your project today. We’ll be able to answer your questions and get your project going in the right direction. Your brand matters and we can help you make it valuable. Author Mr. Peterman View all posts

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Supply Chain And Its Importance

Supply chains are what make any product possible. While it may sound like something only used for large businesses, it is not. Every business has one, whether you realize it or not. We’ve mentioned supply chains before in our Kickstarter Manufacturing post, but I wanted to dive into it more. I cannot stress the importance of your supply chain enough. Understand Your Supply Chain Understanding and maintaining your supply chain, even if it’s just one or two people or companies is important. Just to get a single pen for you to use at your company involves a pretty long supply chain. From gathering the raw materials, to manufacturing, to distributing, to you receiving the product. Your product has a supply chain as well. It might involve just a couple suppliers, one distributor, and the end customers, but it still exists. A breakdown in that chain can mean company failure, bad press, or profit loss that affects you for years. Sourcing When sourcing for companies, we look at as much of the supply chain as we can see. Hiring Your Outsourcing may be a valuable use of assets depending on your company size. Many companies keep their exact supply chain hidden in order to keep ahead of competition or many other reasons. The longer the chain the more potential issues can arise. Always look for the shortest chain possible, go direct to manufacturers instead of buying from end distributors for sourcing your products components. Longer supply chains also make for more expensive parts. Backups When possible, always create backups for your suppliers in case something goes wrong. While you can’t always have this, especially if you use specialty suppliers, you should always try to have a backup. Manufacturers close down, change services, make certain products obsolete, stop producing a product, etc. Unfortunately many of these issues can appear with no advanced warning, causing other issues for you. Supply chain management and set-up is an investment. The cost of a poor supply chain can be more than the cost of setting it up right. It can also cause long term damage to your company. Because of this, I advice every start-up to rethink, even if you think that the investment is too high. An investment like this will seem small after you’ve successfully weathered suppliers closing, product failures, and other issues. This means you are still providing the best product possible to your customers and that is a win in my book. You’ll also benefit from happy customers by ensuring you can provide your product to them without issues. Author Mr. Peterman View all posts

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