What's Your Business?

What's Your Business? offers a comprehensive pathway through the subject of corporate design clarifying the relationship between corporate design and corporate strategy and the terms identity, brand, image, communication and reputation. The book explores the impact of developing digital technology on brand creation and positioning in a marketplace, through symbolic and coherent design. A local market trader may buy a van, promote his business on a blackboard and proclaim 'daily special offers'. Corporations use computers, design websites and communicate with global clients through social media. Yet each business started with an idea and developed a distinctive existence. What's Your Business? helps you turn a business idea into reality by establishing its existence, ethos, message and activities. By integrating corporate and design strategy with creative inputs Claire Tomlins illustrates the subject's diversity. She ensures businesses set goals, strategies and plans whilst ensuring they recognise an identity that sparks the corporate design strategy and creative inputs that manifests the company's aesthetic for marketing purposes; including design management, Intellectual Property topics and measures. Business people wishing to know how design can provide added value to their organisation will find this book useful, including where they could contribute. Academic concepts and definitions are updated and explanations are provided to business and design students on where each of their skillsets can contribute to a business.

Claire Tomlins specialises in corporate design strategy and change management, facilitating businesses to achieve their goals. As a management consultant with an MBA (Strategic Management) from the OUBS, she gained extensive management consultancy experience in the private sector working for blue chip companies and SME's in manufacturing, banking, energy, services and IT; public sector government departments and the voluntary sector. As the internet and new media technologies began to impact business strategies, processes and communications,

Part 1 Ground Base - How Corporate Design Started and Evolved: Introduction. Corporate identity and image development. Corporate identity and branding debate. New media, communication and reputation. Part 1 summary. Part 2 Setting the Strategy: Introduction. Corporate strategy. Storytelling and identity. Corporate design strategy. Perception and perspectives. Part 2 summary. Part 3 Cohesive Design Management: Introduction. Cohesive design management. Business and intellectual property law. Part 3 summary. Part 4 Navigating Symbolic Practice: Introduction. The symbolic aesthetic. The visual identity creative process. Symbolism - organisational behaviour. Part 4 summary. Part 5 Digital Corporate Design: Introduction. Digital branding strategy. Designed website content. The social business. Part 5 summary.