Your consultant needs to be an exceptional listener. You need to be able to trust him with one of your company’s most valuable assets.

Some of the key aspects you should look for in a design firm are:

The hunger to completely understand your business. A holistic understanding that is, including your business direction, culture, process, goals (short and long term), target market, industry and your competition. This understanding must be sound, well before any ideas are generated. A skilled consultant will help you share the information with him by asking you and the key members your team a series of structured questions. This is where all the information and inspiration is contained.

Timeless Approach to Identity Design. Powerful brands will stand the test of time. Consider that when you choose your design team because they need to believe what they will create will be around long after you have left this earth and that it will be standing strong. This makes understanding your long term goals critical, otherwise it is next to impossible to create anything meaningful that will last.

Powerful Design Skills and Ability in many mediums. It is invaluable to find a design and marketing firm that has the ability to implement the new brand through your entire collateral material, whether it is print, live or online. A firm with equally talented staff in all areas of design can offer you commanding branding at every client touch point. A touch point is any element of your business that your client touches, whether it is a business card, a sign, your website or even your voicemail.

By doing so you can eliminate the weak links created when using multiple independent firms. The weak links will occur when the creative direction has to be translated again by a new creative team and is misunderstood. It can often be purposely modified with new “creative direction” because of a “was not done here” mentality. This intentional misdirection weakens your message and dilutes your brands story.

In summary, you need a firm with a hunger to understand your business and a desire to create you a timeless brand with the ability and team to implement it powerfully across throughout your company. Simple!