business

Say you've got a super new product you can't wait to unleash. Just get some packaging, maybe a company logo, and you'll be ready to launch, you might think.

Not so fast.

How do you let people know who you and your company are, what's inside the box and why they should want it?

The answer -- even for a small business -- may be creating a brand identity.

The Twin Cities is full of graphic design firms, both large and small, that specialize in branding. Among those at the small end is Spunk Design Machine of Minneapolis, which has worked with big companies such as Target and General Mills as well as entrepreneurs just getting started.

At Spunk, founder Jeff Johnson said, the design process goes beyond logos and packaging to encompass almost every element of a product or service that a client or customer encounters. That can include everything from business interiors and exteriors to websites featuring motion graphics and music, to posters, stationery and other printed materials.

What a business owner gets, in short, is a brand.

Or, as Johnson puts it: "The return that you'll get from going through this design process is that you'll get the most authentic, the most distinctive piece of conversation between your product, your company and your audience."

Projects can run from six weeks to three years or longer, when Spunk continues working with clients after they have gotten to market. The cost typically ranges from $25,000 to $75,000, "depending on how much custom manufacturing is involved," Johnson said.

"I try to approach every project as a piece of custom manufacturing," he said. "When you do, it opens up so many opportunities for what you can do."

Staying small

Johnson, who has a staff of seven designers and writers, said he has chosen to stay small so Spunk can continue to work with mom-and-pop entrepreneurs and lone inventors.

"We're at the apex of our staffing," he said. "I kind of hope we don't get bigger. The overhead you create when you have a large research department and account services department is an overhead that I can't justify and continue to work with entrepreneurial folks."

Those include such clients as Tank Goodness, which delivers warm-from-the-oven chocolate-chip cookies in the Twin Cities, and Q-BA-MAZE, a construction toy developed by a Minneapolis inventor; both were featured in this column earlier this year.

Johnson's own experience in developing and bringing products to market gives him insight into working with entrepreneurs.

"Once they find out that we've taken the crazy pill, [that] you've walked down that weird, terrible path of being an entrepreneur-inventor, they have an amazing amount of respect for you, and you can kind of speak in the same language," Johnson said. "You understand the risk."

Among the products Spunk has designed and manufactured are "Talking Tools," a book of games for at-risk youths, and Puffilines, a coloring book with raised, textured lines to help children who have hand-eye coordination difficulties.

Another is the Minnehotrod, a trailer that carries a canoe and attaches to a bike (pedal upstream, collapse the bike and trailer, paddle downstream). Johnson created it after he became a father, so he could work in short canoe trips while his two young sons napped.