Most people think about logo design in terms of a letterhead or maybe a website design, a shop-front fascia board or perhaps the side of a delivery vehicle – but what about how your chosen logo works with your staff uniform?

There’s a good reason that multinational companies work with world class fashion designers to create workplace uniforms – it’s because it gives an immediate sense of the company’s aims and image through the clothing that staff wear. You can do the same by creating promotional clothing that gives a good impression of your business.

Start by choosing a logo that has relevance to your customers, rather than for you. If you want to be thought of as a speedy company, pick a logo with wings or a jet stream. If professionalism is your key desire, use a logo of a smartly uniformed man or a halo, which suggests saintly behaviour!

Make sure the logo appeals to your workforce – if you’re expecting your staff to wear your logo emblazoned in their work T-shirts or neatly embroidered into a monogrammed polo-shirt, then they need to have some investment in the clothing – if they don’t like it, they will resent wearing it and it will affect their work performance.

In design terms, make sure the image shape, colour and size are balanced and will work on a range of clothing – will it be suitable for summer T-shirts as well as winter jackets, can it be worn by both men and women? Make sure your image will translate into a range of sizes and can be reproduced by screen-printing, embroidery and dtg designs.

Finally, does the design work for a viewer – do they understand what the logo is supposed to express?

Get all these elements right and you have a logo that works for the long term.

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When you see celebrities getting off a plane, they never look like the shambling dishevelled wrecks we are when we fly. Going first class helps, but celebs are also clever about what they wear on flights. Boldy printed T-shirts are a top choice for two reasons:

1.    You can dress them up or down
2.    They are easy to transport

And a third reason, that might not matter to Paris Hilton or Victoria Beckham, but does to the average traveller – they are economical to buy and clean.

There’s really only one downside – T-shirts do tend to  wrinkle. Here’s how to get rid of the creases before wearing a T-shirt when you don’t have an iron handy:

1.    Put your T-shirt in a tumble dryer with a slightly damp towel – after fifteen minutes the towel will be dry and the shirt free of wrinkles
2.    No tumble dryer? Hang your T-shirt on the shower rail and run the shower as hot as it goes – after a few minutes the creases will drop from the T-shirt. If your wrinkled garment is a screenprinted T-shirt remember to turn it inside out before putting in the tumble-dryer to prolong its life.
3.    No shower? How about this – dampen the most wrinkled parts of the garment, and then dry them using a hair dryer set on medium – put your hand between the front and back of the T-shirt to allow the air to circulate faster – this literally blasts the creases away.

Polo shirts can also be perked up using this method, especially if they are the 50/50 cotton/polyester polo-shirts which tend not to crease anyway. In winter, heavyweight sweatshirts have the same appeal, but if you want to wear one that you’ve packed for a flight, don’t fold it in your carry-on bag, instead, roll it up with the sleeves crossed over the front – that way you don’t get any square creases that are obvious when you wear it.

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The good news is that the weak pound has caused a surge in export orders, meaning that the manufacturing sector in January saw its swiftest growth for  a decade and a half according to the PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index) but while that may mean a quicker lift out of recession, there are still tough decisions to be made in business.

As everybody tries to limit spending, whilst wooing new customers or trying to persuade existing ones to increase their order books, corporate gifts and promotional items can play a substantial role in helping create an atmosphere of growth and hope. There are three steps to creating a cost-effective promotional scheme:

1.    Be sure about the target audience – you need to identify the right people (CEOs or purchasing managers? Mid-level decision-makers or top level executives?) and then choose a promotional item that meets their daily needs. High level executives will not use promotional pens but might see value in a top quality printed bag bearing your company details, while frontline staff will use all the pens you can supply them with but giving them bags would be an over-investment that probably wouldn’t bring enough return on your expenditure to be worthwhile.

2.    Refine the message you wish to project – and bear in mind that this isn’t just the slogan you use, but the medium that carries it: an organic fair-trade T-shirt tells a story about your company’s values and aspirations even before you label it with a message. Baseball caps convey speed and youth, so if you’re in the business of fast service, giving embroidered baseball caps as promotional gifts could be an excellent idea.

3.    Set your ROI and measurement systems – how will you know

•    Who received your promotional item?
•    What use they made of it?
•    Whether it converted into a new or enhanced income stream?

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Offering a range of promotional clothing as business gifts can be good for business as it helps you deliver a promotional or customer loyalty campaign by providing a worthwhile reward to customers without having too much effect on your budget.

There are two classic ways to run campaigns using clothing as rewards or incentives. They are:

Scaling up incentives

This is where people get a reward of increased value depending on how much they spend. The lowest reward might be some sweatbands or a visor, then, for a higher spend, a baseball cap or an embroidered beanie hat. At the next level of spend you might reward your customer with a printed T-shirt and at the top level of spend they might receive a custom printed hoodie or fleece. This kind of incentive can also run as a loyalty campaign where the customer gets to save up ‘stamps’ or ‘vouchers’ for each purchase they make and then trade them in for a promotional clothing item. The more loyalty tokens they have, they better the garment they get as a reward.

Launch campaigns

To create media and customer interest you can use promotional items around the launch of a new product or service or to promote an existing one. Media goody bags can be a good idea here, but journalists are very unlikely to use promotional clothing so cans of soft drink overprinted with your promotional message, notepads, pens and gifts like printed umbrellas may be a better idea, all packed into a screen-printed bag that carries your launch message.

Take care to ensure that you don’t spend more on a promotional campaign than you will get back in increased publicity that you can convert into sales and make sure that any loyalty scheme rewards are durable and of good quality as customers soon feel cheated if you’ve given them shoddy clothing that doesn’t last.

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It’s fascinating to realise that many people will judge your company or business by the promotional items you give away.

There are two forms of judgement – rational and emotional.

1.    The first is when people decide if your post-it pads are cheap and nasty or smart and useful, whether your brand-printed baseball caps are stylish or tacky. It’s largely value-free and based on facts.
2.    The second kind of judgment happens when they use their emotional intelligence to estimate your company by nature of the promotional items. For example, do they feel flattered or insulted by your offering?

This is particularly important when opening new business contacts and relationships – if you give them a mug with your business details on it, are you saying they are the kind of person you expect to be always stuck in the office? Alternatively, does a vest imply that they are sporty and maybe slack off work to go running or to the gym? Does the screen-printed bag you gave them suggest they are a valued customer or are you saying that you think they are the kind of person who walks around with a rubbishy plastic bag they should replace with your gift?

When picking out the perfect promotional product for a certain occasion, you need to consider the emotional intelligence that your clients will bring to bear. Some items: key rings, pens and calendars, sweatshirts, and memory sticks, are emotionally neutral while others: intimate garments, literature, cosmetics etc are very personal and may carry a heavy emotional load.

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Most of us are familiar with the kind of promotional clothing used by fun runs and other events, like concerts. Right now the internet is packed with a variety of T-shirts that have been designed to raise funds for the victims of the Haiti earthquake. But many items of promotional clothing, like printed or embroidered T-shirts, have more value than just their fund-raising potential.

•    First, these items of clothing commemorate an event or person – this gives them a sentimental value.
•    Second, if they are well-designed garments, they also have a chance of developing ‘collector’ status – this is where something that was designed to recognised a current event ends up becoming a nostalgic emblem.
•    Third, items like embroidered caps or printed messenger bags have recently developed cult status: this happens when the design is iconic and much copied, but the original item is coveted for its rarity and brand status.

A business can’t necessarily aim to develop these kinds of value in their clothing, but it can always aim to choose designs, colours, styles and qualities of clothing that might help it achieve added value in its chosen staff uniform or promotional clothing.

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2012 means Summer Olympics, for the UK at least.  Sports clothing retailer JJB is relying on the Olympic boost to pull it out of a slump, in part by appointing four times Olympic Gold winner Sir Matthew Pinsent as anNon-executive director.

But all businesses, not just sports retailers, can benefit from the ‘Olympic effect’.  Choosing to invest in the buzz that comes from the Olympics is a good way of building teams and creating new energy in your business. There are two ways of doing this:

1 – picking champions

You may already have sports-people in your organisation – at a much lower level than the Olympic standard. But investing in them and setting up support systems can encourage all your staff to see that you believe in their talents and personal development. Companies can do this by:

1.    Sponsoring a local event like a fun run, or a youth football team, or offering to pay for branded sports clothing for an amateur sports team, whether they are darts players or netballers.
2.    Getting staff involved in supporting a local football or other team by organising visits to watch matches and investing in promotional clothing that says ‘X business is supporting Y team’ which can be worn in the workplace.
3.    Funding a skills development day for local sports people – bringing in a trainer to help sporty types to improve their performance and setting up a stall about your business and what it has to offer alongside the sports work.

2 – making champions

Getting an entire business involved in healthy activity can sound impossible, but if you make active life part of the personal development of all your staff, it bring rewards because they take less time off, have more energy and a great team spirit. Companies can do this by:

1.    Picking a range of sports: swimming, running and a ball sport are the best options, and offering staff a range of ways of engaging with them.     Some companies offer an extra half hour lunchbreak once a week for people who go to the local pool and swim during that time.  Others set up after work ball games and provide printed T-shirts and sporting equipment for staff to take to the local park.
4.    Some businesses sponsor a charity and get all employees involved in a fun run or sponsored walk with special motivational branded clothing that links the business to the good cause and creates recognition in the public of the way the company is supporting the local community.

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The Hen Night of the noughties is going to be a completely different animal to that of the first decade of the new century. Why?

•    Brides are older
•    Pockets are lighter
•    Second marriages are more common
•    Same sex ‘weddings’ are the biggest growth market in the wedding field.

So how do you organise one of the ‘new’ Hen Nights?

First, the traditional Hen Night on the evening before the wedding is dead – anything from two to five weeks before the big day has become standard, to allow everybody time to recover.

Day is the new night – daytime activities have become much more popular, especially with older brides and same sex couples – and a lot of these activities are charity related: sponsored swims and runs etc. If you incorporate a ‘doing good’ component in your ‘feel good’ Hen event, get some printed caps showing the name of the bride and the charity she’s raising money for. You’ll often find you get a lot of public support from passers by which is a lovely way to celebrate. Daytime fun also means that your group doesn’t get too drunk too fast which is good, and allows everybody to get to know each other better.

If you’re organising a pamper day or spa weekend, why not have some personalised items? Personalised bags containing inexpensive supplies of nail varnish, face packs, massage oil etc are fun to share – if you pick a different theme for each bag (hair, feet, fingernails, eyes, lips, legs etc) you can each carry out beauty treatments for the rest of the group.

The drinking part of the party is always fun, but make sure that you carry a fully-charged mobile and everybody has your number – it’s really easy for people to get separated, especially if they’ve had a drink or two and then you have the hassle of tracking them down. One hen party had the organiser’s mobile number embroidered in tiny letters on their celebration t-shirts – it meant that even if somebody got lost (or passed out) the organiser could be contacted.

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There are a few basic rules to choosing uniform clothing:

•    Consult your staff – they are the ones who have to wear what you select, and they may not feel happy about wearing something too outrageous.

As an example, Air New Zealand’s newest uniform look has been criticised by staff who say the flamboyant pink dresses makes them look like drag queens.  The new uniform is due to appear in 2011. An airline spokesman the new look as ‘contemporary’ and offering ‘greater expression of femininity’ but a flight attendant who spoke to New Zealand’s Dominion Post said ‘The flight attendants look like drag queens’.

•    Consult your clients – they are the ones will think well or badly of your business depending on the uniform you choose.

In 2008, Thames Valley Police replaced some traditional helmets with an embroidered baseball cap to meet the demands of modern policing. But it turned out to be a failure – comments on the hats included the suggestion that it was ‘inappropriate to be in a baseball cap when having to tell a relative that a loved one had died’. And other commentators said the caps was ‘too similar to other uniforms, such as Burger King’. So the new kit has been replaced by the old kit, and everyone seems happier.

•   Consult your budget – buying complicated uniforms can be expensive, especially if they don’t work out.

Instead of following Air New Zealand’s example, start by adding a  pink T-shirt with a DTG printed image on it. If your staff and customers are happy with that, you can expand the uniform line, adding a cap, then a jacket with an embroidered logo etc, but if it doesn’t work out, the experiment isn’t too costly and doesn’t result in a public relations failure.

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At present, many winter uniforms seem to be lacking enough clothing, with many companies rushing to order jackets and coats for their staff and even sending desperately short-notice orders for fleeces which chilly employees can wear over their uniform shirts or even, for the truly unlucky, branded T-shirts! Hats, scarves and gloves for those working outdoors have also become important, and several major industries in the UK have been handing out insulated turn-up hats to employees who have to travel between warm premises and the cold of outdoors.

Embroidery is the ideal form of decoration for both winter jackets that have a chest logo and for hats, with the added advantage that a hat with a logo on the middle front is easier to get the right way round on your head! Embroidered clothing for outdoor wear gives a strong image to a company and because embroidery is durable it copes well with the rigours of being worn outdoors in all weathers as well as coming up fresh after frequent laundering.

Many employers have wised up to the advantages of providing a uniform that allows for a number of layers such as a printed T-shirt to be worn under a shirt, fleece, jacket or overalls, along with a long-sleeved sweatshirt or hoodie that can be worn alone, with a T-shirt under it, or layered with a fleece to provide extra protection in low temperatures. The same T-shirts can be worn in summer, with lightweight trousers so that instead of moving from winter to summer wear on a given day, staff can choose from a range of clothing that meets the demands of the changeable British weather.

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