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Wondering if a trademark is important to you as a business owner? Let’s start with the basics. A trademark is a word, phrase, symbol, or logo that distinguishes and identifies the source of goods of one company or person from another. For example, the name Kraft is trademarked, as is Nike’s “swoosh” logo.

The list of what constitutes a trademark is long. A trademark can also be granted to unique packaging such as the shape of Coca-cola’s bottle, building designs, color, sound, and even fragrance. Service marks receive the same legal protection, but are used to distinguish services instead of products.

Your business can acquire trade or service marks through the consistent use of a mark. The symbols TM and SM demonstrate the owner treats the mark as a trademark or service mark. There is no requirement to federally register at the trademark office. You are still protected under intellectual property laws. However, if another party uses your mark it can be more difficult to prove your ownership.

To register online with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), go to www.uspto.gov. There is a registration fee for each name, logo, and slogan. Federal registration ensures another party is not already using your mark. A registered trademark gives you exclusive rights to use a mark with your particular goods or services. The USPTO can only register trademarks for marks that are used across state lines. A website customers can access in other areas can satisfy this requirement. Otherwise, you will only be able to apply for a state trademark.

Only a mark registered and approved by the USPTO can use the ® symbol. Since the application process can take many months to complete, use the TM or SM symbol in the meantime to establish your intention to use the mark as a trademark. Make sure you keep records as to when your mark was first used in commerce and regulate the use of your mark in the marketplace.

Wendy Maynard, your friendly marketing maven, is the owner of Kinesis. Kinesis specializes in marketing, graphic and website design, and business writing. Visit http://www.kinesisinc.com/resources/articles.html for more articles and free marketing wisdom.

Want to harness the power of kinetic marketing? Sign up for Kinesis Quickies, a free bi-monthly marketing e-newsletter: http://www.news.kinesisinc.com

The following web sites are all great examples, that leverage excellent typography in their design. I fell in love with typography in my twenties so I thought i’d put together a set of sites for inspiration and sites that you can reference to help inform the typography on your websites.

happy cog
http://www.happycog.com
Happy Cog is an excellent web design and development firm in New York. They have built a business around designing sites that meet web standards.

webstock
http://www.webstock.org.nz/
Similar to Happy Cog, this site simply makes it’s type choices work well together. I love their color palette and font choices.

brian fidler interactive
http://www.brianfidler.com
If you like animated typography, http://www.brianfidler.com does a good job adding playful animations as transitions from topic area to topic area.

A Brief Message
http://abriefmessage.com/
A Brief Message provides short form design opinions on all sorts of things. They have done a nice job utilizing SIFR to replace headlines with a slab serif font with the specific font encapsulated in a dynamically created Flash movie.

Guggenheim
http://www.guggenheim.org/The Guggenheim site is the primary website of the Guggenheim Museum in in New York City. The type treatment for their masthead area and for their headers is a subtly altered version of Futura and is again, just very nice and simple.

A corporate looking logo can effectively make you look far more important than you actually are. By adopting this simple 1,2,3 step guide we can turn your existing crummy logo into a world beating effort - garaunteed to impress the ladieees.

Step 1 - Choose a dull font such as helvetica
In the world of high flying executives and corporate back slapping deals done upon yachts etc. the one thing almost all self-made millionaires will agree on is that you must give the impression that your company is a straightlaced solemn outfit. Standard fontfaces such as helvetica or times will signify your ability to fit in with suits without ruffling too many feathers and will be looked favourably upon by those all important investors looking to harvest some of their cash in your business.

Step 2 - Choose a dull colour such as grey
Battleship grey - has there ever been a colour more appropriate for the deadening nature of high corporate investiture? No, not by my reckoning at any rate. But surely a grey logo among a sea of other bland logos is just going to get lost isn’t it? Hmmm, I’ve got to hand it to you, you’re right but do you know what - if we add a smidgin of royal blue somewhere within our hypothetical logo we achieve the type of chin stroking brilliance that committee members and associate directors can spend literally minutes debating before abstaining to the golf course and soho massage parlours.

Step 3 - Choose a dull symbol such as a circle
Right this is where our creative minds get to have some fun. Do we put the grey/blue circle before the words or after? Above or below? Whatever you choose to do make sure it doesn’t involve anything too clever or inspiring. Remember our aim here is to look ‘corporate’ and sensible not like some kind of fun loving chimps, you gets me. Right the logo should be just about complete and ready to enter the exhilarating world of corporate high life. To celebrate why not throw a lavish party inviting your corporate buddies like Dave and Steve from down the pub?

To summarise, what we want to achieve is an air of ‘dullness’ yet reliability. Choose a dull font, keep the colour palette strictly dull- nothing too interesting and if you must add a quirky symbol of some sort make sure it keeps well within the dull spectrum of ideas i.e. a circle or square. Corporate Logo Design is not rocket science but if you want to give off the right impression you’ve got to go with the flow. Right now where did I leave that bowl of cocaine I’m off to a corporate party. Toodle pip.