Graphic Design

BS LLC is a Cincinnati Ohio based full-service graphic design agency offering professional graphic design, website design, logo design, packaging, and more. Scroll to the bottom of this page to see samples of our work. 

What is graphic design? 

In its most simple form, graphic design is the use of symbols to convey meaning. These symbols are visual in nature and can include visual design, photography, user experience design, interior and environmental design, packaging, branding, among others. The design process analyzes a problem and uses the sub-disciplines listed above to organize information to its end goal. 

Often the goal is to make it easy for a potential or current customer to understand the benefits of a product or how a product is unique in the marketplace. Design is also a system used to simplify tasks. Think of a calculator or a mobile phone, they are pieces of design that allow you to complete complex tasks with relative ease. 

In that way, design typically reduces complexity into fractional and understandable parts. 

Problem Solving / Design Thinking

Design thinking is a framework for understanding consumers (empathy), challenging assumptions (removing bias), defining problems, and building solutions.  There are many approaches to the above methodology. At BS LLC we practice Job Theory to understand why a product service exists, who it serves and how the use-case experience can meet the consumer needs. 

What is important about design thinking is that it is a human-centric practice that enables practitioners to simplify problems, prioritize solution attributes, and develop a response that privileges the end-user. Design thinking is particularly good a contextualizing unknown problems, or problems that are ill-defined, by framing them in a human light with historical precedent.  

Creative Agency

Design firms or creative agencies help companies improve how they look and communicate with customers and potential customers. Individuals who work for a company or industry almost always are much better versed in the specifics of the industry. A creative agency helps businesses think about problems through a different lens. This is possible because agencies are not beholden to the same criteria that may limit the set of available options to a company. It is also made possible by the fact that creative agencies work on creative solutions to problems every day. This makes them exceptionally good at outside-of-the-box solutions, or solutions that may not be immediately evident to a company that is used to working in very specific ways. 

In combination with strategy, creative consulting pays large dividends back to brands by helping them define a unique position, point of view, and tone of voice in an industry. In an increasingly competitive and visual world, being unique has never been so important. 

Logo Design 

What is a brand without a logo? The primary visual mark of the company carries with it the thousands of other activities your business undertakes to stake a place in the market. It is the vessel that comes to represent the strategies, culture, and goals of your business. No wonder M&A firms buy brands. They are not just buying a logo, they are buying everything that logo comes to represent.

So how do you make a logo? With practice. At BS, the logo process begins with research. You can learn more about our branding process here. Once we establish insights that inform how your business can stand out, we develop mood boards that define creative pathways. Once refined, logos ideas are developed in a high volume that interfaces with symbolic, semantic, functional, and emotional meanings of the in-development brand. 

The best logo executions are presented to our clients in black and white. Based on client feedback, we refine the logo territories and begin building their attending brand systems, which include color, typography, illustration, photography among other graphic assets. 

Over our history, we’ve hundreds of logos, take a look at our case studies to learn more about specific development techniques. 

Web Design

In today’s world, websites are our most important marketing vehicle. Digital tools allow us to immediately connect with businesses across the globe via their digital footprint. Through intentional and beautiful web design, business owners can create a virtual experience that mirrors the quality of the brick and mortar experience. For e-commerce businesses or other focused on lead conversion, the design process includes both art and science. BS LLC has designed dozens of SEO-focused websites for our clients. 

See some of our website design work here.

Learn more about our website services here. 

Learn about our SEO Services here. 

Business Cards

The art of the business card. It’s nearly impossible to discuss the business card without linking to the famous scene in American Psycho. Comedy aside, the implications are real. A great business card is an impression, a moment standout amongst humdrum executions and be noticed. 

BS LLC has designed hundreds of business cards. We have working relationships with technical print partners, paper mills, and paper production houses to help you create something 100% unique. Our technical experience allows us to employ many creative avenues including embossing, letterpress, lithography, silk screening, duplexing, colored edges among many others. Our promise: it’s enough to make Patrick Bateman sweat. 

Packaging Design

We have worked with clients to produce packaging for consumer product goods, beauty products, clothing, restaurants, and hospitality, as well as custom box design and packaging for neighborhoods. We are happy to help clients develop eye-catching packaging for any need. 

Design V Art

At BS LLC we often discuss the difference between graphic design and art is that design is made for a purpose. The objective of design is to solve problems. For instance, a business or institution may be able to better communicate how to build their product with the use of infographics. A brand may be able to better communicate its value position with a purposefully placed photograph or video. A simple web interface can mask complexity to help a user save time in their day.  

In a sense, graphic design is an engineered product. It is made for its end-users in an effort to change habits, facilitate ideas or create discussion. In that way, like art, it has functional, social, and emotional dimensions. 

That doesn’t mean that it always has its best intentions at heart. There are many historical examples of graphic design being employed to confound, namely through propaganda. 

Art is different in that is made by an artist to communicate an idea or aesthetic. Its goals are not focused on the facilitation of the end-user rather they are focused on the artist themselves. Art takes its power from the purposed imagining of perspective. When amplified into culture, this perspective can be extremely powerful.