Today is day 2 of my 30 day blog challenge.

Aquamark & Education Consultants is a consulting firm, providing sustainable water and green energy engineering and construction solutions, as well as certified and professional training. Founded by German engineer and consultant, Axel Haase, Aquamark also works to build partnerships between funding sources in the European Union (primarily German) and government entities and business in Latin America. Because the primary aim of the business is to create partnerships on two continents, the website needed to be able to effectively communicate with people in three languages: English, Spanish and German.

Prior to a website, Axel’s initial marketing needs consisted of a logo and business card. As we do with all our clients, the first step in determining the design direction is to meet with them and, together or separately depending on their style, a design brief is completed. A design brief is a series of questions and answers that gives us, the design and marketing professionals, a complete picture of priorities, needs and preferences of our clients and their businesses. For instance, what is their vision and mission? Who are their biggest competitors? Who is their target market? What action do they want their target market to take? What is the personality of their business? How do they want to be perceived?

Based on the information we gathered from this process, our  graphic designer, Margee Gaeddert, created his logo. The Aquamark logo is a rendition of a blue heron, which is an international symbol of clean water and the beauty of nature. The blue heron also has a similar meaning among some Native Americans. Margee used blue to represent water and green to represent sustainability as the primary colors. She also added Native American elements, a nod to the Latin American culture in Costa Rica where Aquamark is based.

The website was a more complicated challenge: the marketing goals in German and Spanish are completely different, which required a different call to action and content for each. We started with a WordPress theme, with some tailored customization to meet the unique business needs for Aquamark. Each language is actually a separate website, and each page is linked internally so that site visitors can move from one language to another from any page they are working from.

The result is a clean and easy-to-use, mobile-friendly website with clear calls to action and content for each of the three languages. We used key words and phrases throughout the website based on our extensive conversations and planning meetings with Axel.

Our next challenge for Aquamark: promoting his training courses and certifications. We will keep you posted!