As a designer, I’ve always got this question: Am I charging the right amount for this project? What should my salary be (in corporate America, anyway)?
I just read a really interesting article on the Graphic Designer Blog about a graphic designer’s worth and what sort of elements go into the salary for such a position.
Interested in reading it too? Check it out: GraphicDesignBlog.org
We’re busy over here this week creating a Customer Spotlight campaign and display for one of our clients. Some local banks and establishments offer a similar program for their clients to advertise their work or business to passersby.
It’s a great way to market your company or product for free to the local community and to build a brand identity at the same time. So pound the pavement and see what’s available in your area for Customer Spotlight or Featured Businesses.
A few quick tips when creating a Customer Spotlight:
Some interesting articles on Tradeshows:
How to Create an Effective Trade Show Display
Tips For a Successful Tradeshow
Got the pointer from David Churbuck this morning…absolutely hysterical video. David, you owe me a new keyboard – I spewed coffee through my nose.
View the video at makemylogobiggercream.com
We’ve covered it here before…here and here and here…the business card is often the first tangible thing people see of your business, and they will make judgments about your business based on that. Jeff Cornwall of Belmont University and The Entrepreneurial Mind Blog covers this very subject today.
His excellent list (go to his post here to read the full explanations…)
- Never cut corners.
- Pay attention to the little things.
- Include all critical data, but none that is useless.
- Include description, logo, and/or slogan.
- Remember, it has two sides.
Business cards are the first thing you hand someone and often the only thing that remains after you’ve left. Make them something memorable, and make sure they not only are an adequate representation of your business, make sure they’ll make an impression (positive of course…).
The electronic age has definitely brought us all closer and made it much easier to communicate using IM, blogging, email, etc. But I must admit, I am still a huge fan of good ol’ fashioned print. There’s something about having a beautifully printed piece to look at. It’s the impacting design, the feel of the paper, the smell of the inks and the exquisite spot varnishes that really make me take notice.
Case in point, I was sitting in the car dealership a few weeks back, waiting for my car to be serviced. Just the typical oil change, so it wasn’t an all day event… but I did have time to kill. So I sat in their sleek waiting room, watching the muted infomercials and playing around with my iPhone. It’s great to be able to chat on the phone, check email, surf the Web, etc.
But then something caught my attention: The auto brochures located in the showroom just steps away from where I was sitting. So I grabbed a few of these sleekly designed pieces and started to look through them.
It’s amazing when companies have such huge marketing budgets that they can produce these print pieces. They’re beautifully done and truly inspire me as a designer. I love seeing the use of color, photography, typography and all the selections of paper and printing techniques used in one catalog. Heck, I even like being able to smell the inks on the page!
So I brought some of these brochures with me and keep them in my office project idea file as a source of inspiration for future design projects. We do a lot of print design for our clients and having this file gives us inspiration when we may have hit a creative roadblock. Take a look at some of the nicer catalogs or mailers that come your way. Even annual reports are a great resource for ideas and layout options.
Check out their design, the paper they are printed on and some possible cool design elements that may get your creative juices flowing!
It’s amazing when things just fall into your lap unexpectedly. There’s no rhyme or reason for it. But just when you think there’s no way to solve a problem, a solution arises without even looking for one.
Case in point: We have been busy working with a client to plan a sales conference in Florida. We have all the name tags, place cards and agendas designed, printed and shipped to the location. All the gift bags are packed and the dinner location is booked. But the client ran into a snag earlier in the week: Envelopes that would not fit into her printer.
The client had created some welcome notes for each of the guests to receive upon their arrival. Problem was, the envelopes for the notecards didn’t fit well into any of the office printers because of a foil lining. She tried everything from laser printers to ink jet printers but none of them would cooperate.
Defeated, the client thought of one last hope: Kinkos might have a printer in their store that could print on these envelopes. So over to Kinkos she went hoping that they could help her out of this pesky problem.
The client walked into Kinkos and asked one of their employees about her envelope issue. The employee must’ve heard this problem in the past because before she could finish telling him about it, he said that the only way of printing well on an envelope with this thickness was with an offset printer.
And here’s where fate stepped in: The Kinkos employee said that he was a freelance calligrapher and would hand-write her envelopes for a small fee. What luck! Talk about being at the right place at the right time.
By the next day, the client had beautifully hand-lettered envelopes for the meeting attendees. Now she can be proud of presenting these notes to everyone at the sales conference next week.
I guess you never know who you’ll run into that can help you out of a pinch!
I received an interesting direct mail piece from a stock photography house that we use. Each time they send out a mailing, Media Bakery ( http://www.mediabakery.com ) provides the recipient with some useful information, whether it’s color schemes, measurements or paper sizes. I know that their direct mail is a success because I have clipped all of their mailings so far and have them taped to my monitor for easy access.
Their latest mailing had some interesting and useful advice regarding direct mail. I thought it important to post it for our customers to check out:
“How to Get Your Envelope Opened”
by Media Bakery (November direct mail piece)
A few weeks ago, we had a client ask us to review an ad that they had submitted to their local yellow pages. The client had the directory design the display ad for them so they just wanted us to check it out and make sure all looked okay.
Upon receiving the PDF proof, we were horrified! Typos on the final proof – and the logo was wrong! We immediately tried to contact the ad representative to insist on changes to the ad. After various emails back and forth, we learned that the deadline for artwork changes had passed some time before and it was too late. The logo artwork that the client submitted was not in the correct format so the art department needed to recreate it. And now, it appears in print incorrectly, and it’s too late to do anything about it. Hard lesson to learn.
Bottom line: If you’re in a situation like this or are looking to advertise in a similar setting, contact us and we can help you out. We talk the talk and understand the guidelines for these types of things, so in the long run, it’ll turn out better. And besides that, it’s our job to make our clients look good. They have to worry about other things: Growing their businesses!
At our company, it’s important to give back to the community. We were approached by the House of Hope in Lowell, MA a few weeks back to work on a design for their annual Harvest of Hope Benefit at the John Nesmith House in Lowell on October 14th. Gladly we took the project to design a high end invitation to send out to potential donors and invitees for this exciting event. We really enjoyed working with the event planning team of Deb Chausse and June Messina from House of Hope Lowell, and coordinators Elaine Thibault and Deb Lemos. Check out the article that the Lowell Sun wrote about the event: http://www.lowellsun.com/lifestyles/ci_4398806