Hello friends!

So today we are going to broach the ever frustrating, confusing, irritating world of technical limitations on your designs.  The goal today is to help you avoid costly or time consuming mistakes on print and design projects.  Once you understand a few basic concepts, you’ll be able to avoid problems in the future.

There is a handy synopsis at the bottom of this blog since it is BIG.  Generally it is also concise and contains lots of good information that will save you time and headaches.

File Formats and the difference between Raster and Vector Image types:

You are probably familiar with JPEG images.  Maybe PDF’s.  Maybe more.  We are going to detail the important elements of different file formats and how you should be aware of them when you are having design done for your business.  The key reason you want to know about file formats is to ensure that you can reuse design work in the future.  JPEG’s for instance, contain only image data, no words are stored (and hence cannot be reused).  This can be bad if you really NEED to change some of the text.

Just remember this: Raster = pixels (or little dots of color), Vector = shapes and lines. Raster is good for photos, Vector is good for drawing.
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Hello, neighbors!

It is time yet again for a jaunty expedition down entrepreneur’s lane.  In our last two sessions we covered How To Effectively Market With Flyers and Creating a Winning Marketing Campaign.  We are going up and onward with some very basic considerations before you start your own business.

Noble and admirable as it may be to launch into action with a great idea, enthusiasm and a flippant disregard for finances… it is probably a good idea to think a little bit about how you go about it.  Even a failed business may take you years of agony to move away from.  If you are going to make a decision that could very well change the course of your life, take a minute now and consider the risk you want to take.  Having money doesn’t equate to having success and you may do better starting a business with no costs and having no cloud over you demanding you return X dollors in X days.

Please note, this article presumes that you have not yet launched a successful business, but much of the advice is relevant even to those that have been in business many years.  If you notice a detail or two that seems like common knowledge, you may yet find a nugget that you appreciate before your time here is over.

To help illustrate we are going to go through a hypothetical business.
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Almost every business owner has had this experience: after working extremely hard for a long time, you obtain a smidge of extra capital that isn’t earmarked for a bill or eating dinner.  It’s sitting in your account and you decide you want to grow your business with it.  You decide that maybe you’ll invest it in marketing.

Serendipitously (not really because there is always someone trying to sell you marketing), you run into a friendly purveyor of techniques or ad space or some such thing.  You spend your hard earned money and… bubkiss.  Nothing.  You just blasted through your dollars and you didn’t hear a thing back.  Fail never hurts so bad as it does when it echos the million things that you ‘could have done’ with that money.

Well, there is good news and bad news.  The bad news is that your money is gone – poof – and it will not be back.  The good news is that this: as uncomfortable and disappointing as it feels, is a process and it will get better with time and experience.  The great news is that you can try something else and you don’t really have to start it out spending a lot of dough.  Here is the thing though, if you give up and you do not take the time to try to understand your failure, it is a waste.  There is a lot of gold to be mined from a failed attempt, but only if you can be objective about your losses.
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You may suppose that a task as simple as taking a piece of paper and distributing them around town to be very easy.  It certainly isn’t rocket science, but having the right methodology and good practices are the difference between incredibly effective marketing and less than stellar returns.

I have managed distribution of printed material for music festivals, major concert companies and some of the top dance clubs in the nation.  I have found that being really effective in distributing printed pieces requires you do a really excellent job at a few things.   (more…)