Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

Logos are an essential part of any corporate image – they provide a medium by which the values and qualities of your company become entwined with your company name and brand in one image.  The image provides a visual stimulus to the reader which will kickstart their brain into recognizing you as a company and associate positive attributes to that image and your name – logos are an essential tool in building a brand.

Text Logos

Simple words are images in their own right and their are numerous examples of clever use of words to produce a logo.

You can use differing font and typesets to create a word image for use as yoru company logo – a forward slanting font will emphasize your company is moving and going forward; script and cursive font styles represent style, elegance and cash conscious, good-management.

An example of a text logo is FedEx but take a close look at the logo, the “E” and “x” and you will see a sublimal arrow deliberately included to represent speed and motion in the right direction:

Symbol Logos

Images are frequently used to produce a company logo and visual cues associated with the image can be both triggers and puns on the company name or evoke emtional responses for qualities we want associated with our brand.

An example of a name-trigger is Shell:

Combination Logos

By far the most common form of logo is where text and images are combined to form the finished product – frequently you will find abbreviations are used instead of words and that the letters themselves are turned into imagery or vice versa.

Examples include Coca-Cola, Pepsi, name virtually any NFL team and even the home of the President:

Color impacts us in various ways – it is not only that we associate color with certain feelings or sensations, but we also associate the same colors we encounter in different ways depending on the personal situation of the viewer as well as the way in which the color is presented to the viewer.

Here’s a simple test for you to do right now – think of “cold ice” and think of a color to represent this.

Chances are you thought of a shade of blue.

Now the reverse, think of high excitement and euphoria – a real adrenaline rush – and now think of the color to represent it.

Chances are you imagined a red or bright orange color.

We have in-built into our psyches a whole spectrum of colors which are automatically assigned to certain feelings and sensations by our brains.  Ice is blue; the sun is red/orange and the sensations of hot becomes the color red and for cold it is blue – which is how we mark out tap faucets.

Think about the color red.

If you work in finance and accounting, what does the color “red” immediately bring to mind?

Losses – costs – a negative balance?  Something to be avoided.

If you are an engineer, the color “red” will mean danger or heat.

For a medical professional “red” will mean oxygenated – a good thing.

Now consider the color, “green” – for a doctor or nurse, green represents “infection” but for a motorist it means “go”.

Yellow means “substantial” or “highlighted” to a finance professional but to a medical practitioner it will mean “jaundice” and to an engineer or car driver, it will mean “caution”.

“Blue” means poison to chemists, biologists and medical personnel but to a corporate viewer it is likely to evoke stability and reliability.

Color impacts us in numerous ways which we as designers and you as a customer looking for marketing collateral which will sell, must recognize and become attuned to – it is unlikely that a brochure making heavy use of “yellow” and “green” will positively impact on an audience of medical personnel for instance – it will evoke feelings associated with jaundice and infection – hardly feelings to hope for in a reader you are trying to sell a luxury holiday to!

You want to get the most bang for your buck when it comes to extracting all the sales juice from your marketing budget.

A picture paints a thousand words and there is no doubt that using pictures has a direct and positive impact on the sales success of marketing tools such as catalogs, newsletters, brochures or company magazines.

Creating good-looking and successful collateral is time-consuming and expensive if you are going to do the job right – it also takes time not only for a piece of work but for your overall repertoire of tools you will develop and use.

Catalogs for instance, are very heavy users of photos – and this is where customer seek to cut corners first and save money – this is where a catalog will either succeed and return profits or fail completely and lose the investment.  Do not scrimp on the photographs – take single product shots where possible and make the images as large as you can in the catalog – both directly increase sales.

You can save money by using images from your supplier or manufacturer – frequently these are excellent images for you to use, so always make sure you ask them if they have images you can use in your own publications. You not only want the images but you want them in the format your design partner can work with – for instance, images with clipping paths may be required; if they don’t have them you may end up with a higher design and preparation cost which loses you the money you save with a “free” image – act as liason between the design partner and the suppliers so everyone knows exactly what is required.

Many customers are web-based companies who grew from a web-site and have continued right on growing so there  is little to say where the “traditional” part of the business begins and the “web” business ends.  Frequently they have a stack of images which are used on the web but there are problems with low-resolution and these images simply cannot be used in a print-catalog – the end result will be blurred and there are also issues in handling them causing increased design team costs.

Clients also look to save money by taking the photographs themselves – a false economy on several levels.  Firstly, the cost of the shoot is about 30-35% of the image budget but is 100% important when it comes to the finished quality.  You simply cannot afford to end up with a set of bad product images and taking the shots is where the risk lies – hire a professional volume image provider and get the shots you really will need and the design team can use.

For retailers and resellers, a good-quality catalog is a major selling tool – a 24/7 shop right in your customers’ homes.

Good catalog design follows some simple rules so we’ve collected together our practical experience for you here and give you 3 for free!

Sell to Lifestyle Aspirations

People may buy something they need but usually, they are buying something they want!

What they “want” is something they perceive as making themselves feel or look better – there is a deep-seated emotional driver which determines the buying decision – logic is used only afterwards to justify the expense.

With this in mind, position your products, the descriptions and the images around the lifestyle you are selling to your prospects.  For instance, if you are selling clothes, look for plenty of verbal and photographic imagery with the clothes in the settings which will instil the lifestyle your prospects are aspiring to – sharp suits in serious business settings; fashion wear in exotic locations; childrens wear in the park or at a birthday party.

Format the Catalog for Your Audience

Selling to the public and selling to other businesses will require different approaches.  Adjust your design and format for yoru target audiences – it will be pointless offering discounts for order levels over 5,000 widgets to Mr & Mrs Smith of Powhattan VA and Microsoft is not going to be interested on buy a coffee-maker and get a mesh filter for free.

Similarly, if your market is youthful – pitch the catalog at that market – if they’re baby-boomers, adjust for their lifestyle aspirations.  Always be very careful in respecting the demographics of your target audience as well as the trends and fashions affecting them.

The Product is King

There is a sales maxim – Always Be Selling!

Apply this to yoru catalog – the product is the centerpiece of your display and so it should be on every single page of the catalog barring the index or the (very) brief introduction and how-to-use the catalog sections – on every other page, product, Product, PRODUCT!

Make the photographs of the product as large as you can and try not to skimp on the photography by taking shots of groups of products – this reduces sales and there is a direct correlation to size of image to sales and number of products per image and decreased sales.

As your business grows and your reputation and name become more widely known, the humble company newsletter just isn’t going to cut it anymore – more than this, if you are looking to create a really glossy image for your prospects and customers, a newsletter may be just passe!

A magazine does not need to be published every month to create corporate impact – many companies publish them on a quarterly basis which is also a common publishing cycle for newsletters too.

A glossy magazine also can be used much more widely than simply to impress customers – many corporate clients will use their magazine to further bond with and include their staff and business partners.  Company communications can be consolidated and combined with major company news for internal and external consumption and we have found that making major announcements such as product launches and promotional news gains a great deal of attention through the magazine compared to a newsletter medium.

Magazines are also an excellent way to gain the interest of potential readers – a good looking magazine is much more likely to be picked up and read by a prospect or general reader than a simple company newsletter – your penetration into your markets and business sector will be much greater.

A major issue to deal with is the cost.

There is a deep-rooted perception that creating and publishing a company magazine will be expensive and that cost will make the exercise prohibitive.  The fact is that for print and design firms with the experience in this niche, the costs are not exhorbitant and you can bring a great looking, professionally finished magazine to your target audiences for a fraction you might think.

Templates can be used so most of the layout and design have already been taken care of for you’ this saves you time and money while still giving you a professional image and product. One hint is to simply make sure that the print partner you select is using “100#” gloss paper and not “80#” – a slight difference which makes a huge imapct on the appearance and will not add to your cost!