Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

Large or small, creating a brand identity is a primary goal of successful businesses because it is an essential mechanism for achieving differentiation between them and their competitors. Print advertizing is a proven method for achieving a brand identity and creating a separate perception in the eyes of the public, your customers, employees, suppliers and business partners.

Print advertizing encompasses a wide-range of products and techniques and there are numerous ways that print advertizing can be used to create and enhance your corporate image.

Corporate Identity

You may already be familiar with the phrase, “Uniformity of Message”; this means that you have a standardized way of putting together all your business communications no matter what they are used for – marketing and sales, general correspondence, legal issues, employee relations – no matter who you communicate with you are going to be using the same, uniform components such as:

· Logo

· Tagline

· Basic contact information

You will use these no matter what printed medium you are using, so;

· Business cards

· Envelopes

· Letterhead

· Marketing brochures

· Website

All these will carry the same basic components which are integral to your branding efforts.

Direct Mail

Direct mail campaigns are an excellent way of getting yourself in front of customers and prospects. Use direct mail campaigns to communicate new products and services, special offers and news affecting your business offering and your customers. Direct mail is highly effective and especially when you use them in conjunction with press releases.

Press Releases and PR Campaigns

Many businesses fail to use the media because they simply don’t imagine what they have or what they are doing is newsworthy. This is fallacious; editors and newsrooms are hungry for news items and what may not seem interesting or noteworthy to you may be just what the editor is looking for.

Press releases have a set formula for their construction and layout so it pays to research this well before you dive in and it will also pay dividends if you take the time to make some press contacts first as well. Whenever you have a new product or service, issue a press release – this is news. The same applies when you promote an employee, or make a new business partnership, offer a new product line or providing a special offer. All of these things are cause for issuing a press release.

Banner Advertizing

Posters and banners are good promotional material and cheap to produce though where you get them placed can significantly vary in terms of cost and quality. Ensure you have your logo on these as the logo forms the center-piece for your brand and corporate identity. Use this form of printed advertizing for getting yourself in front of the general public at large and for raising awareness of your brand and business.

Other Print Matter

There are numerous promotional methods for getting yourself noticed and it is a good idea for your business to have at least one of more of the following or similar available to hand-out to customers and prospects:

· Calendars

· Booklets

· Catalogs

· Notepads

· Stickers

· Door hangars

· Bookmarks

Establishing your corporate branding will take time and is a process rather than a simple “order” and it gets delivered exercise – a brand is synonymous with the company which operates it and you will need to exercise your imagination as well as a variety of printed and non-printed media to get the message and concept across.

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:

The online printing market is highly competitive with many sites offering services where the work is performed overseas and especially in China and the Far East.

Labor there is very cheap and this keeps the cost down but there are several disadvantages of using these outlets:

• printing quality is sub-standard and the finish and paper quality are usually very poor;
• sending work overseas means less work for American companies and their workers;
• Overseas printers use highly toxic and environmentally dangerous inks and toners which harm the environment while here in America we operate under much greater standards using environmentally friendly raw materials and recycled paper wherever possible; and
• turnaround time is usually a lot slower (by weeks sometimes).

Many free offers are nothing of the kind in any event – they are usually just a teaser to bring you onto the site and place an order which, if you commit to a certain minimum order value results in a “free” offer.  When you see “FREE!” make sure it is free – there are companies who do in fact offer free stationery or business cards for instance – and they are doing this with no obligation!

You provide the artwork or design you want, tell them the color scheme and how many you want printed off and they print them for  you – all you have to do is to pay the shipping and handling costs.

Now that is a free offer!

Why do they do this?

The answer is very simple – reputable priniting companies are not afraid to produce samples for you.  They use this as a test for themselves and a thank you to you for the opportunity to show you, the potential customer, just how good they are at producing the goods.

Obviously, the idea behind it all is if you are impressed with the service and quality you are going to come back for some more and how right they are

A customer newsletter is a fantastic method of keeping in touch with your customers and prospects as well as the market generally.  Do not underestimate the impact a newsletter has – your expertise is valuable and your business opinion on the areas you deal with will be valued much more than you may think.

Newsletters should be launched when you really have something to say – usually a monthly newsletter is the best option though if you are operating in a fast moving environment where there are industry or business developments occurring by the minute, you will want to consider a more frequent publication.  

Remember the whole point of the newsletter is to grab your readers attention and create some interest so make sure you have “news”!

The larger the newsletter is, the more success in gaining reader attention – you will find newsletter standard sizes are 8.5 x 11, 11 x 17, and 11 x 25.5 but choose your format carefully so it remains in keeping with the overall brand identity you are attempting to establish. 

Content is key and you are looking to make the conversation a two-way street between you and your readers – look to engage your readership and solicit their opinions and stories.  A newsletter is a great vehicle to show off how you helped a customer and you can make this into a case study with your customer getting some exposure as well as acting as a great testimonial in respect of how much money you saved them or made them, how great the quality of your work was and what fantastic customer service.

Another tip is to invite businesses who provide complimentary products and services in to write for you – again this will give you something to say and allow for cross-selling opportunities as well as demonstrating you are really delivering good information and advice through the newsletter which means it is likely to be read that more often.

Posters should be eye-catching if you are using them to promote an event, a product, service and your business though many are also used for decoration as well – the fundamental principle still applies, be bold and daring and make sure it stands out a mile away!

You can have a lot of fun with designing a poster and you ought to let your imagination run wild with the themes and ideas.  Obviously you will want the subject event or promotional item being painted large as well as your own identity though there are also several examples where you can lure the reader into the poster by engaging their curiosity with something completely different.  This is a snake eye approach but you have to be very good at pulling it off and frequently, customers simply want the basics – What, Where, When, Who and How much it is going to cost them.

Look to use large print with a bold font and very vibrant and contrasting colors – here the quality of the paper used will make a difference so while many poster printers will only use 80% paper, insist on them using 100% text weight paper – this will ensure that the design and colors come through to best effect otherwise cheap paper detrimentally influences the completed appearance. 

It doesn’t do you any harm to make sure the print on the poster makes it clear you supported an American business and American jobs by having “Made in America!” stamped along the bottom! You will find many of the online stores selling their print services are actually outsourcing the printing work to the Far East and this results in slow turnaround times, proofing errors and the production process uses old printing technology resulting in a poor quality finish plus, don’t forget, here in the US printers are compelled to adhere to far higher and stricter environmental protection standards and many inks used overseas are highly toxic.