Be Relevant, Be Meaningful

We touched on this briefly; to be interesting you need to be relevant and give meaningful information. Readers will follow what you have to say, but to be sure you are not simply sending tomorrow’s trash complement the promotional, sales orientated aspects of the newsletter with practical tips and advice or Q&A’s.

Use Templates

You don’t have to re-invent the wheel and there is no need to have journalistic or editorial experience. There are plenty of newsletter templates already designed and freely available for you to use – save time and energy, not to mention money, and select a template for you to populate with your content.

Write for Your Audience

Address the reader directly – we know you can’t call them by their name, but you can refer to them as “You” or “Your”, avoid using “Their’s” or “Them” because you are talking about someone else and be ruthless with using “I” or “Us” because you are now just talking about yourself. You can also include items which the audience can use such as calendars of trade events or deadlines, coupons and special pricing promotions as well as including your contact information in a handy format.

Use Your Customers

Everyone likes to see their names and faces in print, and your newsletter is no exception. Use your existing customers as case studies in your newsletter so they see how you solved their problems – this is a great testimonial for your business.

Shapes are at the root of design and have been historically from cave paintings to ancient writing to the modern period. Shapes define layouts, make patterns and are fundamental to the other elements created on the viewed page. Lines are used to draw the eye and mind’s attention to specific parts of the design, to define the parameter or area of the design, or as a separator of different page content. Lines can be straight or curved, but they do not need to be drawn necessarily – a line can be implied by the design, for instance typed text following a curved path.

Color is a very important element in graphic design because it impacts upon viewer’s perception and it is changeable depending on the context within which it is viewed. Color is also a factor which resonates emotionally with the viewer – there are warm colors, e.g. orange, and cold colors, e.g. light blue. Type refers to the fonts used in text, but also size, color, alignment and spacing which all affect how the text is rendered and how it impacts within the overall design.

Images, including photographs are also powerful design elements because they can bring a design to life and as the saying goes, “A picture is worth a thousand words!”

Visual color is what you are seeing – your own perception of color in your brain given a certain situation. The color we see may depend upon lighting or the specific context which is applied and we then experience. Visual color is a form of the physical color, the environment and how our brains work.

Physical Color

This is the “actual” color in fact – perhaps what a physicist would term “color”. It is determined by the reflective properties of the material involved as all colors are derived from the reflected light which shines upon it. If all color was reflected from the object it would appear as white – a color is formed by some wavelengths of white light not being reflected but being absorbed by the object, and the color which results is made up of the components of the white light which are not absorbed but are reflected.

Conceptual Color

This is an abstract concept of color – it what we use when we describe a color as opposed perceiving it or having a physical sample. Examples of conceptual color may be when we use a color word, e.g. blue, or a description, e.g. dark green or even a specific color classification, e.g. the # value for a color from the Pantone system.

spot color printing;
process printing; and
digital printing.

Pantone developed spot-color printing which allocated a unique number to different colors and varying shades. Different shades and colors can be achieved by mixing colors according to a set formula using the Pantone color charts.

You can also use color swatches which will allow you to see the color being used, and many graphic programs will seek to render the colors using the Pantone scheme (be careful though as what you see on the PC or Mac screen is unlikely to be a true rendition of what you will get on the finished product – computer screens cannot represent colors in a completely true fashion). The beauty of the Pantone scheme is that once you have selected the color from a swatch, you are guaranteed that that will be the color rendered in the finished product.

Process printing uses a four color system – CMYK. CMYK uses the the three primary colors and black to create all the other colors and it stands for, Cyan – Magenta – Yellow – BlacK (K stands for black to differentiate it from blue). The printed colors are produced using a dot matrix using the CYMK colors, which when viewed as a whole, gives the different shading and colors. This is a visual trick because the eye does not see all the tiny, different colored just a completed effect. Again, if you use this system you will probably select a color from a swatch and again, this will be the exact color you get on the finished product.

Digital printing uses a 6-color system; CYMK plus light cyan and light magenta, however there is no standardized color system as with spot color and process printing. This is important to you as the customer because no two machines will produce an identical color rendition. There will be variation in shading, color, tone and hue – even the same machine will be incapable of delivering uniform color results over time because things such as temperature and humidity affect the toner which is used to print the content. There are workarounds on this, such as printing off several swatches from a digital printer and selecting the colors which best match your requirements for a print run on that day – time consuming and not 100% satisfactory.

You can help to make the process go faster and without excess hassle by considering these two “fast” tips:

Don’t Submit Print Design Files as PDFs

Adobe Acrobat PDFs should not be used to submit your design files – they are great for making sure the content within is not changed but Adobe will automatically set the control defaults for web presentation and not for printing to paper. This will require your print partner to work around the default settings so true reproduction is achieved when the design files are used to print out the content.

There are a large number of design applications – PhotoShop, Quark, CorelDraw and so on – which are far better for creating and storing your design files. If in doubt, speak with yoru print partner for what is the fastest and best method for your particular print project.

Avoid Taking the Design Close to the Edge of the Paper

If your content runs close to the edge of the paper being used to print it out with, then there is a risk that the ink will not completely covering the full sheet of paper and parts of the content either being poorly printed or missed altogether.

The “bleed” is the space around the edge of the sheet of paper which is used to bound the content you are printing out. Bleeding is the process by which the ink is deliberately run off the edge of the sheet of paper to ensure full coverage of the content. Typically, the bleed is trimmed off the sheets of printed paper so they then conform to the actual paper size required – this means printing with paper which is larger than the finished product.

You need to have a logo which is unique and the reasons for this are two-fold.

First, a unique logo will satisfy the desire of many people to have a visual representation of your business. Visual imagery is powerful and especially when the visual imagery (your logo) becomes associated with your business directly. If your logo is not unique or is too similar to another logo, then people will become confused and you will experience a dilution in your brand identity.

The second reason your logo must be unique is because if it is too similar or borrowed from someone else, you are likely to find yourself infringing a string of laws to protect “intellectual property”, i.e. the logo you have taken from someone else’s design.

You company logo does not need to be complicated – a simple design will suffice, but it is essential that it is sufficiently unique to separate it from any other. A simple design will also lend itself to more easily embedding itself in the minds of those who see it and it will become more quickly associated with your business.

It is important that the logo you decide upon will properly reflect your business image. You wouldn’t use a toilet seat for a law firm, and you wouldn’t use some representation of the scales of justice for a plumbing company. The two images or concepts may make a good basis for a logo but only if they are more obviously associated with what your business does.

Using a logo is one of the most effective and powerful ways to create a brand identity and increase your business impact on the consciousness of your markets.

First of all, don’t try to make your ads do everything – decide on what the objective is and focus on creating the ad which will serve its purpose. Advertizing appeals to people on many different levels – emotional, psychological, values and beliefs, rationality and experience. This means that one ad or technique cannot satisfy all of your goals and objectives – you need to carefully craft your ad so it becomes the right tool for the job you have in mind.

Advertizing is not about educating people, it is not about raising awareness, it is not about building brand recognition – advertizing is about SELLING! While you may wish to have a stunning piece of art which will win awards at the “Ad Man Convention Awards in Whereversville”, the primary objective is to sell. Create an attention grabbing piece, use good, simple English to create interest and facilitate the reader making a decision and finally, always have a call to action, i.e. buy the product or service!

Make sure you have identified who is in your target market – you must use this information to create the path for them to take from initial attraction to the ad and the path they follow through to making the order or other call to action. Who you are pitching the ad at will determine the approach you take in selling to them – selling to women, you will language and imagery which appeals to them, selling to the elderly, you will not place the ad in a youth magazine. This will also affect the tone of the ad pitch as to whether it is an emotional sell or one based more on rational appeal to someone with prior experience.

In a nutshell – identify the target audience – decide on the objective of the ad – use AIDA (Attention, Interest, Decision and Action).

Text Size

The most important aspect of the visual impact is the size of the text – too small, and the reader will not be able to use it easily, too large and it looks ungainly and clumsy as it clashes with other visual elements on the card.

Use the following text sizes as you design the initial draft of your business card:

Address and Contact Information – use 7 or 8 point text size (but never less than 6 points)
Name – this should be 1 point larger than then address and contact information text size
Title – use one point less than the address information
Business name – use a minimum of 12 point

If you include a tag line or logo, try to aim for a text size which complements the text you have already entered (try the address text size and see how that works).

Some professions will use a set template or style; for instance doctors and lawyers will use much smaller text sizes for their address information.

Typeface or Typography

Look at your existing business stationery for the typefaces used in their production, because it will help create a brand identity and uniformity of message if you keep everything standardized. There is a “but” – some typefaces do not maintain their appearance and style when you reduce the font size while some typeface styles are not suitable for the type of printing methods used in producing business cards.

Content Checklist

Make sure you have everything you need included on your business card – it is a common mistake to forget something!

Here’s a handy checklist for you to use:

Company name
Company logo or tagline
Name
Title
Address
Telephone number (office and cell)
Fax number
Email address
Website address