Any size business can take advantage of custom infographics to better communicate and attract interest. Any process or idea you would like to explain to potential customers can be illustrated with eye-catching graphics. Talk to your printer about creating your own custom infographics for your blog, website, signage or print collateral and you’ll get excited about the potential and creativity of illustrating your business.
This infographic was provided courtesy of Bigstock Photo.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
And while it can often be neglected in the excitement surrounding digital and cutting-edge communications today, print continues to thrive and surprise. It’s very physical, tactile nature is the reason for the powerful impact and longevity of print. Two great illustrations of that popped up on the same day.
Here at the print shop sat an old dictionary from the mid 1950s, purchased at Good Will, and gathering dust. Yesterday our bindery manager discovered, tucked back inside the pages, a Civil Defense brochure from 1959 outlining the emergency drill in case of a direct nuclear attack on Asheville or Buncombe County. Seems our proximity here to the Oak Ridge facility in Tennessee put us in harm’s way. Interesting reading – a great insight into the mindset of the Cold War days. The brochure, printed in patriotic red and blue, had hardly ages at all, well preserved between the dictionary pages.
And the same day we stumbled across the story online of a rediscovered typeface – Doves Type – that had spent almost 100 years at the bottom of the Thames River in London. Designer Robert Green led the search for the type which had been thrown off a bridge into the Thames in 1917 in an attempt to settle a dispute over it’s usage. Green’s team retrieved about 150 metal type pieces, rediscovering what was once a lost typeface. (Watch a short BBC film about the story below.) And to bring the story totally up to date, you can now follow Doves Type on Twitter @thedovestype.
So you never know where you might find a lost piece of print history – tucked in the musty pages of a forgotten book or at the bottom of a river. Either way, print can surprise you, proving itself to be influential long past your wildest expectations.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
The USPS direct mail program called Every Door Direct Mail, begun in 2011, makes saturation mailing affordable for small businesses. Offer coupons, publicize events, send thanks, announce sales or online promotions, and discover new customers from areas you target – all at the lowest price ever. However, as with all things postal, you may also encounter a few potentially confusing rules and paperwork. Read on for a little clarification…
What is Every Door Direct Mail?
EDDM is a USPS program that seeks to make direct mail easier and less costly for small businesses. Using EDDM Retail, you send your mailpiece without a list of addresses or a permit to every address in targeted areas (carrier routes) which you select. Each printed mailpiece will be exactly the same (i.e., no cost for variable data addressing, no individualized addresses). Customers go online and use the USPS EDDM Retail program to select carrier routes and generate necessary paperwork. Of course this saturation mailing has some limitations: you can only mail 5,000 pieces per mailer per day, your piece must meet the specs for a standard machinable flat, your piece must be printed with the correct EDDM indicia, and you must bring the mail physically to the Post Office that services the carrier routes you chose. Also you must fill out the requisite postal forms and labeling, as well as follow bundling and packaging requirements. You can read more online at usps.com/everydoordirectmail.
What is the Difference between EDDM Retail and EDDM BMEU?
BMEU stands for Business Mail Entry Unit. EDDM BMEU allows larger businesses who already maintain a mailer’s permit for payment and tracking of their direct mail to use their permit and to drop off their EDDM to the Business Mail Entry Unit. With this method, mailers are not limited to 5000 pieces per day and the rules for what type of mailpiece qualify are more flexible.
While you can go it alone with the Post Office online, EDDM may be a daunting task for anyone new to bulk mail. (You can check out details of the USPS program online here.) The USPS has posted an in-depth video presentation on the EDDM service. We have broken the video into two parts and you can watch them by clicking the video links:
Watch the EDDM video part one
Watch the EDDM video part two
What are the Benefits of Every Door Direct Mail?
Every Door Direct Mail service lets your business send advertising without the need of an address list or the cost of addressing. The USPS rate for EDDM averages $0.175 per piece! A letter carrier delivers your piece along with the day’s mail to every address on the routes you choose. EDDM allow you to:
TARGET every address
REDUCE production costs
SIMPLIFY the mailing process
Discover the Possibilities…
Invite customers to a Grand Opening or Open House
Offer timely coupons or promotions
Announce events & sales
Publicize your participation in community events
Highlight your hours of operation, new services,
menu, mission statement or products
Emphasize your location and enhance your brand
Thank customers for their patronage
EDDM helps retailers and service-based businesses reach their local target customers – a good fit for the following:
Perfect for some businesses and some direct mail objectives, EDDM is not always the smartest option for everyone. Why? In general, targeted direct mailings – where you “edit” your mailing list for various factors such as age, income, and lifestyle of the folks you want to reach – produce greater results and therefore greater profits. Consider these situations: if you are a restaurant and want to get coupons out into the hands of locals who pass by your place daily and are the most likely to stop in, EDDM saturation mailing could be your smartest approach. But if you are a business selling products specifically for the elderly or homebound, sending mailpieces to every address in a neighborhood could be a waste of your investment. A targeted mailing to only elderly or disabled residents in a wider area would yield more positive results.
Best advice?
Talk to your printer about which mailing strategies will work best with your budget and your direct mail goals. Rely on their experience with the USPS and with integrated marketing to make your life a little easier… and more affordable.
Contact us at ImageSmith to get started with Every Door Direct Mail today. You choose, through the USPS site, exactly the areas you wish to saturate with your mailing and we’ll handle all the paperwork, packaging and regulations. No mail list, no hassle, and – if you decide to take advantage of EDDM BMEU – no need to apply for a postage permit, you can use ours at no added cost.
It’s easy to love The New Yorker. Their editorials, criticism, opinion, reporting, poetry, and celebrated cartoons have consistently set a gold standard of excellence for publishing. The venerable magazine is celebrating 90 years of groundbreaking, respected coverage of much more than the New York literary scene, and must be basking in the accolades from readers and critics. You know you’re pretty influential when bloggers take the time to praise and interpret the shape of just one letter in your masthead!
The New Yorker covers provide a master class in creative illustration and graphic design. Timely and often controversial cover art is a mainstay of the magazine as the New York Times notes the covers have taken a distinctive shift “from polite to provocative.” The editors seek out innovative artists who movingly capture the nation’s excitement, fear, contradictions or spirit in a graphic image that gets noticed, sells magazines and ultimately proves the enduring power of print.
Great graphic design brings order and meaning to a complex or hard-to-define subject – and The New Yorker covers excel at that. Wit and creativity are needed to illustrate a complex point of view or clash of points of view in a deceptively simple artwork. Some magazines rely on the excitement and buzz generated by a controversial cover image simply to get attention for attention’s sake – think Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue or the outlandish banner headlines of the tabloids. Conversely, The New Yorker covers do more than exploit an event’s moment in the mainstream spotlight – and they often make news in and of themselves.
Often a great cover image becomes indelibly linked in our minds to the events or topics they address. As the covers below prove, the creation of a great cover illustration also has a story behind the scenes that is equally interesting:
July 8, 15, 2013: “Moment of Joy” by Jack Hunter, celebrating the defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Jan. 19, 2015: “Solidarité” by Ana Juan, memorializing the massacre at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.
Dec. 16, 2013: “Madiba” by Kadir Nelson, for the passing of Nelson Mandela.
To show the importance of cover art to the magazine’s essence, The New Yorker decided to print not one but 9 different covers – one for each decade – for it’s special anniversary double issue. Each image seeks to bring the iconic cartoon dandy Eustace Tilley who appeared on the first cover in 1925 into the 21st century. And in order to ensure they stay as relevant and dynamic in the next 90 years as they have in the past, the magazine just hired ad agencySS+K to steer and coax it’s brand progression.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
Operating an at-home photography business or taking photos to use in your graphic design work can be convenient, efficient and enjoyable. It also can be expensive. If you can be as creative with do-it-yourself projects as you are with your camera, you will find that you can afford and create several creative and eye-catching backdrops in your own home.
Get the Foundation Right
If you are new to the at-home photography business, there are a few steps you should follow. First, dedicate a room that has plenty of space to be your studio. Make sure it has good lighting and a neutral color on the walls. Any greens, reds or blues will kill your color balance, so stick to whites or grays. You also might want to lay down a tarp to avoid any colors bouncing off from the floor.
Once you have the room set up, install a backdrop holder. Using a half-inch galvanized pipe, plates and some conduit, you can screw in a backdrop holder either onto the wall or from the ceiling.
Now, you can begin making backdrops. Amazon offers basic backdrops for as much as $40. However, consider adding colorful, elegant drapes to the windows to give off a homey feeling. Custom drapes can be found online from retailers like The Shade Store.
Use Chicken Wire
Chicken wire is a fun, creative tool that you can use over and over again. To make a custom heart background, you’ll need:
Staple gun
Small nails
Hammer
Spray paint
3 pieces of one-inch by two-inch wood, six feet in length
Color material to create your effect.
Then, red napkins can be stuffed into the chicken wire to make a heart shape. With the chicken wire frame up, plot the points of your heart with napkins, and make the outline. Then you only need to fill in the outline.
Use Strings
This tasty idea can give you a 3-D effect by using stringed marshmallows. If you hang strings of marshmallows from the ceiling, it will give your backdrop a snowing effect. If you don’t have marshmallows, cotton balls or Christmas tree bulbs can be used instead.
Colorful yarn also can be an interesting tool. You can mix and match colors that can blend with your object or be in contrast to it. The yarn needs only to hang from your backdrop frame. However you choose to make it, you have a variety of colors and patterns to choose from, and the only thing you need is yarn, scissors and a creative mind.
Find Miscellaneous Items
Believe it or not, you may have the ultimate backdrop material already in your home. Here are just a few examples:
Using your neutral-colored wall, you can use colored tissue paper from your gift-wrapping arsenal to create a paper flower backdrop. The DIY website Lovely Indeed demonstrates how to make the flowers step by step.
If making paper flowers is too time-consuming, then book pages might be easier. Strategically place book pages onto a canvas to give your backdrop a unique, elegant and fun look.
Or, if you’re in a pinch, line blown-up balloons together to bring out some color in your shots. These can be really versatile because there are so many kinds, colors and sizes, giving you an infinite number of ways to set them up.
Finally, keep it simple by using gift-wrapping paper. This is easy to use, inexpensive and full of unique patterns. This is especially great for baby photos. And, all you need is some tape and scissors before your backdrop is ready to go.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
Another year in the rearview mirror. Imageblog – our online newstand of conjecture, knowledge, experience and opinion about print, design, marketing, technology and sustainability – takes the last day of a busy year to glance back at the topics we touched on in the past 12 months. Editorially, we strive to cover topics of interest to graphic designers, print buyers and small business owners involved in empowering their brand through effective marketing. With a year-end overview, we notice a few trends in our blog:
Creative Cloud: Adobe’s Cutting Edge
Adobe moved us all to the cloud in 2014 with new versions of all our favorite software programs, new features available only in the cloud-based apps, and new ways to share, collaborate and learn interactively. Keeping up with the CC innovations could be a time-consuming job this year, but thankfully Adobe did it’s typical stellar job of integrating new tools and features in an intuitive, user-friendly interface. In June, we discussed issues relevant to print designers when Upgrading to Adobe CC and settling into the new stand-alone versions of InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator. Another article focused in on the changes for Illustrator, which included a reworked pen tool, pencil tool and “Live Corners.” For InDesign, we took a look at how to Auto Generate QR Codes with Data Merge (which seemed unthinkable a few years ago), the wonderful new Color Theme tool, and the evolution of Kuler into Adobe Color.
Graphic Design Tips & Tricks
As always, we love to share ideas that might make the life of a graphic designer or busy business owner a little easier when preparing files for print or marketing projects. This year that included blog posts on How to Properly Create Bleed Area for a print project, an easy strategy for using layers to keep auto page numbering on top of other elements in InDesign, and how to design and create mock-ups of product labels. We’re always on the lookout for blogs featuring great prepress tips, and are happy to share new ideas and secrets as we learn them.
Time flies – and as it does we note the passing of great leaders in the design and print world, as well as the passage of trends and techniques in a quickly changing field. This past year, ImageBlog posted a remembrance of Al Feldstein, the well-loved and long-time editor of MAD magazine, as well as one on the great Massimo Vignelli, who almost single-handedly brought the European modernist aesthetic to American design. We also took a curious look back at some vintage artifacts from our own pre-digital Prepress Department.
Who’s Doing It Right: Great Design in the Real World
Cheers to a great and exciting 2015 ahead. We wish you enormous success with your small business marketing ventures as we all continue to learn and innovate.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
Visual content marketing, or the use of video in your website’s content, has grown exponentially over the last few years. According to numbers published by Ooyala, mobile and tablet video watching has grown a staggering 532% since 2012. Taking advantage of the new trend to couple content with video is key in your content’s success in engaging consumers. Here are some ways that you can use video to engage your audiences and keep them coming back for more.
Teach Them Something
Your audience may be interested in your product, but may be unsure of how to use it or are confused about its applications. Smart content coupled with instructive videos can engage and inspire consumers to make the jump from interested to invested. For example, Callaway Golf’s online show, “Callaway Talks,” is a video podcast where pros talk about equipment, performance and innovations within the world of Callaway Golf clubs. The information provided, discussions, and debates are all powerful content marketing tools utilized by Callaway to reach out to consumers with video content.
Tell Them a Story
The line between marketing and entertainment is becoming more blurred than ever before. No recent advertisement serves as a better example of how entertaining content can serve to capture the imagination of consumers and engage them in your brand than the recent viral video shared by the Wall Street Journal of Jean-Claude Van Damme doing powerful splits between two Volvo Trucks. In just a minute and a half Volvo created massive social media buzz and demonstrated to the world the stability and control of Volvo’s powerful Dynamic Steering systems. You may not have world-class martial artists at your disposal, there are plenty of royalty-free stock videos available online. With clever editing, narration and your own video content, even stock video can be utilized to craft a memorable tale to capture consumer attention.
Get Them to Relate
If your brand isn’t strong, most consumers will see you as just another faceless company with something to sell them. By adding a compelling and human face to your online presence, you can draw in customers on an emotional level and help them relate to you. Global arc welder manufacturer Lincoln Electric crafts oxyfuel cutting devices and distributes soldering alloys internationally—not exactly a relatable business for most consumers. However, through personal and introspective videos available on their LincolnElectricTV YouTube Channel, Lincoln electric connects with consumers by showing them how welding helps in the creation of everything from farm equipment to roller coasters. With the video tagline of “Welding Makes This World Possible,” Lincoln Electric grabs consumers emotionally and makes them take a second look at the products and people that they may not have ever given a second thought to.
Let Them Participate
The final tool in your video content arsenal comes from your customers themselves. Encourage your customer base to create their own videos sharing how your product or service effects their life, and share the ones that best represent your brand. In doing so, you essentially crowdsource your marketing directly to your audience, and create a connection with them. Everyone wants to be famous for a moment, and sharing consumer created video content is a sure way to get them talking about your product with their friends and families. Integrated marketing that truly engages your audience is the goal. Check out these links to see how companies like Taco Bell and Traveler Beer are utilizing creative ways to bring their customers into their marketing outreach.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
If you’re a business owner, you know that great creative sells. Whether it’s banners, business cards or an eBlast for an event, you want the presentation to be top-notch. But, getting great artwork can be expensive and time consuming. With seemingly limitless amounts of apps being released daily, Adobe is hitting the app industry hard with their new Adobe Shape CC. Even without the entire Creative Cloud suite of tools, anyone can catch and share inspiration for designs in a vector format right from a mobile phone.
What It Does
Marketed with the tagline, “Where ideas take shape,” the app allows users to choose a shape they like and want to use in their design. All they have to do is take a picture of the shape with their iPhone, and the app turns the shape into vectors, or editable, resizable graphics. Extremely user friendly, you aim your phone’s camera at the object you want to capture, adjust the view, then use your finger to swipe away any detailing or lines that you do not want the photo to capture. This means that whatever you take a picture of can be morphed into a graphic shape that you can edit. It is like having Illustrator’s Live Trace feature available at all times from your phone!
Now on Mobile Devices
For those who have used Adobe applications on a desktop or laptop, the new app brings many of those familiar features and functions to the palm of your hand. If you find a shape you want, you can instantly capture it on your iPhone, save it and edit it with literally a few swipes. The app also allows users to import existing photos from your iOS camera roll and save to Adobe’s Creative Cloud.
By saving the image, Adobe turns your picture into a vector, and you can easily edit on your computer, tablet, smartphone or any device that allows you to plug in your Adobe ID. Additionally, you can save your images to Creative Cloud Libraries so you can work on your project at home, at the office or on the go. With the cloud library, you also can work on your project in Shape’s sister apps such as Adobe Brush, Color, Draw and – best of all – Illustrator.
How Businesses Can Use It
This gives users as well as businesses a way to create and edit an intricate shape without actually having to draw one. For those without creative help, the app can serve as your artist. For those who do have a creative team developing their artwork, Adobe Shape CC is great for inspiration and tight-deadline projects. By making any shape editable, designers can go in and manipulate the shape without spending time drawing it from scratch. Not only does this save time, it gives employees who would not normally be able to come up with a creative concept, a chance to flex their artistic muscle without picking up a pencil.
Call us at 828.684.4512 for any of your marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
The classic bandana with a paisley pattern seems to never go out of style. We love these custom printed bandanas that incorporate the customer logo seamlessly into that classic design. They are lightweight woven cotton with screen printing in white and come in the whole rainbow of colors you would expect.
The pet bandana version is also pretty awesome – a triangular shape makes it easier to tie around your best friend’s neck. They come in different sizes to fit the tiniest dogs or cats or some king-size buddies. The entire imprint area can be designed with your repeating logo or with some other shape or design of your choice.
You’ll need a version of your logo that works reversed out in all white with no screens. In our large bandana sample here, we used the logo at a larger size in the center, and then in four smaller imprint areas on each of the four corners. When folded, you’ll always see one of the logos. You might want to include a tagline or web address as well if the imprint area works better with that information.
Developing your logo in different variants is important for multichannel marketing. Never settle for one “FINAL” version of your logo from your designer with the idea that it can multitask for every need. Develop different “flavors” of your logo that will be versatile enough to work in full color, single color with screens, spot color and at different sizes from tiny to billboard size, offset to online . The standard full color logo that looks just perfect on your letterhead may not be the version that works for embroidery on uniforms, screenprinting, promotional products, black and white forms, single color designs, or wide format prints. For versatility of use, it’s also great to have your logo designed in a “Tall” (portrait) and “Wide” (landscape) version. Think about it: what might look good on a round coaster might look pretty tiny if you decide to print it on the side of a pencil!
Call us at 828.684.4512 to order your bandanas, or for any marketing needs. As a printer, we understand communication and design. Your printer should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
Doodling is often for designers a free form beginning to the exploration and creation of great ideas. While many exciting digital devices with intuitive interfaces are built to spur your creative process, nothing quite lives up in the beginning to the ease and freedom of doodling on paper. Sketching or doodling are the first steps of tracing out into reality the designs still forming in your imagination. Paper gives you permission to make mistakes, to create something odd or terrible or just maybe ingenious. It nurtures the “sketchy” nature of new ideas that are only partially formed, shadowy connections and inspirations that only begin to take on real shape in a quick sketch or design on paper.
Writing – or more precisely copywriting – takes place onscreen today. Mistakes are quickly edited and blocks of text can easily be moved around and reconnected as ideas evolve and take shape. The keyboard has sped up the creative process for wordsmiths. But to begin a visual idea, pencil or pen on paper still seem to be the tools of choice.
In the creation of a logo or any design concept, doodling is thinking. How do you represent a company’s core values, mission, standards, range of expertise in a compelling way? Sketching becomes a visual expression of real-time problem-solving – an essential part of the creative process. The shapes and ideas liberally sketched out on paper will be edited and developed on screen as the process continues. But in the initial stage, feel the freedom to draw, connect and reject. Wrong turns and attempted ideas all litter the page as you continue to draw, but still inform the overall process.
Alma Hoffman has a wonderful essay on this in an article called “I Draw Pictures All Day” on Smashing Magazine. She points out that all artists, writers and creatives should carry a sketchpad. You may also want to check out Sunni Brown’s book “The Doodle Revolution” about using the habit of doodling to improve creativity and focus.
With that in mind, we at ImageSmith gave custom embossed Moleskine® notebooks as gifts last holiday season. You never know when an idea will arise or you will find some tidbit of vital information to remember. No wifi needed. And now Moleskine has a notebook with a “Livescribe” app that instantly brings your sketched and notes to your computer screen and can convert writing to text. The paper itself has a dot pattern embedded in it which is read by the pen as you write. Moleskine understands the intersection of analog and digital.
Leonardo da Vinci sketch of a perpetual motion machine.
No surprise, doodling itself has risen to a high art form in the hands of many talented designers and artists. Check out this gallery for some inspiring examples: 48 Examples of Doodle Art. You might also find enlightening the random doodles of some creative greats at these sites: Doodles of Famous Authors like Plath, Nabokov and Kafka and Six Famous Notebook Users like Hemingway and Picasso.
They’ve also found doodling can help combat stress – another plus with those looming deadlines, right?
About the logo at the top of this article: ImageSmith is now partnered with Extreme Awards & Engraving – our in-house partner providing custom engraved trophies and awards for employee recognition programs, sporting events, and promotional needs. With our new sister company, we will be sharing space, resources and expertise in a collaboration designed to further provide you with one place to meet all of your marketing needs… Under One Roof! Visit them online at www.extremeae.com or call direct at 828.684.4538.
Strive to buy your print locally! A community printer will understand communication and design, with a special emphasis on your local market. They should be able to provide you with the latest information, inspiration, technical advice, and innovative ideas for communicating your message through print, design and typography, signage, apparel, variable data printing and direct mail, integrated marketing and environmentally responsible printing. If they can’t, you have the wrong printer! The best advice, always, is to ASK YOUR PRINTER!
Call us at 828.684.4512. ImageSmith is a full-service print and marketing provider located in Arden, North Carolina. Contact us at ImageSmith for quotes on all your print and marketing projects, and more useful tips on how to create custom, effective, high impact marketing solutions.
