7 Easy Techniques for Increasing Catalog Sales
Well designed print catalogs make people want your products. When readers see glossy pictures of people enjoying themselves with your great offers, they want those items, and lifestyle, for themselves. Increase your catalog printing project’s productivity by using these seven simple techniques.
Essentials of Brochure Design
A brochure needs to well designed or it will end up in the trash. Brochures should clearly tell the customer what it is you are offering them, how to get it, and why they should want it.
1. Decide exactly what you want your brochure to achieve.
Your goal with brochure printing should be simple and easy to identify, and everything about the brochure should work toward this goal. Don’t overcrowd your brochure with too many products or too much information. A brochure should get the customer interested in the products and tell them how to get them or how to get more information. Clarity and brevity are the keys to a successful brochure.
2. Speak to the customer.
Don’t just list features of your products; this can bore your customer. Instead, tell them how your products and services will help them. Write your copy with the customer in mind, and make them want your product by appealing to their emotions. Write from their point of view and use words like “you” instead of always speaking from your company’s point of view.
3. Be clear and concise.
With brochures, your space is limited, so you may be tempted to pack a lot of information into a small amount of space. This is usually a bad idea. Write and rewrite your copy until it is as clear and brief as possible. Use plenty of white space around the text, and space between lines, to increase readability. Consider using lists to tell about your product instead of long paragraphs. Make it easy to understand your brochure even if you just skim it.
Top 8 Trends in Graphic Design
1. Handwritten fonts, especially on “Post-It Notes.” The fancy computer-generated looking font is fading and handwritten looking fonts are taking its place. These were popular in 2008 and are expected to stay in vogue for 2009. Paper clips are also making a comeback—fake ones that is.
2. Homemade. Anything too polished or too put together seems too perfect anymore. Now that people aren’t spending like they used to, and with the economy still expected to be in a slump this year, homemade gifts, crafts and the like are gaining in popularity. Many ads and Web sites are following suit, using craft-like materials to create images. This billboard goes a bit far, using actual denim, but hey, it’s for a major denim company (it’s a butterfly, by the way).
3. Large fonts. Designers are paying closer attention to the types of typefaces they can use and manipulate, and that seems to mean making the sizes bigger to draw in more detail. Using typography as graphic elements is a big trend right now. This trend is not only popular with graphic design, but in advertising design as well.
4. Green. Green is a hot color for 2009. With everyone, including President Obama, having the environment at the top of their minds, green design is blossoming everywhere. From paper towel packaging to green Web sites, green is the dominant color in many marketing campaigns for 2009.
Designism: A Real Movement of Designers?
”Art is a survival mechanism of the human species, otherwise it never would have survived,” said Milton Glaser at the 3rd annual Designism 3.0. The event series hosted by the Art Directors Club in NYC in October 2008 was conceived by Brian Collins, former mastermind of Ogilvy BIG and now COLLINS:. Designism 3.0 and previous installments are a forum used to highlight and address design for social action.
Designism is a movement that attempts (sometimes well, sometimes not) to connect design to politics. A less “loaded” definition would be “a movement that attempts to change the world through design.” “Designism” was originally coined by Glaser, one of the most famous graphic designers living today, best known for his I Love New York logo. (more…)
Where To Go To Get Inspired To Design
Everyone has those days when you just can’t get creative. It’s like every creative bone in your body has been replaced with a boring bone. Well, I’ve got some sites here that will help stimulate your creative side.
Web Sites
101+ Places to Get Design Inspiration – The Aussie that runs this blog is only 20 or 21 and still in college, but he’s already a great designer. He’s been working since he was 16 for professional clients, designing logos, flyers and everything else a business needs.
Abduzeedo – Very interesting ideas, very unique. Not for the traditionalist.
Freelance Switch’s 60 More Places to Get Design Inspiration – Online and Off – Freelance Switch has a blog with advice for all kinds of freelancers, including this article with Web sites and books recommended to help you get your design on.
Books (all at Amazon.com)
New Masters of Poster Design: Poster Design for the Next Century – This book shows top poster designers’ artwork of now, which has proven that the poster can still serve as a worthy communications tool. According to Amazon: “In doing so, they’ve brought the poster back to prominence. In this book, the author has compiled the world’s finest new work at the height of this rebirth. There is currently no book on the market that can claim it features a ‘definitive’ poster collection.”
Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop – A “comprehensive layout design workshop that assumes that in order to effectively break the rules of grid-based design, one must first understand those rules and see them applies to real-world projects.”
You get to find out about how top designers’ processes work and their rationale while designing. “Projects with similar characteristics are linked through a simple notational system that encourages exploration and comparison of structure ideas. Also included are historical overviews that summarize the development of layout concepts, both grid-based and non-grid based, in modern design practice.”
Typography Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Using Type in Graphic Design – “[This book] is part of Rockport’s popular Workbook series of practical and inspirational workbooks that cover all the fundamental areas of the graphic design business.” It contains loads of info on type without a lot of extra fun facts you don’t need to know about so that designers can get the information they need quickly and easily.
Other books on typography are more technical or showcase oriented, but this book actually gives you ideas and inspiration through real-life examples that show successful uses of typography.
It also offers “a variety of other content, including choosing fonts, sizes, and colors; incorporating text and illustrations; avoiding common mistakes in text usage; and teaching rules by which to live (and work) by.”
Layout Workbook: A Real-World Guide to Building Pages in Graphic Design – This book doesn’t only have great examples for inspiration; it also helps you understand design. “The book illuminates the broad category of layout, communicating specifically what it takes to design with excellence. It also addresses the heart of design-the how and why of the creative process.”
Logo Design Basics and Tips
A logo is one of the first things you should design when you start a new business. Your logo is what customers look to when they remember you or identify your business. Your logo also gives customers more faith and trust in you as a business. A business that doesn’t even have a logo is not yet a business in many people’s eyes. That’s why you gotta get a logo first!
A logo contributes to your credibility, memorability and visibility. You might want to put off designing your logo until you get more money, but the longer you wait, the longer you’ll have to wait to create marketing materials, including your Web site. That’s because your logo needs to go on every piece of marketing material and your product packaging too. That’s how important it is.
Your logo should be unique and heaven forbid, please do not use ClipArt! ClipArt screams amateur and unprofessional. Besides, if you use ClipArt, your logo could end up looking just like your competitor down the street.
The first step: design or text?
The first thing you want to decide on is whether you’ll have a design represent your company, your company’s name as your logo or a combination of both. There’s no right way to design a logo: all of these choices are equally good. It all depends on what’s needed for your company.
Design
If you decide on design, try to think of a way to incorporate your industry or your product into the design. I saw one clever logo for an airline called Peace Air, and its logo looked like a peace sign – the plane’s body was the vertical line that makes up the middle of the peace sign and the plane’s wings made up the two smaller lines that go out to the side of the peace sign. That’s pretty clever if you ask me.
Of course, you can’t always incorporate something from your industry into your logo. But it’s always nice if you can!
Text
On to text. If you decide to use purely text as your logo, here are some font tips:
1. Choose a font that fits your business’s personality. Serif fonts, the ones with “feet” give off a mature and established feeling whereas a sans-serif font (without feet) looks more modern and young.
2. Use a font that no one else uses. You can buy fonts online and download them, and some you can even download for free. I’d advise against the free ones, because those are the ones everyone else will be using. Buy a good, wide-ranging set of fonts so that you have less of a chance of looking like some other business. You can also create your own font by hiring a designer or buying software that lets you create fonts, like CorelDRAW. There are plenty of other software options out there, so just Google “create fonts software.”
3. Modify the font if possible. If you choose a font that looks similar to others, or if you just want to add a little bit of flair, modify your font just a bit. You could add longer serif “feet” or stretch the font to make it look wider. You could even just modify one letter of your logo to make it look different. A slight modification can make your logo look unique and add visual interest.
7 Design Tips for Better Print Marketing
1. The headline: Use words that catch readers’ attention in the headline and that will pull them into the rest of the copy. Words like “free,” “save” and “secret” work well to intrigue people into finding out more about what your print marketing has to say.
On average, the headline is read five times more than the body copy. That means people have read the headline and it wasn’t good enough to motivate people to read on. Don’t become part of that statistic! Include a clear benefit to the reader in the headline and you’ll draw them in. If you can pair a benefit with an eye-catching word like “free,” your headline will have real stopping power.
2. Use white space. Any space in your design that isn’t filled with text or graphics, or is in other words blank, is considered “white space.” Don’t feel like you have to fill every square inch of your print marketing materials. Whether it’s a flyer, postcard or brochure, a simple, uncluttered design will look much better and will draw people into your marketing piece than a cluttered design.
3. Limit yourself to two fonts. Any more than two fonts will make your design look cluttered. Unless you have a huge poster or a big marketing piece that can handle the extra fonts, stick with two. You should use a sans-serif font for your headlines and subheads (sans-serif means “without feet” in French; examples are Arial and Century Gothic) because sans-serif fonts are harder to read when they font size is small. Use a serif font for all of your body copy, or your smaller size copy. Serif fonts have “feet,” which make them easier to read. Examples of serif fonts are Times New Roman and Garamond.
4. Address your audience. Make sure you talk directly to your audience – say “Attention CEOs” or blatantly ask “Are you a stay at home Mom?” By talking directly to your audience there will be no mistake who your message is for.
5. Use before and after ads when possible. People have an above average understanding of before and after ads, and I think many women like them because they are like makeovers. When you can give proof in a photo format that your product works, there is no contesting it.
6. Use photos instead of line drawings when possible. Photos are more believable than line drawings. Photos are better at drawing people’s eyes in because the colors are generally more saturated than in a graphic.
7. Test your ads again and again. Readership increases with repetition. Keep testing new ads against old ones to see which ones are more effective. There comes a time when repetition gets boring, so be sure to switch up your design to keep consumers interested.
