Sins of Business Card Design

January 25, 2012 in Business, Marketing with 0 Comments

Sins of Business Card Design

Design site Desizn Tech had made an excellent post about business card design that says:

Regardless of your job industry or type, you need a well-designed business card, one that is appropriate for your trade. A business reflects your skills, professionalism and attracts clients and customer. Therefore it is absolutely vital to have a business card that brings more clients not turn them away.

They are absolutely right. Be sure to check out the post and keep their points in mind when commissioning a card for your business. After all, your business card should be quality and reflect the professionalism of your company.

Using Colour To Reflect Your Business

January 19, 2012 in Business, Theory with 0 Comments

Are the colours you are using for your business brand effective? People react to colours in different ways, and there’s an entire science of colour theory built around the subject. For example, people in western cultures see red as exciting, energetic, passionate and provocative. Similarly, in western cultures the most preferred yellows are either very warm or creamy, while greenish-yellows are mostly disliked; but in asian cultures nearly all shades of yellow, especially green-based yellows, are adored. Continue Reading…

Design Is More Than Just Aesthetics

January 15, 2012 in Theory with 0 Comments

Mark Simonson has written a quick little post that illustrates perfectly why looks alone are not enough in graphic design. Sure, your design should be beautiful; but that beauty doesn’t come about by solely by choosing a pretty font and some nice colours. It comes about from understanding the end-user of the design. If your design makes it easy for the end-user to understand your message then it will largely be beautiful to them and an it’s easy plus for you. All aspects of design should consider the impact on the end-user.

Copyright Roadblocks in Design

January 13, 2012 in Business with 0 Comments

The Graphic Artists Guild has published a series of articles at Sessions College outling some real word scenarios relating to how copyright works when hiring a Graphic Designer.

While brief, the series does cover some common issues you may face when working with your Designer, such as whether you or the designer owns rough sketches, alternative designs etc relating to your project and what happens if there are limitations on where and how you can use your design if outlined in a contract.

It’s well worth a read if you’re thinking of hiring a Graphic Designer. You can find links to all three articles in the series by clicking here.

Simple Design Techniques to Convert Customers

January 12, 2012 in Marketing, Theory with 0 Comments

Simple Design Techniques to Convert Clients

So you’ve created your website with the aim of selling a product. Aside from writing some great sales copy and having an attractive site layout, there’s one thing you can do to boost the likelihood of visitors clicking on your ad – using design theory to create an effective call to action button.

The use of shadows, colours, size, context of wording, font and placement on the page all matter when it comes to converting visitors into sales.

The folks over at UX Movement have made an excellent guide outlining all of this, so head on over to check it out.

 

Your Email Signatures Suck

January 3, 2012 in Business, Marketing with 0 Comments

HTML email signatures

Don’t you just hate receiving an email from a business that answers your query in three lines, but at the bottom uses a HTML signature that’s ten, fifteen or even twenty lines? From the business’ logo, employee name, title, email address and telephone to things like social media links, quotes from famous dead people, legal disclaimers acquiring ownership of your first born son and, at the very bottom, a hypocritical request asking you to please think of the environment before printing. It’s becoming a nightmare!

So why then do business owners, the same people who hate receiving emails with huge signatures, use ridiculously long HTML email signatures themselves? Continue Reading…

Why TwiBooklet Has It Right With Update Syncing

December 21, 2011 in Social Networking with Comments Off

TwiBooklet has published an interesting article on why you should never use the cut and paste method for updating social networks with information. And I completely agree. That is, with everything but saying “Google+ is no Facebook”…I personally see them as two birds of the same feather …

But the point is, it can take you hours and even days to research and write an article that you want to share with your audience. If you’re going to that amount of effort, what’s another five minutes manually broadcasting to your followers about it? Seriously, what are you broadcasting to? Twitter? Facebook? Google+? Chances are it’s at least two of those so it won’t take you long to personalise your message a bit. And as the article says, it’ll give you a chance to:

  • Stick within the character limits of each network
  • Give you a chance to remove network specific artifacts, like hashtags you might use in Twitter but are useless on Facebook
  • Modify wording so your message appears to be personally written to your audience. Continue Reading…

Design Genius: Pen Holder Adapter

December 17, 2011 in Products with Comments Off

Adapter Pencil Cup By Felix NG & SILNT

If you’re like me you’ve been storing your pens and pencils in a mug or pencil cup on your desk for as long as you can remember. And it can get pretty messy in there.

Well, thanks to Singapore design firm SILNT (pronounced “silent”) there’s no more excuses. They’ve just released the “Adapter”, a flexible insert for nearly any cylindrical insert that turns it into an organised pen holder. Continue Reading…