Filed under: Print Place General
Marketing using flyers has become so commonplace that people have actually gotten the habit of avoiding employees or volunteers handing the pieces of paper over. That and the fact that you only have one page to deliver a marketing pitch that’s supposed to stick make flyer printing design a bit tricky. Luckily, there are some simple ways to deliver that much desired lasting impact.
Adapt to Modernity
Flyers might seem so outdated what with the current ongoing cyber boom. Everything in reality will eventually have a cyber counterpart. And when it comes to marketing, the Internet counterpart of the actual thing far exceeds the latter in advantages. So why not make your flyer print design adapt to modernity?
DISCLAIMER: The following images are not owned by PrintPlace.com and are used for the sole purpose of inspiring our viewers.
A QR Code on a mail flyer.
Try incorporating your business’s Web address or portal into your print design using prominent font. Don’t stop there, go ahead and put in a Facebook “Like” page or other social media or communities. Better yet, deliver all this information through technologies such as QR (Quick Response) codes that can easily be scanned by a smart phone camera.
Evoke Emotion
You don’t have to send them belly-flopping in laughter or weeping rivers of tears. You just need to instill upon your audience a sense of either urgency or pleasure, as these two emotions are most useful in marketing.
Sales have always been effective in getting women excited. (more…)
Filed under: Design Inspiration, Print Place General | Tags: logos, typography
Among the many elements you can use in your print design, simplicity is one of the most cost-effective ones. Cost-effective in terms of ease of use and its consequent assistance in speeding things up.
Indeed, one of the most noteworthy design styles today, minimalism, advocates the use of simplicity in design. The main minimalist thrust “less is more” works well in ordinary print design in that making thing simple helps in image perception. Simple layouts and images help bring attention to the parts of the design that require attention. What’s more, often simple design is intelligent design, making a lasting impact through sending a message though visual elements are minimal, and exactly because of it. To better illustrate this point, let’s take a look at simple and intelligent logo designs.
DISCLAIMER: The following images are not owned by PrintPlace.com and are used for the sole purpose of inspiring our viewers.
The logo for The Guild of Food Writers. Black on white background, the image portrays the tip of a pen, and inside it, a spoon. There are only four elements here: two colors, and two easily recognizable image depictions of commonplace objects readily associated with what Food Writers is all about.
Logo for Schizophrenic as designed by Siah Design. Two colors, white on darker shade. The font is subtle and doesn’t jump out too much, too. The text serves to support the image, which is also basically text and ingeniously uses a common Web practice to achieve better reach. The image unmistakably depicts a sad emoticon intertwined with a happy one, much like the way a coin has two sides.
Wiesinger piano service logo by Nexqunyx. White on black, and the two contrasting colors serve to better present the logo image without using other colors or graphic elements: the unmistakable depictions of piano keys, which are also a W and an M that stand for Wiesinger Music. (more…)
Filed under: Print Place General
Photos are not only appealing to the eyes, they also communicate well to your audience. But beyond just using photos in your design, you might want to use these five photo quirks that can enhance your overall design’s efficiency.
Appeal to Emotion
In debate, the ad misericordiam or appeal to pity is a fallacy. In print design, however, appealing to emotion is often key to making your design more relatable.
Fiery photos evoke fiery sentiments.
There are many images that can elicit varied emotions. Make sure you use appropriate photos to evoke the right sentiments. The impact of the photos in your design can support your main message, accentuate it, or even play the role of the main medium by which you deliver your message.
Facial Recognition
Pareidolia is the phenomenon of human minds making out faces in pretty much everything they see. Clouds, water, tree barks, you name it. We can discern a human face from it if we look hard enough. For print design, this means you can use human faces to draw attention to elements that require attention. (more…)
Filed under: Print Place General
While there are many considerations and factors to take into account in the act of designing brochures, the conceptualization doesn’t end with the textual and graphical elements. The brochure fold should also be given due consideration. Let’s look into the three most common brochure folds to get you truly ready in your brochure printing endeavors: the half fold, letter fold, and Z fold.
The Half Fold
Most commonly used in greeting cards as well as brochures, the half fold opens up a good number of creative possibilities, like die-cutting for instance. In the half fold, a score may be required to obtain a smooth fold edge for cover weight paper.
Getting creative with this type of fold isn’t hard. You can use it to emulate restaurant menus or a layout for a golf course. The two side-by-side panels make for excellent product comparisons. A half fold is a handy small product guide because they allow for more or larger images without folds slicing through thanks to added panel width.
Half folds are wider than most brochure folds, and though this makes them more noticeable, it also makes them unsuited for a number of standard brochure racks.
The Letter Fold
Taken from the way an actual letter is folded by hand and inserted into an envelope, the letter fold is a staple in mail marketing campaigns and a tried and tested brochure fold. What’s more, the letter fold creates a self-contained unit of paper that is easily handled by even automated envelope insertion machines.
The letter fold is preferred in corporate presentation as it can really impress. A practical use of the fold is a step-by-step presentation of a process, with each succeeding step literally unfolding after the previous one. Also, as the letter fold needs to be unfolded, it is an effective way of drawing your audience deeper into your message or sales pitch. The first fold grabs attention, the next fold expounds on key concepts, and the last fold delivers a clear call to action or conclusion.
Letter folded brochures have simple drawbacks though in that what you put in the first fold is limited, and many other professional establishments and businesses also use it. To compensate for these, make sure the front panel of your letter fold is very attention-grabbing, and that the design of your brochure is unique from a gamut of other letter fold brochures.
The Z Fold
Multi-page letters benefit from the Z fold as the pages unfold in sequence because they are nested together. Some automated envelope insertion machines might have trouble with the fact that it tends to spring up though.
The Z shape fold unfolds easily in the hands of your audience, and as such the fold is ideal for large images and maps, or charts and other infographics. To entice a reader to open it up, large, visual typography on the front panel works great.
Filed under: Print Place General
However artistically fulfilling it is to churn out one design after another, sometimes we just get burned out doing the same thing over and over. Luckily, there are some simple design reminders that can help us avoid lackluster design owing to burn out – tips that can refresh our creativity and imagination.
Limitations: Use Them
In today’s technologically advanced world of modern design innovations, even beginners can come up with professional looking graphic designs and print media. There just doesn’t seem to be any limits to what Photoshop or other digital design software can do. Though initially inspiring and quite useful, this can end up being detrimental to the graphic designer constantly using such programs. (more…)
