Premedia Designs Evoking Childhood and Nostalgia

August 30, 2011 by Leave a comment

As this is my first post, I’ll start off with a short introduction: I work with retailer clients at Affinity Express, trying to see how best we can serve them with our premedia solutions.

As I looked through some of our best recent premedia designs, I found a few that caught my eye and wanted to share on the blog. What’s common among these samples is that the ads and marketing materials are all aimed at kids, are baby products marketed to parents, or evoke the nostalgia of childhood.

Premedia sample: comic flyer

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Newspaper Publishers Offer Digital Services through BPO

August 26, 2011 by Leave a comment

News onlineAfter years of cost cutting, why are some newspaper publishers actually staffing up their in-house digital production operations and investing in technology and tools for new interactive services like video advertising, deals-of-the-day, social media services, etc.? As newspapers rethink and reinvent their business model, they should engage business process outsourcing to generate profitable revenues that will sustain their businesses and pay for quality journalism well into the future.

In 2010, advertising revenues for newspapers continued to fall, about 6.3% for the year. Print circulation also continued to decline (5% daily and 4.5% for Sunday), according to The State of the News Media 2011, Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism. On top of that, the past year saw a surge in expenses, which puts limits on funding both for experiments and for maintaining editorial quality in print and digital formats. Read more of this post

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Colors for Print: Matching and Separating

August 23, 2011 by 3 Comments

Working with colors is par for the course for a printer or print designer. In my first post, I’ve put together some basic tips on working well with color.

Matching Colors

Designing something new for a customer, and they ask you to match the color(s) of an existing document? There is more to it than you might think. Read more of this post

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Choosing the ELITE Logo Design

August 16, 2011 by 1 Comment

With the announcement of our new Affinity Express ELITE initiative to better communicate and reinforce our company’s core values, we launched an internal design contest in July to develop the ELITE logo.

All Affinity Express employees were eligible to participate. Designs had to include “Affinity Express” and “ELITE” (in all caps because it is an acronym). We asked them to take into account the company branding standards and colors, but work to develop an attractive logo that demonstrates our creativity and design capabilities. Individuals could submit designs or teams could work together. And multiple entries were permissible.

I’m happy to say that we received hundreds of amazing designs and this was our most popular contest since our corporate logo was developed several years ago. Entries were reviewed without any names or identification and voted on by a team of Affinity Express personnel, including Human Resources and Marketing representatives.

The first thing we did was eliminate entries we didn’t believe would work for a variety of reasons (e.g., because the colors were off, the designs were not interesting or they didn’t have balance with our logo). We also got a lot of variations on the same theme and had to drill down to one representation of an idea. As we went through our review process, it was important for us to consider how logos would appear in different media: on memos, the website, t-shirts, posters, presentations and more. Read more of this post

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Cool Things Newspapers Are Doing on Facebook

August 11, 2011 by 2 Comments

You’ve heard it before: newspapers should be using Facebook. But what should they be doing?

Here’s what some of the best newspaper pages on Facebook are doing right. (Instead of looking through all newspaper pages I could find on Facebook, I started out with this list. I also included a few from here.)

Read on to see what Facebook features you should be taking advantage of (even if you’re not in the news business). Read more of this post

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A Five-Step Recipe for Marketing Success

August 9, 2011 by 2 Comments

Cinnamon pecan buns

My cinnamon pecan buns

You’ve already heard that I work long hours juggling multiple priorities in my role with Affinity Express. When I show up at the office armed with trays of decadent desserts my coworkers, I invariably hear the question: “How do you find the time?” 

The answer is that I make the time because baking not only gives me a welcome break from work but also reinforces the way I approach marketing and gives me an opportunity to think through more complex challenges. Let me explain.

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How to Outsource Marketing Design and Keep Your Brand Consistent

August 3, 2011 by Leave a comment

Print ad for laundry service

Print ad created by Affinity Express

As I ask (and answer) in my post at Search Engine People, how do you outsource marketing without losing your voice? Let’s take design. How do you outsource design of your ads and marketing materials without losing consistency?

Managing an outsourced team can be no different (or difficult!) than managing a team in-house, provided you follow the rules.

For example, rule #4:

Give detailed, specific instructions.
I can’t tell you how many times our clients fail to do that and are surprised when our designs don’t match their expectations. If you have something specific in mind, you have to really tell them what you mean. You can’t just say “make it like our current logo, only better.” You have to say, “I don’t like this black box in our logo because it makes us seem unapproachable. Replace it with something pink and poufy and transparent.” Yes, the designer will use their judgment: that’s what you’re paying them for. But you can’t give them vague statements and expect them to read your mind.

Now go over and read the rest. Don’t forget to tell me what you think I got right and what I missed.

Filed under graphics, marketing communications, outsourcing Tagged with , ,

Designs of the Quarter: Video, Print Ads, Flyers and Image Editing

August 1, 2011 by 1 Comment

For our second Designs of the Quarter contest this year, we called for entries in the categories of: flyers, print ads, video ads and image editing. Now that we’ve shared the good news with our team in our newsletter, we’re pleased to let you know about the winning designs.

Flyer

This flyer stood out because the image ties in perfectly with the headline, “Healthy Kids” and grabs attention. The boy looks ready to take on the world! Plus, the layout of the text lets readers easily grasp the point: donations are requested for this worthy cause. When you have so little time to engage, it is important that messages come through quickly.

Designs of the Quarter: flyer
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