Happy Holidays

December 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

It’s a holiday tradition at Affinity Express to recreate a well-known piece of art using embroidery digitizing. This year, the pressure was heightened since last year’s design just won us two awards: the Stitches Golden Needle awards for Design of the Year, Technical, Corporate and Design of the Year, Artistic, Corporate.

The subject we chose this year was a Renoir painting. And regardless of whether we win an award, I think we can be proud of this year’s design as well! What do you think?

Embroidery digitizing design of Renoir painting

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10 Tips on Designing Brochures

December 16, 2011 by Leave a Comment

With Mel Fernandez

Even with the prevalence of digital marketing, brochures are common marketing materials, used in both printed and electronic form. We use them to present our company and its products and services in an interesting way that grabs readers’ attention and makes them want to buy from us or work with us. To be effective, a brochure must have solid branding, strong visuals, clear and concise messaging, and effective page layout and design.

When we recently re-wrote and re-designed an Affinity Express trade show brochure (for print) and some posters to display in our booth, we took the time to document the process. Mel and I have worked together on dozens of brochures and come at it from two perspectives: strategy and content for me and design and branding for Mel.

Together, we came up with the following tips that will help you create effective brochures.

Affinity Express graphic services brochure

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Using Cartoons for Marketing

December 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Cartoon created by Affinity Express

Cartoon created by Affinity Express for a client

I have been reading the book Visual Marketing by David Langton and Anita Campbell, and came across the example of cartoons to market CaseCentral. CaseCentral markets eDiscovery software to law firms and corporations, and these “Case in Point” cartoons are meant to draw attention, entertain as well as demonstrate the company’s knowledge of the field.

That is a smart use of visual marketing, and it reminded me of the Indian consumer goods company, Amul. Amul Butter cartoons appear on billboards and newspapers all over India. Each cartoon references some current event—an election, a new movie, a sleazy scandal—and the tagline is at once a pun on and a comment on the event that it references. They have been doing this for decades and these cartoons are immensely popular: you can browse through some here.

If you haven’t guessed already, I am in awe of the Amul campaign. They combine contemporary relevance, story-telling and art to create a powerful message that evokes the brand and ties in the product, and they have done this consistently for over three decades. If that isn’t brilliant, I don’t know what is.

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How to Work with Designers

December 2, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Over at the Search Engine People blog, I offer more advice on working with designers.

Working with someone in a remote office is always difficult, but when I started out, I found it harder to get design done efficiently because I didn’t know much about design and I hadn’t realized how I could be a better client.

So here’s some of  what I’ve learned the hard way!

Once in a while you work with a designer who can take your “I want something pretty, but corporate, and use our brand colors but do something different and fluid” and turn it into a fabulous design. (Thanks, Mel!) But lets face it, that’s really rare. So here are some tips for marketers and business-owners on working with web or graphic designers (whether they are employees, freelancers or a business services provider).

Give detailed instructions.

This is the most obvious but also most important tip. Especially when you start out working with a new designer or provider, make sure you write down every little thing you can think of. Here are some common aspects I often forget to specify:

  • The size of the design (in pixels or inches or whatever works for you)
  • The purpose: Is it for print or web? Will it be used in your blog and have to fit into the blog column? Is it a direct mail piece that has to fit into a certain size of envelope?
  • Do you have preferences on how the design should be laid out? How many columns? How much space should the image take up?
  • When do you need it?

And make clear what you can’t do: e.g., change the colors in your logo, use serif fonts, or whatever your guidelines are. Which brings us to…

Click here to read 8 more tips.

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Design Projects: Information You Should Provide Your Designer

November 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

“Design is about getting the right idea, and getting the idea right,” according to Marty Neumeier. So how do you get the most from your projects and achieve critical marketing goals? Do you have a clear vision or do you want your designer to develop the ideas for you?

Clear information and direction are vital to a design project’s success. Defining your objectives, target audience and your optimum results will enable a designer to meet your needs and overcome challenges effectively.

It is best to provide a thorough brief that sketches out the task at hand. However, when clients have a vague goal or an incomplete brief, it is the designer’s responsibility to lead and to get the required information. Whether you are the client or the designer, here is what should be covered:

1.  Scope

What is the project? What is the budget? What are the deliverables? Will the images and copy be supplied? What is the timeframe?

Communicating these important information at the start of the process gives the designer a framework and enables him or her to clearly define the visual problem and devise solutions. Read more of this post

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Designing Our Website Icon/Favicon

November 3, 2011 by Leave a Comment

How do you make your brand stronger down to the smallest detail? How can you enhance your website and stand out from competitors and other companies? Try using a favicon, which is also known as a favorites icon, to display in the address bar when your site is open in the web browser. You can see them today on most popular websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Facebook Icon Twitter Icon LinkedIn Icon
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

Without an icon, your site can look flat or worse, like you don’t care enough to create one.

Affinity Express didn’t have a favicon, so I suggested creating one and took on the task of designing a 16×16-pixel icon that could also be used in various media such as Facebook. I wanted our favicon to convey creativity because we offer advertising and marketing production solutions and have a team of more than 900 designers. With this in mind, I developed several design studies that were true to our corporate branding.

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Happy Halloween

October 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Witch's Cat

With Diwali celebrations in India last week and Halloween today, it seems like a special time everywhere! Diwali is the festival of lights and if you’re in India at this time, you can expect to see every window in every home or shop lit up with traditional oil lamps or the equally ubiquitous strings of electric lights. If you’re in India, happy Diwali!

To the rest of you, happy Halloween. Have a terror-filled, dark and gory holiday and (if you aren’t busy setting out candy or making last-minute adjustments to your costume) check out these designs created by our team. Pretty creepy, huh?

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Designs of the Quarter: Online Ad, Coupon, Vector Art

October 28, 2011 by 2 Comments

The results of this year’s third Designs of the Quarter contest are in, and as always, I’m proud to present some of the best work within Affinity Express.

Online Ad

Designs of the Quarter: online ad

This eye-catching ad was an easy choice for Design of the Quarter because it grabs attention. Regardless of the online newspaper’s headline, you can’t ignore the ad because it surrounds the content. Even better, it earned high praise from our client: “We need to keep maintaining the high quality we’ve become accustomed to through Affinity Express. This is an AWESOME piece of creative built by your team. Keep up this great work.” Read more of this post

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Creative Blocks: How to Work Through and Find Your Inspiration

October 19, 2011 by 1 Comment

“The creative mind of an artist is an expression of his soul,” but what happens when your creativity dries up? We’ve all experienced it: the ideas aren’t coming, the clock is ticking and the client (or the boss) is waiting.

It is very human to face creative blocks, regardless of the type of work you do. As a senior designer for a dynamic company with a heavy workload and tight deadlines, I don’t have the luxury of letting them get the best of me.

As Professor Robert Winston says, great composers have come through creative blocks to produce outstanding works. That’s great to know, but how do you get over it and FAST?

1.  Manage expectations

When you realize you are stuck, it is important to manage your client or supervisor to make him or her feel that you have everything covered. Suggest concepts, get feedback and provide updates (basically, appear like you don’t have a block). Ask plenty of questions, as you never know if an answer or insight will suddenly solve the problem for you. Either way, the communication will help the person understand the process and feel engaged, which buys you some time. Read more of this post

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Graphic Services Score 4.2 of 5

September 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Thank You for Your FeedbackWe recently conducted our annual survey of graphic services customers. First of all, my sincere thanks to everyone who participated: nearly 300 of you took the time to answer our questions and we are grateful. We have pored through the results and read through every single word of your comments. Thanks to everyone who wrote critical feedback: we want to solve the issues you have had with using our services and make it easier and better for you. Our team is also responding to individual respondents with any concerns or issues.

And of course, every word of positive feedback encourages our team and makes us happy, and we’re grateful for your appreciation.

So, how did we fare? Read more of this post

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Recreating A Printed Document

September 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

From time to time we are sent scans of printed documents and asked to make changes. This may seem like a simple thing to do, but it can actually be quite challenging. Even changing a phone number can lead to a great deal of work and take many hours depending on what is provided.

Here’s an example of an order we received recently that will help me illustrate this point.

Front of postcard

This is the front side of the postcard (I blacked out the company details)

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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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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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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.

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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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Using Color in Ad Design

July 26, 2011 by 2 Comments

We have written before about the importance of design in marketing, and color is one of the most important elements of design. Designers have always used color to convey different moods and underline the messages. Let’s take a look at some colors and what emotions or attributes they often convey.

Blue

Blue is a very commonly used in B2B messaging, because it is a calm color that indicates respectability. Because blue conveys reliability, it is commonly used by brands in financial services, healthcare and other industries where trust is paramount.

Ad illustrating use of blue color

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Designing Our Facebook Page Welcome Tab

July 7, 2011 by 4 Comments

I had been coveting the interesting welcome tabs other brand pages had on Facebook, so I asked Kelly if we could have one of our own. Never one to refuse a reasonable request, she asked Mel if he’d be interested in designing one.

Now Mel knows that if you give clients options to choose from, they’re more likely to approve your work. So he sent us three designs to choose from.

Facebook welcome tab design with orange background

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Happy Fourth of July

July 4, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Hope our readers in the U.S. are enjoying the long weekend!

Happy 4th of July: vector artwork image with fireworks

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It’s Summer!

June 21, 2011 by 3 Comments

Embroidery digitizing sample from Affinity Express

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. And as usual, we celebrate it on the Affinity Express blog by sharing a few summer-themed designs from our team.

What are you doing this summer? (Actually, I’m going away this weekend, to a cottage in a forest–glad you asked!)

Going on a vacation? Going camping, maybe? You’ll need a tent. Read more of this post

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