Pink and Red: Valentine’s Day Ads

February 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Whether you love it or hate it, Valentine’s Day is here once again. From a design perspective, this can be a challenging holiday, as there are a limited number of symbols or images and colors used. And we recently heard a bit of proactive advice from one of our clients: we should be careful not to overdo a theme because it can undermine the effectiveness of an ad.

Below are some of the designs we completed for clients in anticipation of this day dedicated to showing those we love how much we care.

Flowers are one of the most common gifts given on Valentine’s Day. I just heard a statistic on the news that two-thirds of the flowers purchased by men are given to their wives or girlfriends. One-third are given to their mothers! Anyway, featuring the flowers in this ad makes it eye-catching and bright. You can see here the typical approach of using reds and pinks on this holiday (purples are also seen although less frequently).

Valentine's Ad for Flowers Read more of this post

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Designs of the Quarter: Pre-Media and Print Ads

February 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Once again in Q4 of 2011, we called for submissions to our Designs of the Quarter contest. This time, we did not limit the categories, so all Affinity Express designers could participate. We were pleased with the response and the committee selected these four to feature. For the first time, we had two winning entries from the same person, who is clearly a design superstar in the making!

Oasis Cafe

Check marks the spot—in coffee beans on the cover of this menu, which is an interesting device to incorporate the main product in the design in a fresh way. It is reinforced by the coffee cup at the bottom. The brown, black and white color scheme works well for a coffee-oriented restaurant and the layout is clean and easy to read, despite there being a lot of text.

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Enhancing Your Image with Ads about Community Service

January 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment

We were looking through some of our best print ads for our newspaper clients last year. We were surprised by how many had a focus on community service and immediately thought, “we have a blog post!”

Just as people are more inclined to purchase from companies they get to know better on social media and relate to, they are more likely to view companies positively that demonstrate their volunteer and charity programs in advertising. That is, if they do it effectively.

There are three secrets to highlighting good works and doing it well:

  1. Create a strong headline.
  2. Feature images of people.
  3. Make ads about giving back (rather than touting product features and other sales pitches).

For example, this ad for Service King lures in the viewer with the headline: “Looking Out for You . . . on the Road and in the Community.” It ties in well with the company’s business, which is performing collision repairs. This effectively turns around a common distrust of car repair services. I’d be more inclined to trust a service that invests in causes I care about. Read more of this post

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Happy New Year

December 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Online holidays greeting card from Affinity Express

Please click here to view our online card.

From all of us at Affinity Express, we wish you a very happy 2012.

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New Year Ads

December 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

What comes to mind when you think of New Year’s Eve? Based on the ads we create at this time of the year for our clients, it is fireworks, balloons and decorations, and champagne. Unlike Christmas, there isn’t a wide variety of iconic images from which to choose, which means it can be challenging to stand out in a crowd of New Year’s promotions.

Nevertheless, I think this ad for Jaguar is successful. It gets your attention with bright fireworks that lead the eye to look down at the cars. Wouldn’t it be nice to ring in the new year with a new luxury car? Well, it’s nice to dream . . .

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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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Christmas Ads

December 20, 2011 by Leave a Comment

We’ve written previously about holiday-themed ads and how to best tie into the season to encourage customers to buy products and services. As we approach the winter holidays, let’s take a look at some fresh winter ads.

This is another example of adding an image to a standard ad to brighten it up and evoke the season. It’s easy and, quite often effective with minimal work required. Basically, it is an ad for businesses to do just that: pop in an image and some copy and run it in the newspaper.

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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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Seasonal Ads for Winter

December 6, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Every season brings on a slew of new products that need to be promoted. Smart marketers and business-owners also find ways of packaging existing products for different times of year to inspire customers to buy. As winter sets in, let’s take a look at some of the ads our team has designed for our clients while the temperatures drop and the snow starts in North America.

The easiest way to work make an ad seasonal is when there is a natural fit with the products, such as these ads for winter boots and slippers that will keep you dry and warm.

Ad for waterproof winter boots

Ad for Ugg winter boots

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Thanksgiving Print Ads

November 24, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Happy Thanksgiving! It’s the most anticipated meal of the year, but what is important for us is that many businesses have special promotions around Thanksgiving and rely on our advertising and marketing production to meet deadlines and increase revenue. For retailers, they are already deep into promoting holiday sales and hoping to make the most of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Restaurants and other businesses food-related try to get people to their doors or to buy their products (as wells as to advertise in their dining guides).

Here are just a few of the many print ads our team has created this time around.

Newspaper print ad for Thanksgiving Dining Guide created by the Affinity Express team

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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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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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Coupons, Print and Online

September 16, 2011 by 2 Comments

September is National Coupon Month. Coupons have traditionally been a common and effective sales promotion technique. At Affinity Express, we often create coupons for our clients, for print or for online use.

Coupon
Some coupons are handed out to the customer at the checkout counter, to encourage future visits

Companies often put in a coupon within another piece of communication, like an ad, a flyer, or a mass-mailed letter, to encourage you to take that final step and buy the product(s) that is the subject of the communication. Read more of this post

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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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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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