Writing an Effective Creative Brief for a Design Project

February 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

A creative brief is almost like a roadmap for how a project will turn out. It is the best chance to set the tone of your project so it starts off in the right direction. Your design will be only as good as your brief.

I remember a quote from a seminar on writing good briefs conducted by the Philippine Association of National Advertisers (PANA): “It is the miracle and magic of advertising that a structured, formal document can produce communication that touches people emotionally.”

There are all types of creative briefs and methods for developing them. The approach you use is less important than the mission: communicate clearly and thoroughly what you want. In other words, provide detailed instructions.

Affinity Express has order management systems (AESB and IDEA) that guide our clients through all the critical details, from size to folding specifications to fonts that must be used. Essentially, our technical team created an electronic client brief to make it easier for clients to communicate. We give them an area for “Additional Instructions” in which they can write anything that might help inform the designers. They can also attach as many reference documents as possible to show styles they like, old versions of documents, color combinations that work well and more.

Whether you are a client and use Affinity Express or not, here is what you should include in your creative brief for your internal team members and outside providers.

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Getting Line and Paragraph Spacing Just Right in Your Document

February 10, 2012 by 2 Comments

Line and paragraph spacing can make a lot of difference to the look of a document, yet it’s often overlooked. In this post, I share some really simple tips on spacing and how to get it right.

The standard spacing strategy is to use a decreasing amount of space as you move down the document.

The space between the title block and the text that follows should be the greatest: that sets the title apart from the rest of the document. The space between a section heading and the body text that follows it should be more than the space between the lines of text that after the heading. Following this simple spacing rule will make the document easy for your readers to follow.

Spacing and Leading

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10 Steps to Keeping Marketing Communications Updated

February 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

At the start of the year, every marketing department needs to update their materials and documents and make sure they’re ready to use. Now that I’m done with mine, I put together a checklist that you can use too.

Affinity Express Price Sheet

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Build Your Brand on Social Media

January 19, 2012 by 1 Comment

Have you started out on social media but aren’t quite sure what to do with it? Do you wonder how you’re ever going to show your business’s competence and expertise in 140 characters? Or how to get people interested in your industry to follow you?

I provide some answers in this post at the Search Engine People blog. A taste:

Answer Questions

Answering questions from people about the way your industry or business functions is a sure-fire way of making yourself look like an expert (provided you actually know the answers). Look through topics related to your business on sites like Quora and LinkedIn and set up a saved search on Twitter and look at hashtags. Join industry forums and participate in discussions. Use web search and Google alerts to find more questions on those topics. Don’t just answer for the sake of getting your name in: you need to actually add something informative to the discussion.

What else can you do? Read the blog post to find out!

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10 Recurring Features for Your Newsletter

January 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment

NewsletterDo you think sending out a newsletter isn’t for you? What could you possibly put in it every week (or month)? Think about it: you might find more content ideas than you now realize. Here are some ideas for recurring features you can have in your newsletter.

Answer customer questions

What customer questions do you or your staff (especially customer support or sales) get frequently? A  recurring column in a newsletter is a great place to answer them.

Feature feedback

Dedicate one corner of your newsletter to glowing testimonials you get from your customers. That’s your little boasting spot! Read more of this post

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What Are the Most Influential Retailers Doing on Twitter?

December 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Klout has shared this list of the top ten most influential retailers online, and it got me wondering: what are they doing that makes them influential (or really, gives them a better Klout score)? Here’s my completely unscientific evaluation.

Amazon

It’s no surprise Amazon is on the list: it’s the top online retailer and has in some ways defined the space. Their Twitter profile is well-maintained but with no surprises: they post links to new products and to content (including Amazon’s best books of 2011, retweet from other Amazon accounts such as amazonbooks and AmazonKindle (and while I’m surprised at the inconsistent capitalization there’s nothing else noteworthy here), and have the occasional apt-and-funny product recommendation.

Victoria’s Secret

They do an amazing job at talking and not broadcasting. They respond to followers, call out people wearing their products, they even thanked Klout and their own fans for their ranking in the influential list. 

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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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6 Reasons Why I Hate Your Website

December 9, 2011 by 6 Comments

Mobile siteThere are many, many reasons why someone might hate your website. If it works for you—gets you a great number of leads every month or your e-commerce sales have gone up since the redesign—you can shut this page now and go back to work. But if you wonder what it is about your website that’s just not bringing in the leads, read on: your website might be committing one of these mistakes.

It Annoys Users

Forcing me to wait through a two-minute Flash “intro” before I can even get to your site will really annoy me. Almost as bad is making me click on an “enter site” button. I AM on your site, so why do I have to ENTER it?

Other things that annoy your users:

  1. Music that plays as soon as I enter your site so I have to frantically mute my computer while coworkers raise their heads and look around
  2. Cluttered design with little white space and too many different elements
  3. Bright clashing colors or light text on dark background to give me a headache
  4. Lots of Flash, so that getting to your “management team” page feels like a complicated and difficult game
  5. Your website takes so long to load I can make myself a fresh cup of tea while I’m waiting

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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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9 Tips on Getting the Most out of a Conference

November 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Attending a business conferenceIf you’re like me and work in a small department, conferences are an incredible opportunity to learn about what’s new in your field and meet people who do similar work. I went to my first two professional conferences this year, the Click Asia Summit in Mumbai and Ad-tech in New York. I was extremely excited to meet speakers I’ve read and heard of, people doing incredible things in marketing, and just meet a group of fellow marketers and chat with them about challenges we all face.

But if you have a tight budget (and who doesn’t?) conferences, including traveling to them and staying at hotels, can be extremely expensive. So how do you make the most of every single industry event you attend?

1.  Find the best events

This is obvious, but also probably the most important. With so many events in the year, which one(s) give you the most bang for your buck? Research online, read blog posts on the last year’s events, and ask people (both on Twitter and your real-life colleagues). What are your objectives? What do you want to learn about? What kind of people do you want to meet? Figure all this out and then check out which event makes the most sense for you. Read more of this post

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Seven Easy Steps to Outsourcing Advertising and Marketing Production

November 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

While most companies outsource at least one or more processes (e.g., payroll, cleaning services, landscaping, security, and benefits are rarely done in-house), there are many companies who have never outsourced advertising and marketing production, a mission-critical function that can include design of display ads, websites, emails, social media, marketing collateral and more. The idea can seem new and daunting.

Although marketing and advertising production is essential to every business, the outsourcing process doesn’t have to be complicated, especially if you are working with an experienced company that can lead you through it efficiently. Here are seven easy steps to outsourcing advertising and marketing production.

Samples of work Affinity Express has created for clients Read more of this post

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Social Media Marketing at Ad-Tech

November 10, 2011 by 4 Comments

Some quick notes from yesterday at ad-tech. We stayed in the social media track, because there were interesting topics up, and I was excited to see Chris Brogan, whose blog I read religiously, in person!

David Fischer, the Vice President of Advertising and Global Operations at Facebook, revealed that if you reach out to your fans and their friends, you get 81 times the distribution. Nielsen statistics also indicate that 68% are more likely to remember an ad with social context, twice as likely to remember the message and four times as likely to buy.

So how do you build your brand on Facebook?

  1. Connect
  2. Engage
  3. Inspire

Well, that sounds easy! Also remember, your social media strategy is really your people strategy. Create personalized experiences and let people share them. 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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Repurposing Content

October 21, 2011 by 3 Comments

100% RecyclableAs a marketer, I’m constantly inundated with advice on what I should be doing. Apparently, marketers are now publishers, but not the old-fashioned magazine publishers who only needed to worry about one issue for the month. We have blog posts to write (and they’d better be long and well-written and useful and frequent), newsletters to send out regularly to our subscribers, website copy to frequently update (to catch the attention of the elusive search engines), the Facebook page to continually update and monitor, the Twitter account to be briefly witty on, the press releases to send out and reach the media, sales collateral to keep engaging and current, events to plan for, and maybe ads to create and manage. Don’t forget the internal communication: at Affinity Express, for example, we have a quarterly newsletter, as well as memos and posters we often put up to inform our internal audience.

How does a small marketing team with limited resources do all this?

1. Read widely.

Not only is reading about industry news and best practices essential for you to learn, it also helps you think and may provide material for a blog post. I’ve blogged about a book I read (and that was a fiction book and not about marketing or business, so don’t be narrow in your selection), articles that I disagreed with, a blog post and speech that inspired me.  I also routinely cull industry articles and put in a few of the best links into our monthly newsletters.

2. Dig into what’s already available.

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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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Marketing for the Holidays

October 11, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Start preparing for the holidays now!When the weather is warm, the sun is shining and kids are out of school, I think about . . . the winter holidays. It sounds counterintuitive but this is the best time to put together plans, place orders and get ahead of the requirements of the season. I realize the summer has already passed, but hope this post will help you catch up!

The best advice of all is to start as soon as possible. These days, holiday decorations go on sale the day after Halloween with good reason—many people start planning and purchasing early. That’s why, whether you are a B2C or B2B company, it pays to have a roadmap for the holidays before you start hearing carols and seeing inflatable snow men on your neighbors’ lawns. 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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Eight Tips on Organizing a Great Event

September 21, 2011 by 2 Comments

Event planning often falls under marketing, whether that means trade shows, client visits or corporate meetings. And if you are a small- to medium-sized business, the chances are you don’t have a budget to hire an outside firm or a consultant. We’re just back from the Affinity Express annual strategy workshop and I’m glad to say that it went quite well, from the hotel to the meals to the events. Based on this recent experience, here are some suggestions to increase the likelihood of success for your event, regardless of the type of meeting or the industry you are in.

1. Visualize the Details

This is probably the tactic that has helped me the most, especially when it comes to large events. You have to know the venues, details and agenda better than anyone. Plus, you should see them from the perspective of your participants. When you envision through how guests will enter, what they will see, what they will need and what they will expect, you can effectively cover all of the details. Your goal is to have the attendees relax and feel completely taken care of, even when you’re having a straightforward business meeting.

This is one reason why you see signs with group names and directions in hotels when there are events. Having people wander around aimlessly, wondering where they are supposed to go, is not the best start to a gathering. The annual event for the Chicago chapter of Go Red For Women was a great example of effective signage. It was a large hotel and there was no doubt where to report, check your coat, find the ballroom, etc. They answered all the questions before they could be asked (and we were proud to have helped design the signage).

Dinner at the strategy meeting

Dinner was a time to relax and have more informal conversations

For our dinners around the strategy meeting, I had perused the menus and arranged for special requirements in advance. Each day, I arrived early to meet the servers, select wine and appetizers, discuss the approach with the staff and ensure everything was set up the way I wanted. Over the course of four days, my boss never started a question with, “Did you . . .?” When our guests arrived, they didn’t have to think, just enjoy themselves, which they certainly did. I’m not naming names but there was spontaneous karaoke at one point! Read more of this post

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Working with Linked Files in an InDesign Document

September 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

What do you do when a customer provides an InDesign document for which the linked files are either missing or need to be re-linked to the document? Here are some tips.

Modified Links

If you open an InDesign file that contains linked files that were changed since the last time the InDesign file was saved, you’ll see this message.

modified links

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