www.narvinta.com

This month, we wanted to share some general tips relating to your graphic design that we’ve come up with over the past year:

Always include an address on your business card, even if you are operating a small
business out of your home it greatly increases your credibility and makes you
look much more established! If you’re concerned about privacy, a Post Office box is
a great way to go. When signing up for a Post Office box, consider using a
“Mailboxes” store instead of the Post Office you’ll get a street address instead of
the typical “P.O. Box”, and the store will accept shipped packages from UPS, FedEx
and other carriers for you, so you won’t need to give out your home address as a
shipping address.

Never be caught anywhere without business cards again! Carry a supply of cards in
your car so that if you can restock when purse or wallet stash runs out. The same
applies for brochures, articles, promotional postcards, samples, informational flyers,
and presentation folders with information about your company and capabilities
you never know when you’ll have an opportunity to hand them out!

Look for ways to make producing your designed materials less expensive. Need a
business card and brochure? Why not combine the two into a folding business card
and save on the printing costs? Is your logo designed in so many colors that printing
becomes too costly? Try having materials printed digitally by an online printing
house like psprint.com or vistaprint.com they’re often much more cost-effective
for materials printed on white paper stock. If you want to print on a specialty paper,
consider converting your logo to a one- or two-color version just for your printed
materials unlimited colors on a website don’t cost extra! We’re always thinking up
creative ways to save our clients money, and we’re happy to offer many more
suggestions like these based on your individual needs just contact us with your
questions.

Do you want the professionalism of having a printed letterhead, but don’t expect to
write 500 letters (the minimum quantity for most printers)? There are two options to
avoid this: Design a letterhead that can act as a base for your printed invoices,
flyers, report or proposal covers, articles, client intake documents and everything
else! This way, all of your materials will be professionally branded and you’ll go
through “all that letterhead” quicker than you think! Or, recreate your letterhead
design as a Microsoft Word template, so that you can print sheets one at a time
from your desktop printer. Just pick up a ream of specialty paper from the local
office supply warehouse to avoid that “home printed” look.

If you frequently drive for your business, or if your parking spot happens to be on a
busy street, make the most of it by having a set of car magnets designed and
printed with your logo, phone number and website address on them they make a
big impact, spread the word all over town and, after the initial investment, it’s free
publicity!

We hope these tips help you promote your business.

About the Author

Erin Ferree, Founder and Lead Designer of elf design, is a brand identity and graphic
design expert. She has been helping small businesses grow with bold, clean and
effective logo and marketing material designs for over a decade. elf design offers
the comprehensive graphic and web design services of a large agency, with the one-
on-one, personalized attention of an independent design specialist. Erin works
closely in partnership with her clients to create designs that are visible, credible and
memorable - and that tell their unique business stories in a clear and consistent
way. For more information about elf design, please visit: Logo design at http://www.elf-design.com

Share This

Check any Yellow Pages directory heading from one year to the next and see how many ads disappear, or reduced in size.

Here are some little secrets that your Yellow Pages rep will never tell you but may save you a small fortune.

1. A colored ad will double the amount of calls that you will receive over a black and yellow ad. The truth: There is no study by any independent research firm that verifies any increase in calls. Many large advertisers will use color in their ads when it is free and drop the color when they have to pay for it. These advertisers track their calls and see no difference in colored or black and yellow ads.

2. The largest ad in a heading will receive the most calls. The truth: In fact the smallest ad will sometimes receive the most calls.

3. The Yellow Pages publisher will design a wonderfully effective ad for you for free. The truth: Letting the publisher design your ad could make it the most expensive ad design you will ever pay for. Paying for a professionally designed Yellow Pages ad is better than spending money on color or size.

4. A display ad is always better than an incolumn ad. The truth: I have many clients who have increased their calls from their Yellow Pages advertising by going incolumn instead of the display ad that they had before. They were able to reduce what they were spending by 75%.

5. You’re better off spending money on your Yellow Pages advertising than on the Internet. The truth: This year more people have used the Internet for local business search then used the published Yellow Pages.

6. If you buy a Yellow Pages ad your phone will ring off the hook. The truth: More businesses than I can count have been put out of business by paying for ads in the Yellow Pages that they couldn’t afford. A new advertiser should be very conservative in the size of the ad they purchase. No matter what your sales rep says there is no guarantee that you will receive one call, yet you still have to pay the bill every month for the next year.

7. Put your name in big print at the top of the ad. The truth: Yellow page publishers suggest this all the time, not to make your phone ring but to appeal to your ego. What you do that separates you from your competition should be your ads headline. Example:” One Hour Service, Guaranteed” Your name and your phone number should be at the bottom of the ad.

8. The big phone companies Yellow Pages directories are used the most and is where you should advertise. The truth: All directories that are distributed to businesses and residents are used. Almost always the phone companies directories are used the most, but you may get a much better deal from some of the secondary publishers. There also will be far less competition in your headings.

To West Coast Yellow Pages advertisers I have been known as the good Doctor Yellow Page. I have consulted with over a thousand businesses and professionals the last 20 years, helping them cut their Yellow Pages advertising cost and increase their customer calls. I have trained over a hundred Yellow Pages consultants across the United States. I can be seen and contacted a http://www.doctoryellowpage.com.

Share This

There are many components of a brand identity: logo, color palette, font choice, and
the Visual Vocabulary. There’s a lot of information available about the use of logos,
colors, and Visual Vocabulary, but not much on the effective use of fonts. So, here’s
some information on the creative, practical, and technical aspects of fonts.

Font basics

A font is a set of all the letters in the alphabet, designed with similar characteristics.
This is also known as a typeface.

Fonts are usually designed to include several style variations. This can include styles
like light, regular, bold, semibold, ultra bold, and italic. Some fonts also include
“Expert” versions, which are fonts that include fractions and mathematical symbols.

Font families are typically packages of fonts that include all of the different versions
of a font. Using fonts with large families will give you a wide range of fonts to use in
your materials, for variety and emphasis.

There are many basic classifications of fonts. Four of the most common classes of
fonts are:

Serif fonts, which have little “feet,” called serifs, at the ends of the lines that make
up the letters. Some examples of serif fonts include Times, Palatino, and Garamond.
These fonts are more traditional, elegant, and old-fashioned.

Sans-serif fonts don’t have those feet. “Sans serif” means “without serifs.” Arial,
Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are some of the most common sans-serif fonts.
These fonts are more clean and modern.

Script fonts are calligraphic or cursive fonts. Brush Script and Nuptial Script are
two common script fonts.

Display fonts are decorative and often used for logos or headlines.

There are other types of fonts as well, including handwriting fonts and all-caps
fonts. However, the four listed above are the most common and useful in business
communications.

Creative font usage guidelines

Each type of font has certain characteristics that translate into that font’s
personality. A font might be serious or light-hearted, traditional or modern, legible
or decorative, or any number of other personality traits. The traits of the font that
you use in your marketing materials and business communications should reflect
and enhance your company’s brand.

Your company should have designated fonts to use in the following situations:

A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts that come installed on Windows
machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some logos will have two or
three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider using one of those
fonts as the secondary font as well.

A secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines, taglines, special text such as
graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull quotes, which are the large
quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents. This can be the same
font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and unique font as well.
This may also be used as the font for your contact information in your stationery,
depending on its legibility.

A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the secondary font is not always
legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact information.

A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents. Printed materials are more easily
read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif font.

A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and on-screen use. Text on a
computer monitor is easier to read in a sans-serif font than in a serif font.

A website font, which may be the same font as is used as the main sans-serif text
font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.

All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting characteristics. Choosing fonts
with similar characteristics will make your fonts match and create consistency
throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting characteristics will
build visual texture and interest into your materials. For example, you could pick all
thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a harmonious, matching
suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting characteristics to create
greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for the headlines and then
using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.

Each piece of marketing material or document created should have a maximum of
three or four families of fonts on them. (A font family includes all of the bold and
italic variations of a particular font, so using bold or italic effects does not count as
additional fonts.) Using more than three or four fonts is confusing, and it looks
unprofessional.

Practical font usage guidelines

Fonts can require special consideration when you send materials to a professional
printer for reproduction, use them on your website, or send Word documents to
others. Here are some basics on using fonts and preserving their appearance in
these cases.

In printed materials, it’s easier to read long blocks of copy that is set in a serif
font. Sans-serif fonts are usually used in print for short blocks of information, like
headlines, pull quotes, or bulleted lists.

When sending your materials to be professionally printed, make sure to address
your desires regarding the use of fonts. You can either include the fonts with the
files you send to the printer (which might be considered a copyright license
infringement), rasterize your artwork (convert it to pixels, so the font data is no
longer needed), or outline your fonts (creating shapes out of the fonts, an option
that’s available in most vector art programs such as Adobe Illustrator and
Macromedia Freehand), so that they can be printed accurately. Outlining the fonts is
the best way to guarantee that your fonts will remain accurate and sharp.

Online, in websites, emails, and HTML newsletters, sans-serif fonts look the best:
they’re clean, clear, and easy to read. There is one other trick to online font use: you
have to make sure that you use fonts that will be installed on the computers of
people reading your site. Otherwise, your text will appear in the default font
selected by their browser, which is often Courier, a very plain font. That limitation
does leave you with several fonts to choose from, though, including Verdana, Arial,
Tahoma, and Trebuchet MS.

Serif fonts could also be used on websites; however, it’s best to use them in limited
quantities, such as for headlines and subheads. Some fonts that are available to use
on the web include Times, Times New Roman, and Georgia.

Another issue that commonly arises with online fonts is the difficulty in controlling
the size and appearance of those fonts. Standard font tags in HTML don’t offer
precise sizing control and need to be used several times throughout each HTML
document, so making changes can be time-consuming. You can use Cascading Style
Sheets, or CSS, to precisely control the exact size of your fonts and to make site-
wide font, size, or color changes with one simple alteration.

In Word Documents, you also want to make sure that the fonts that you use for
the text will be available on the recipient’s computer. Good fonts to use are the
standard fonts that come installed on PCs, which include Arial, Verdana, Tahoma,
Times New Roman, Georgia, Palatino, Courier, and Trebuchet MS.

In order to insert a small amount of customized textsuch as your logo, tagline, or
address informationcreate an image of that information and to place it in the
header and footer of the page.

Another way to preserve the appearance of text is to export your document as a PDF
file and send it to the recipient; PDF files embed the fonts into each document so
that they can be viewed on any computer and still look right.

Some technical info about font file types

When you purchase fonts to use on your computer, you’ll often be given a choice of
buying a Post Script, True Type, or Open Type font. Here is a brief explanation of
the characteristics and problems with each of these formats:

Post Script fonts are considered industry standard and are therefore preferred by
professional printers. There is a format of Post Script fonts available for Macintosh
computers and another format available for Windows computers; those fonts cannot
be shared between Macs and PCs.

True Type fonts are often found on Windows machines. These fonts do not print
as well as Postscript fonts.

Open Type fonts are the newest type of font. They are cross-platform compatible,
but many fonts aren’t yet available in this format.

With this information about the creative, practical, and technical aspects of font
usage, we hope that you can make font choices that will enhance your brand.

First impressions countand that’s especially true for your business graphics. Your
designs should get you noticed, reflect your values, and leave an impression that
makes your company unforgettable and ultimately, increases your bottom line.
elf design is a Brand Identity Design and Management Company that specializes in
helping small business and entrepreneurs create a powerful and unique brand
identity that differentiates them from their competition and helps them to connect
with their target market. Our work is bold, clean and effective, and our processes
are proven to get your materials completed quickly.
A winner of several industry awards, elf design offers the full-service of a large
graphic agency and the highly-personalized attention of a boutique firm. Whether
you need a logo, brand or corporate identity, website or print design project, we’ll
create a Custom Marketing Package that contributes to your company’s visibility,
credibility and memorability. Visit http://www.elf-design.com to learn more.

Share This