Some clients, especially those that do no business over the web, question the need for a website or an SEO effort. But they seldom question the need for local publicity.

My wife writes magazine articles. One recent assignment had her seeking out local farms. They were hard to find, in part because few had any web presence. After all, why would a small farm need a website?

Yet, here was an experienced writer, story assignment in hand from a respected regional publication with some 400,000 readers. As publicity, it was priceless, and it went largely to those enterprises that could be found online. And this situation happens again and again.

Search engines are key research tools for journalists and editors. That makes having a website, even a simple one, an essential step in the local marketing/P.R. efforts of any business. Even those that “don’t do business online.”

Get a group of designers talking and eventually you will hear the complaint that “clients don’t understand design.” In the eyes of many designers, this leads to unreasonable and downright ugly requests regarding colors, logos, copy, and anything else that will ruin their perfectly good designs.

While I am sympathetic to this lament it reflects two problems. The first is an inability to “sell” our designs to clients. Clients are trying to do business with our designs, so we need to be able to describe and defend their efficacy in business terms, not in aesthetic terms or those dictated by our “professional” opinions.

The second problem is adopting an antagonistic posture towards them. We must engage clients as long-term, collaborative partners. That means striving to educate them when they don’t “get it” and, frankly, trying our best to make their suggestions work if they still don’t agree with us.

It all boils down to trust. Demonstrating that we are easy to work with and have their best interests at heart builds the trust that will incline them to accept our guidance as time goes by.

Oh, the dreaded question that always comes up in the initial meeting with a prospective client. After more than 7,000 creative projects, that question still sends panic through my veins. Here’s my advice: never state a deadline. That may seem strange coming from a 35-year veteran of the design and publishing business, but understand what goes into a deadline.

The publishing business is built on deadlines. Yet when starting out, you’ll often feel compelled to agree with forced deadlines just to please the client. This is a dangerous path to take. (more…)

Any design student that has ever taken a class on Print Production has most likely tackled projects that requires a creative solution for a very tight budget. What’s amazing is how quickly we forget those lessons once we start working for a company with vast resources or for clients who have very deep pockets. I’ve been guilty on many occasions for being so forgetful. We all need to be reminded every once and awhile that there are creative ways to produce fantastic designs with just one type of paper and only one ink color. The true test of any designer’s ability is when they have very little to work with and can still create something visually stunning.

Here are some thoughts to ponder that may help you think of ways to produce good design on a budget:

1. Know your materials and outputting options. For example, if you’re going to use a color copier to output a brochure on the cheap–make sure you test the design on the printer and check to see that the colors look good on the stock you’ve chosen. Do not just go by what you see on your gorgeous computer display.

2. Photography doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg. (more…)

A quick glance at graphic design job ads on Monster will teach you that, at the entry-level, there is little difference between the role of Graphic Designer and Production Artist. Aside from the fact that most of the responsibilities involve creating sales collateral, client inserts, and applying logos to various things — in other words, “designing” within predetermined formats and guidelines — the job requirements will inevitably include lines like, “Complete Mac proficiency in Quark, Illustrator, PhotoShop, Dreamweaver, and ImageReady,” or “Proficiency in all relative graphic design software; willingness to train where software deficiencies are identified,” or, to the horror of most designers, “Advanced skill in PowerPoint, including use of color palettes, master slides, animations, imported elements, and template creation.”

This state of affairs should remind anyone entering the design job market that your ability to execute designs, prepare files for output, and see projects through to completion mean more to potential employers than your ability to design from scratch.

That being said, how are your software “chops”?

The Good 50 x 70 Poster Contest focuses on five big social issues: aids, environmental damage, human rights violation, underdevelopment and war and is open to both students and creatives (graphic designers, art directors, copywriters, photographers, etc.).

The aim of the contest is to raise public awareness on these issues, as well as to focus on the importance of social communication.

The Contest deadline is May 10th 2007.

DETAILS

At a time when people love to proclaim (with varying degrees of sincerity) that advertising is dead, while the web assaults us with popups of dancing mortgage-rate ads, you may be looking for evidence that sophisticated, nuanced use of color, words, and image still rise above the pack. Uwe Stoklossa’s recently published book pays homage to classic and surprising techniques of visual persuasion. Stoklossa, a German graphic designer and copywriter, has gathered 500 print advertisements by agencies all over the world into one inspiring tome: “Advertising: New Techniques for Visual Seduction.” Stoklossa’s book illustrates how the most successful and memorable ads go about arresting the gaze of the viewer and earning that much sought-after double-take. The featured ads do this in a variety of ways: by upending our expectations, showing us something out of its usual context, or deceptive imagery that reveals itself, on a second glance, to be much more than what it first appeared…MORE

Constrained by language. If my language doesn’t have a way to express the thought or feeling that I really want you to understand, I borrow a word or phrase from another language. We’re all used to that. But when it comes to using design applications, we just can’t do that (at least, not very easily). If I want to instantly convert an InDesign layout to a Web page, I’m out of luck. If I want to format a long block of text by using nested styles in QuarkXPress, same roadblock. I’m not happy that my tools are constraining my ability to express myself. Somehow, they’ve managed to ‘keep me down on the farm’, even though ‘I’ve seen Paris.’ Maybe there’s a plug-in I can get that will let me do these things.

Read Jay’s previous post

Any time the graphic design field is being discussed, the topic of fees invariably comes up. We had a question the other day from a reader who asked “How can I convince the client my services are worth it?” Another lamented, “I’m uncomfortable about telling people what I charge.”

You aren’t alone. Many people aren’t comfortable telling clients what they charge. This has been the bane of the creative community since the beginning.

Creative people tend to be more about the idea and the performance than the details of getting paid. But to succeed, it’s got to be done. If you ask someone for their prices, and they don’t seem confident about what they’re charging, would you buy from them?

First, you need convince yourself that you must get paid. Do this by fully understanding what it costs to produce the work, and what your time is worth.

You’ll need a list of every element, device and (more…)

How much is that logo worth? $500? $5,000? $50,000? $500,000?

There are designers and brand developers at each of those price points.

But, how much is a brand worth?

How about $66,434,000,000? That’s Google’s brand valuation – the amount of its overall value contributed by its brand.

Don’t have $66.4 billion? General Electric’s brand is valued at about $61.9 billion. Microsoft’s brand is worth almost $55 billion.

These brand valuations come from the Millward Brown Optimor 2007 BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands, a 27-page report you can download as a PDF from the Millward Brown website. This study says that branding accounts for about a third of the value of the Fortune 500.

Obviously, it takes more than a great logo to achieve valuations like these. But, just as obviously, in creating a brand you create a potentially very valuable corporate asset.

DOWLOAD Millward Brown Optimor’s 2007 BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands