http://www.designisaboutyou.com at Bright Ideas Graphic Design, we believe great design is about your success Fri, 20 Jun 2008 14:54:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en E-mail marketing is one of the most cost effective ways to contact prospects and customers. It’s benefits include that it is cheaper than traditional bulk mail and that it promotes communication between the buyer and seller. In many cases, e-mail marketing can have a much larger impact on immediate sales ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/06/20/e-mail-marketing-best-practices-for-success/ A recent article on a trade blog that I subscribe to addressed the issues of legibility and readability in type. These are important factors when designing any marketing materials. They can be extremely critical in the successful communication of the message. Although these two traits might seem to address the same ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/06/12/is-type-driving-your-audience-away/ If you want your direct marketing piece to pull in buckets of leads and fatten your wallet, it is important to remember this simple rule: YOUR MARKETING PIECE IS NOT GOING TO BE PRESENTED IN AN IDEAL SETTING. Your ideal target may be making dinner, talking with his or her spouse, ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/06/06/your-marketing-not-in-a-lab/ Great salespeople don’t sell products, they sell the way the product makes the customer feel, or how it will improve their life. In other words, great sales people sell benefits, not features. This is an important rule to remember when designing marketing materials. Great marketing is visceral and then supported by ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/06/05/features-don%e2%80%99t-sell-%e2%80%94-benefits-do/ Research shows that static mail-piece response rates are about 1-2 percent. Variable Data Publishing (VDP) claims an 8 percent response and higher. Using specific consumer preference data, VDP can be an effective way to produce unique targeted communications that capture attention and inspire a customer to respond. If you think VDP ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/06/04/improving-direct-mail-results-with-variable-data/ It use to be, that the font used on your website had to be installed on the user's computer. This left web designers with only a few fonts to use that were consistent across systems. The number of common fonts has grown from three to about a dozen in recent ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/05/28/sifr-custom-fonts-for-plain-old-html-text/ If a marketing piece only needed to look good on the designer’s screen, it would be a much easier job to design. Reality is that most designs are printed using one of a variety of techniques on numerous types of equipment. Each printing press and process has different capabilities and ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/05/27/%e2%80%9cbullet-proof%e2%80%9d-designs-a-priceless-jewel/ For a given design, I might specify that the printing be in spot colors or process colors. Sometimes, I might even specify process printing plus a spot color. The decision to specify a spot, process, or spot and process is made based on a variety of factors. Process printing, using the ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/05/19/spot-versus-process-choosing-which-to-use/   The world of design is teeming with a myriad of techniques, processes and technologies. One such technique that I recently became aware of is HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. Now, HDR is not a new process — it dates back to the 1930’s, but it has in recent years become ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/05/12/the-secret-of-hdr-photography/ 2007 marked our fourth year as the design partner of the St. George Marathon. This event has a brand reputation as one of the top marathons in the United States and is a qualifying event for the Boston Marathon and the Olympic trials. Preview the 2007 Runners Guide in PDF by ... http://www.designisaboutyou.com/2008/05/10/st-george-marathon-designs/