We know a good company name is very important. Some would even spend a tidy sum to get a renowned marketing research company to discover a good brand name to synergize the name of product/service with the market place. A few of us might even consult a geomancer (aka feng shui master) to ascertain that our personal name and company names are auspiciously congruent with the elements! Yet, many shun away from investing in a decent company logo design. Instead of going to a branding expert, marketing specialist or graphic designer, many run to a local printer whose specialty is print production, to do a logo design and quickly whip up their letterheads and other stationery.

Recently, my designer friend was infuriated with a distant cousin’s request to create a logo design plus a set of stationary comprising business card, letterhead and invoice for under USD150. While I can empathize with her outrage, but honestly, a Google search will yields thousands of websites offering cheap logo design, as low as USD39.

You probably can get an original design done at such price but I cannot imagine how you can get one that truly reflects your corporate persona. And that is so important. You might also get a royalty-free clip art icon for a logo, which means it cannot be copyright and, somewhere, someone, might be using the same icon that you so proudly put on your name card, signboard, paper bags! Or you could get a design that is modified from an established template that is being recycled endlessly. One other possibility is for the logo designer to up-sell you when you sign on the dotted line. This means you would have to pay extra for the other necessities. To illustrate, you might be asked to pay for an extra artwork for the logo to be rendered in black-white, or you need to pay for the logo usage guide to state all the specifications that you’ll need to produce a brochure or TVC later on. If you are offered a really, really low price, you must know what you are paying for.

How much should you pay for a company logo design? Ask that question to any Fortune 500 company and you might just get an astronomical figure. To us folks that firmly believe a logo forms a formidable part in the formation of the corporate persona, corporate branding, marketing and public relations; the logo is definitely much more than just an illustration or graphics! You have to pay for research, concept, design assembly and production execution. Your hired help has to look into your corporate mission, philosophy, beliefs, objective, goals, and aspiration just to understand your company, and probably you if you are the boss. Without such in-depth understanding, the logo experts will not be able to translate any corporate values into a coherent, creative graphics. The logo will be soulless.

Did you know the winged logo of Nike has a story behind it? It is fashioned after the Greek Goddess Nike who personified triumph and victory. Her wings supposedly signify the fleeting nature of victory. Now, can you see the relation and association between Nike the sports good company and Nike the Goddess? Even the expert and the client agreed on the concept “wing”, but how should the wing look? Should it be Pegasus’ spreading wings or something more stylized as seen on the logo of Singapore Airlines? The marketing and creative people would have had to burn much midnight oil to come out with a concept that fit the overall corporate persona and branding. When the concept is worked out, skilled designers will still have to spend long hours working on their Macintoshes to translate that idea into a finished product that we can see, feel and touch. But even then, the job is not done. The next important task is to create a Logo Guide in which every conceivable application and usage of the logo is described, be it at the top of your building or as small as the engraving on your pen, whether it is printed in full colour or in black or applied with a hot-stamp. And so on, and so forth

So much work? Yes, it is that much work. After all, your logo design is supposed to help you:
- Elicit immediate recognition (especially if the company has a “common” sort of name)
- a visual short-cut to convey the company’s personality, character or attitude (in short, corporate persona)
- Relate to your clients by conveying a feeling of familiarity and credibility
- Association with quality and satisfaction

You might like to have a further understanding on the importance of a logo, which is discussed in another article, “Why Logo is That Important” .

Depending on whom you hire, the fees will vary. However, it is safe to say you would most likely be charged based on:
- the experience and reputation of the logo design expert. (Branding Expert, Advertising Agency, Graphic Designer and Freelancer all command different price tags)
- the size and budget of your company (the bigger you are, the more comprehensive your needs will be)
- the scope of work involved.

And, please, please understand that you might be charged a new fee (and not an add-on nominal extra fee) should you change your brief or direction after the logo design expert has started his work.

Always get a logo that can reflect your coorporate branding and persona. Talk to several respectable creative agencies or freelance logo designers and hire the one that understood you best. Only then should you discuss the price. Bear in mind that if you want the branding works, be prepared to fork out at least USD10,000 and more (and that is considered cheap). If you want a professional logo design package that calls for original design, production guide on all imaginable surfaces, all workable softcopy files for print and web plus full release of all font and graphical elements, you are looking at least USD20,000 and up. If you are a start up or small business owner, tell the logo design expert specifically what you want and don’t want. Be honest and frank about your budget. They will work out a respectable looking logo that fits your needs, and most probably would meet some (if not all) of your branding criteria. This can range anywhere from USD200 to USD2000. Even at this price, make sure you negotiate and get the correct files and releases, you do not want to end up getting a second designer to do a touch up on a supposedly ready-for-production logo version.

Lastly, don’t lose the logo files you were given. This is no joke. My client lost his logo files and I had to get my people to manually trace a 16KB 72dpi logo, horrendously printed on a Micosoft Word document; and do touch-up. Then, we had to re-match the logo colours using both CMYK and Pantone PMS and then finally to convert it into a vector file! You don’t want to waste time, effort and money this way!

Out-of-home advertising -the nice-sounding term for all types of advertising consumed away from home, including digital signage- is likely to become an even more important component of the advertising landscape with this week's announcement that Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings will roll out digital billboards in four more cities: Akron, OH, Columbus, OH, Memphis, TN, and Wichita, KS.

Making up the digital billboard network in each city are:

* Memphis: five 14-foot-by-48-foot digital displays;
* Akron: six 14-foot-by-48-foot digital displays;
* Wichita: six 12-foot-by-24-foot digital displays;
* Columbus: six 12-foot-by-24-foot digital displays.

While the size of Clear Channel Outdoor's displays and its ongoing commitment to building digital billboards networks are impressive, what's more impressive is the flexibility the new medium brings to the advertising community. The company plans to rotate advertising copy on each network display in an eight-second loop, totaling a minimum of 1,250 advertising spots every day!

Compare that staggering number to the paltry 23 advertising messages the signs would have carried for weeks or even months if they had been made of paper and ink.

What's clear from the Clear Channel Outdoors example is the dramatic impact technology is having on the way advertisers can communicate their unique marketing messages to people away from home.

The same is true of indoor digital signage networks. They combine the appeal of television -graphics, text, animation, sound and video- with a growing presence in retail stores, malls and other venues where consumers go to shop. Perhaps even more important, just like the Clear Channel digital billboards, the messaging on digital signage networks can change frequently -even more than a thousand times per day if required.

The flexibility to update messaging easily throughout the day is huge in retail. Consider only a few examples. First, many large retail stores spend seemingly countless hours changing thousands of printed signs in various departments to keep their promotional and marketing messages in line with their retail goals. Digital signage can slash the time spent on this activity. Second, updating or replacing signs at different times of the day to match the changing demographics and desires of patrons is at best difficult. Imagine a café in a mall that must post its specials on a placard outside its entrance three times per day -once for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Now extend that concept to other retailers in the same mall that would like to target their messaging to seniors in the morning, students after school and families in the evening. With printed signs, such day parting is nearly impossible. But with digital signage, day parting marketing messages is simple and fast. Third, consider ROI. Traditional signs do not lend themselves to advertising support in a retail setting. Digital signs do, and best of all because they're easy to change, advertising messages can be sold again and again.

There's one other important component of Clear Channel Outdoor's announcement that relates to indoor digital signage networks. The four newly announced cities join deployments in Chicago, Boston, Cleveland, Las Vegas and Minneapolis/St. Paul. In total, the company intends to roll out networked digital billboards in at least 100 markets by the end of this year.

How long will it be before Clear Channel Outdoor's parent company, which owns or operates 40 TV stations throughout the country, begins combining the sale of commercial TV time with the sale of networked digital billboard ads? What sorts of economies of scale and sales synergies would that type of approach bring?

In the indoor digital signage areas, how long will it be before competing, fractured digital signage networks coalesce into a unified market that can be sold in the same way? Just forward this column to Google. Given what they've been up to in the online, radio and television ad markets, they might just be the ones to pull it off.

Hotel Key Access Cards are an excellent branding and marketing tool for the hospitality industry. Their custom appearance and exceptional durability makes them an excellent choice for the quality conscience hotel. In addition, the reverse side is available with a variety of specific instructions for operating the many popular electronic locking systems that are currently in use today.

Printed on a high speed digital card press, plastic hotel and key access cards can have nearly as much color and detail as needed. The typical line screen is 144lpi (300dpi Photoshop file). This enables imaging Making the images on the plastic key cards to be sharp and clear.

These access cards are often customized to fit specific needs. They can be duplicated from a plastic key card that is already prepared or designed into something brand new. Plastic hotel and key access cards cards have exceptional quality and are competitively priced. A leading manufacturer offers hotel key cards are available in a business card size (3.5"x2") or a credit card size (3.375"x2.125").

Now, with the development of intelligent technology and contactless cards, hotels are increasingly using hotel key cards in many ways. The same card can be used as a loyalty card, a leisure access card for onsite leisure facilities and as a prepaid corporate expense card. Hotel key cards can also being used as mini advertising billboards to help promote special offerings.

Businesses are always seeking dependable sources of plastic cards for the the rapidly growing hotel, motel, and hospitality industry. Leading manufacturers have invested in a wide array of equipment to produce these cards accurately and with precision accuracy. Businesses should always inquire about the equipment and capabilities of the vendor prior to placing an order.

Ever wondered how to get your business card pulling in leads really fast? Here's a couple of tested and proven tips you must know.

It's interesting...why do people want to SPLASH THEIR NAME across the top of their business card?

The answer is simple...ego.

You should treat your business card as a mini advertising billboard...and most certainly have an ATTENTION GRABBING headline on the card! Imagine this....

Imagine if a company hired out on of those huge billboards on the side on the road, and put the name of the person who owned the business across the top of the billboard? EG. Do you really think that people are going to want to read anymore of what the billboard has to say? Lets say you owned a business card printing service , and your name is J. Smith ... would your roadside billboard look better if it said "1000 Free Business Cards if You Call and Mention this Billboard", or would you think "J.Smith" would attract more sets of eyes?

So why not put a nice BOLD headline that gets attention onto your business cards as well? Let me give you another example as to why a headline is important.

EG. Picture yourself reading through a newspaper, don't you normally look for a headline, or sub-headline that catches your eye? How about if you read through, and all the headlines you read where the authors names who wrote the article??? Now that would be one BORING experience!

I'm sure you get my message now. Just take the time to think about what your product or service is...then do this....... Put yourself in the buyers shoes! If you were interested in the product that your selling, what would you want to know?

EG. If your selling advertising ... should you have "J.Smith Advertising" in the headline, or should you have "Cost Effective Advertising That Will Pull Leads Like Crazy!" Obvious which one's a better headline right?

Here's another tip that you should be VERY careful NOT to do...

Tell me, which of these two headlines do you think worked best for a steakhouse restaurant...

1) "Great Steaks, Half the Price"

2) " Ladies, Watch Your Mans Face Light Up When He Bites Into One of Our Juicy Steaks!"

Answer: #1. Why? Because you just knocked out half of your audience by addressing the headlines to 'Ladies'. Mmmmm...

So there are techniques that is sure to bring you more customers in less time.

Advertising about a product or services has become one of the key aspects to survive in the business world. Precisely, marketing will enable a large audience to know about all about the products or services. There are various mediums that are available in the market that can be used for the purpose of marketing. Some of them are posters, car magnets, newspapers, banners, pamphlets, internet and many others. Among all these mediums, car magnets are considered as one of the easiest way to advertise. It is because of this reason that car magnets can be put on any vehicle and wherever the vehicle goes, people will surely notice and will read the message. The best part of car magnet is that it can reach a large number of people of all the age groups.

Car magnets are great source of information through which you can achieve several objectives. You can customize different designs in your car to make it look stylish. You can also articulate for a cause that you strongly feel about. It has also been successfully used for fund raising activities for different causes. It is one of the easiest means to express your association with whom you want to show off. Suppose, if you really feel possessive about some cause then you can use car magnet to promote for the cause. Through this, many people will come to know and will undeniably try to help for the cause. It’s a matter of proud that you are one who cares and so you are working for the cause of humanity.

Car magnets do come in various size, shape and color. You can get it designed in the way you want and can also use according to the required size. Well, it depends on you what you want to tell to the people, so in the same way you can get the car magnet designed accordingly. There are also various causes that are recognized with certain symbols and are widely acknowledged by many people. It is universally known that red ribbon is the recognized symbol for Aids. If you are promoting for the cause of breast cancer, then it will be a pink ribbon that you will use. The magnets are very light in weight and so can be easily carried with your vehicle wherever you go.

Information has always been important for everyone, no matters what the source is. It can also be various means that can be used for the spread of information or news to the general public. No matters what the medium you choose for the spread of information but the most important thing is that it should be clear enough and lots of people should have clear picture of the message you want to convey. For such reasons, car magnets are really helpful and useful in this regard. You can use car magnet in any vehicle you want. It does not mean that you can only use in the cars. You can put the car magnet in your truck, bike, refrigerator or any other automobile or place that you want. It can be easily put on your car and can be removed at your convenience. These are very inexpensive and can be easily used for a cause or promotion.

"Advertising is a science, not an art"

Definition: The word advertising is from the root Latin advert: ad (to) vertere (turn), which means to call attention to. To advertise means: “to describe or praise publicly, usually to promote for sale.”

Advertising is a special form of communication intended to persuade consumers to respond in a positive way toward a product, service or idea. In Washington, DC, the home of many non-profit advocacy organizations it means to persuade or to change minds.

In other words the goal of advertising is to influence people:

-to buy something,

-to think well of something,

-to ask they take a particular action.

Contrary to popular opinion, advertising is a testable, provable, science, not an art. Effective advertising relies on a few simple strategic formulas. Done well however advertising can be done artfully. And should be.

It pays to advertise.

The basic purpose of advertising is to inform. Often, simply giving basic information about a product or service is sufficient. i.e., classified ads are simple information ads.

“Top of Mind awareness.”

Memory is the cornerstone of creative strategies in advertising. The basic assumption of this strategy is that the media environment is cluttered and memory is limited. Since memory is limited, it is important that our advertising give customers something worth remembering, otherwise they will simply forget you.

Frequency and repetition is crucial. Frequency and repetition is crucial. How many times do you have to tell a dog to sit in order for her to learn how?

Advertising exists along a continuum. Short-term traffic builders vs. long-term awareness builders.

1. Pricepoint ads are only sale advertising: Jerks.

2. Awareness and Image: Pulls.

How does Advertising really work? It creates:

1. AWARENESS, which creates:

2. INTEREST, which creates:

3. MOTIVATION, which creates:

4. DEMAND, which creates:

5. ACTION!

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGY

I. Advertising is part of a larger plan

The most successful companies have an advertising or marketing plan as part of their larger business plan. Advertising is only one method of communication in this plan. It must be linked to other communication strategies to be truly effective

II. Starting to advertise

A. Position your product. This means to understand how your product looks and feels compared to other similar products in the marketplace. Jeep is positioned as an upscale outdoorsy anyplace-anytime vehicle, compared to Volvo, which is positioned as a sensible, safe, financially secure “investment in security”. Position means to be placed in a certain way in the consumers mind. Having a unique sales position means you can create a unique sales message:

1. Against other similar products (market segment)

2. In new areas (market penetration)

B. Create a strategy

1. Marketing Strategy is the master plan

a. in which you determine actual product, price,†distribution, promotional effort

b. From Marketing Strategy grows creative strategy

2. Creative Strategy is what you say and how you say it. You can't have a good ad without the following:

Major Checkpoints of Creative Strategy

1. Objective: What the advertising should do

2. Research: Is there any and what does it tell us about perceptions, both positive and negative.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative.

3. Target Audience: Who is your consumer exactly. It's ok to have more than one target.

4. Key Consumer Benefit: Why should they buy your product?

5. Support/lnformation: A reason to believe that benefit

6. Tone and Manner: A statement of the product "personality" or the personality of the "statement"

III. What works best

A. The three parts of any Ad

1. Benefit Statement: Headline

a. Get your basic message here and see it from the consumers side

b. Keep it simple

c. Inject news

d. Don't be afraid of Long Headlines (Research shows more sales)

2. Illustrations vs photos

a. Photos generally better

b. Inject story appeal

c. Keep it simple

3. Information/support

a. Support claim or promise

b. Don't be afraid of long copy. Resistance does not increase after 100 words.

c. Testimonials help, although cliched

4. Call to action--What do you want the consumer to do?

a. Coupons

b. Telephone

c. Visit

5. Forget everything but Rule 1. Benefit, benefit, benefit

IV. Media Strategy --Winning a place in the consumers mind

A. Campaigns--A series of ads with a single goal similar in style and execution, slightly different in message.

B. The importance of frequency

1. Awareness building

2. Opportunity improvement capture

C. Placement

1. Research Media Kits (refer to marketing plan)

2. Flight strategies save money

V. Media

Television

Advantages: Excellent medium for emotional impact and singular message. Fantastic reach.
Disadvantages: If bought with enough Total Rating Point's, it is far too costly. It is hard to target and there would be lots of waste over the entire SMSA. Production costs to do quality advertising are expensive

Cable television

Advantages: Can select geographic areas specifically, television allows for high emotional impact. Cable is affordable.
Disadvantages: Networks skew too heavily toward particular targets

Radio

Advantages: Can be fairly targeted, allows for impact and emotional appeal through broadcast, cost effective.
Disadvantage: Fair percentage of wasted geographical listenership over SMSA.

Magazines

Advantages: Prestigious environments, color, room for more detailed information, can target psychographically.
Disadvantages: Very few magazines isolate specific areas, so there's plenty of wasted circulation. Lack of reach with specialty publications. Require many different placements.

Newspaper.

Advantages: Can target specific areas with regional placements, large space units are emotionally impressive, newspaper has an urgent, timely feel, and there's room for longer copy or more photography.
Disadvantages: Normally a retail medium, not usually good for impact or awareness. Limited reach. Poor reproduction

Direct mail

Advantages: Highly targeted, good for long, informative messages.
Disadvantages: Not a prestigious or "important" medium, relatively expensive to produce in 4-color, big impact or large numbers. This medium works best when linked to response offers. It is private and quiet in nature.

Visual and verbal contrast can pop your Yellow Page ad to the very top of your prospects’ mind and attention. Open the Yellow Pages to your ad right now. Does your ad visually leap out from the clutter and background noise of your competitors? If not, if it blends into the sea of yellow, then your ad stands little chance of being seen or heard.

And that’s just the way it works: your ad has to be seen to be read; your ad has to be read to have its message effect your prospects; and your message has to move your prospects before they’ll bother acting on it. Finally, the customer has to call before you can ring up new business from your Yellow Page ad. The strategy is simple, but the execution takes skill. And the first step requires the most artistry.

So how can you ensure your Yellow Page ad is seen amongst a sea of competitors? Use unexpected imagery and words that work together, to convey your unique, compelling story. The background noise and clutter is actually created by predictable ads, generic images, and uninspired copy. Just be strikingly different in your approach and you’ll stand out like a glittering gold coin amongst rusty pennies.

Jolting your prospects’ senses with the unexpected requires some design talent and skill, but is possible for a lot of do it yourselfers. But, grabbing the readers’ eyeballs AND creating a message that’ll move prospects to call you requires an expert with:

* Extensive Yellow Page experience,
* Incredible design skills, and
* A silver-tongued pen.

Hiring such an expert costs more, but the reward for making a strong emotional connection with your audience is having prospects jumping to call you first – and having your phone jump off the hook with new business in return. And isn’t that the point of Yellow Page advertising in the first place?

While opening a business is often a gamble of sorts, in the world of online niche marketing, your greatest asset is often finding the right niche to expose and profit from. Granted, it takes time and expense to find the niche that's just right for you, but it's pay-off can be immense. No, there are no guarantees in this line of work, but neither do offline businesses get guarantees of certain income.

However, here are certain strategies for choosing a niche that has a high probability of success.

Some schools of thought propound the idea tha supply and demand is a good indicator of niche success. In fact, statistical information supplied by search engines is used to determine the popularity of certain search terms. This information is useful because terms which are being searched frequently are terms which have a large audience of Internet users looking for more information on the niche subject.

These same terms can be popular internet searches. From this statistical information you can build a list of potential niches. Once this list is compiled, it is time to begin researching the competition in each of these niches. Ideally the niche you select will be one which has a large audience and not much competition. These are niches which are in low supply.

It goes without saying that protecting your niche should be a top priority and that includes who you work with to outsource your ideas. Many Internet niche marketers are comfortable outsourcing their copywriting and their website design.

However, they are more protective about outsourcing tasks such as marketing, niche selection and keyword development. This is because although copywriting and website design both involve optimization for keywords the strategies for doing so are readily available on the Internet.

Developing related keywords for the niche is very important as they are absolutely critical and conventional wisdom holds that an extensive list of keywords should be developed for a particular niche to be successful. Some in the industry recommend developing approximately 200 keywords for each niche.

Finally, a non disclosure agreement (NDA) is one way for the marketer to protect his niche when he is outsourcing. An NDA is essentially a document specifying the rights of the employer and employee in regard to sensitive materials. The NDA can be drafted to include any terms the client sees fit.

Perhaps restrictions can be made on which materials are sensitive, how these same materials can be transmitted, what time frame is necessary to complete a project and the duration time for which the contract is binding.

Common timeframes include the duration of the project or a set number of days, weeks, months or years. In niche marketing a timeframe of at least one year after the project is completed is recommended to prevent the contractors from entering the same niche immediately after the project ends.

Among the first things an entrepreneur would do when he starts his business is to get a logo designed. A well-thought, well-designed logo can speak volumes of your brand and image. Logo design is really that important. Today I got a big surprise at a popular shopping mall located along the East Coast of Singapore).

I have not stepped into that mall for ages, and was duly impressed with the revamp. It certainly looked much younger and more hip. Then, I got into the lift. There was this large poster and I was casually browsing it when I saw their logo.

I felt that the simple "P.P." logo design (with non-descript font arranged in a boring side-by-side format) was completely incompatible with the ‘feel’ of the mall! I guess I was staring at it a tad too long because a pair of young brothers, around 6 - 8 years old, and their parents started to look at it too. Below is the brow-raising conversation that haunted me the rest of that afternoon:

Young Brother: P. P. What is P.P? Sound like going toilet to wee wee (giggle)
Older Brother: No, it means no pthui pthui (spitting).

You could dismiss that conversation as unintelligent babble of two young kids who could not know better. But you would not walk away from the adults’ remarks without learning one or two things about the importance of logo design.

Mum : Just 2 “P” only, so simple. Must be in-house job. Cheapskate. Wonder why they use green and blue? Made people think they copy Standard Chartered Bank.
Dad : Oh ya? The car park was in green and blue. I thought it was because of Stan Chart.
Mum : There is no Stan Chart here! Here only has HSBC.

This “silly” conversation only confirms one thing: That logo design is not ideal. A logo is a visual short cut to the corporate personality and character. If it fails to do that, then it might as well not be there.

I was also reminded of an article I read recently. It said corporate logos have lost their importance as people have absolutely no motivation whatsoever to feel or remember them. A simple name that is easy to recall should suffice. However, this family’s conversation just confirms that people still look at logos, and associate their perception, feeling, understanding, preference and judgment simply by looking at a logo’s design and colours. If a logo design is not important, this new school of thought has a lot to explain about the emotional and psychological connection one has with the famous golden arches of McDonalds, the half bitten fruit of Apple, curvy lettering of Coca-Cola or the swirled wing of Nike. How many can think of these awesome giants without recalling their widely recognizable, familiar and famous logo design?

Why is a logo design important? Without being over simplistic, a logo can

1. Elicit immediate recognition (especially if the company has a “common” sort of name)
2. Be a visual short-cut to convey the company’s personality, character, attitude, belief, goal
3. Relate to your clients by conveying a feeling of familiarity, credibility and warmth
4. Association with quality and product/service satisfaction

Logo design is a complex job where you and your creative expert has to dig deep internally into corporate philosophy, mission, goals, persona, look into product features and benefits and understand employees’ mindset of the company. And externally, you would want to know what your target audience think of your product or your competitors’ product. Their perception is important because it is never easy to shift a mindset. Logo design is an important part of corporate branding. So be prepared to fork out a decent amount of time, money and resources to get a branding expert to help you develop your logo.

However, if you just want a nice-to-look-at logo with a small budget and not want to risk the designer to coming back with something that is totally different from your preferences, do some homework. You can run through this simple exercise:

Start thinking of your corporate (not personal) persona in terms of:

1. Adjectives (Does “macho”, “relaxing” or “fast as lighting” describe your corporation/product?)
2. Colour (Would that strong chilli red echo your masculine personality?)
3. Shapes (Do you see the corporate self being tall or cutesy-rolly-polly?)
4. Style (Are you a fashion go-getter or a forever green classic?)

Let’s say you are selling sportswear targeted at young guys who dig extreme sports, so, the exercise would be something like this:

1. Adjectives - macho, rugged, tough, dangerous, high risk, extreme fun
2. Colour - strong, bright, loud, shouts out for attention
3. Shapes - precise, strong angular shapes
4. Style - street fashion style, casual wear, everyday wear

How would your logo design look with the above? Already, you will have a fair idea of a “bad” logo and a “good” logo when you see one relative to your descriptors above.

Just as I have mentioned in another of my article "Your Ad Agency Really So Lousy?", you got to do your bit by offering an effective agency brief. If you can’t, just try this little exercise. I know it helps because I have used it with many clients who claim they didn’t know what they want, what the logo should be like and yes, with a small budget. This exercise works. If you want to do up the full work, contact the professionals. Penny wise, pound foolish is certainly not the way to go. That is, even if you are artistically inclined and know how to use a drawing software! There are many more issues to consider. Things like matching CMYK with Pantone colours, applying the logo correctly on hotstamp, reverse and direct, etc; without these technical expertise, you might find yourself with a beautiful logo which cannot be reproduced!

The business card is perhaps the best salesman and partner that you can have. That is why it is essential that it contain much more than your name, address, and contact numbers and services. It should be designed keeping its purpose in mind – that is it’s a powerful sales tool. So start with the design. If you want to create a business card that contains a photo with gradient colours you can try using a glossy paper to ensure that the cards are printed as good as they look on the screen. Or else, you can get disappointed with the print out and if your disappointed the customers may also be

Also, if your card design contains background colour or images, you can use papers that have gaps between them as these gaps will allow you to make up for the unavoidable elusiveness of the printer paper system. However, most stock cards don’t have gaps so if you don’t want to have trouble with printing, make sure your photos, images and text are at 3mm off the edge of the card. This way the printer imprecision will not destroy your business cards making you have to start all over again at a cost.

When it comes to printing, make sure that the paper type that you will use is compatible to your printer (not all papers are). As inkjet and laser printer use different types of technologies, it is important that you only feed the correct paper into them and that is the one that is attuned to your printer choice. So for instance say you will be using a laser printer, using a paper with glossy coating can cause damage to the printer so not a good choice. Therefore the right choice of paper type will greatly affect your business cards print out and the better it turns out the greater the reward in people keeping them for reference.

There are also some strategies you can use in business card distribution. Apart from the usual handing out of your business cards during tradeshows, conventions, meetings and the like, tucking them in your products before delivery can be a good idea. Say you are a florist. You can consider tying your business card around the flowers. Or if use bags in packaging your products, you can staple or tie your card on the outside of the bag. You can also include you cards in your letters and invoices. And if you are really crafty you can slip in your cards into your designs – you can include them in your greeting cards, emboss them with your rubber stamps or blend them with your other artworks. There are so many ways to incorporate them into the deliveries you send out.

There are so many ways to go about it when it comes to designing and handing out your business cards that you should always be carrying them with you for the odd chance encounter, as you never know where your next client may come from. You just have to know how to utilize these possibilities to your advantage. Remember that your business cards can be your best salesman and partner, so make them work for you effectively.