Inspired by a tip today from the GoodGuide, I wanted to share a few green-friendly thoughts on picking paper for communications materials.

How much paper do you need to use?

Think about what you need to print.  How many copies do you need?  Get your printer involved early to help you make smart design decisions for output and size.  Quantity helps determine production possibilities.  Digital printing for smaller projects will have less paper waste, while you may find an economy of scale for putting larger projects on a big press.  Many big presses also use soy based ink.  Work with the printer to determine how many items you can fit per sheet to reduce paper waste.

What is your paper?

Not all papers are created equal.

• Does it have recycled content?
• Is the recycled content post-consumer waste?
• Has it been processed with chlorine? (that is not a good thing, you do not want that!)
• If it has virgin wood fiber content, is it from sustainable forests?  Look for the FSC logo.
• How thick is your paper?  I’m guilty of this because I love thick paper, but thicker paper obviously uses more tree fiber than thinner paper!

Has your printer been certified?

Is your printer FSC certified?  If not, ask them about their practices.

Will your product be recyclable?

Just because it is printed on paper doesn’t mean you can recycle it.

• Think before laminating.  While lamination can look cool and add to the shelf life of your materials, think carefully before using it because it is not recyclable and in most cases not very environmentally friendly (ask your printer about eco-friendly alternatives!).
• What color is the paper?  Some bright colors, like neon pink, cannot be recycled.
• Does it have a binding? and if so, what kind? Wire-o and staples are the easiest for recycling machines to pull apart.

Please let me know if this information is helpful and share other tips in the comments!

When should you hire a professional designer?

When would you want to do the work yourself?

It depends.  There are many times when, financially, strategically, or time-wise, it is a good decision to keep some design work in-house.  However, the way your materials look is a tremendous part of your brand so this decision should be a deliberate one.   Everything your customer or target audience touches (from sales materials, to your website, to administrative things like a proposal or letter) impacts their perception of your brand.

Here are a few question to ponder if you are considering the investment in professional design services for a specific project:

Time

• How long will it take for you to do it?
• How long would it take for someone else to do it?
• How much time would doing this internally take away from your core business?

Complexity

• What are the technical specifications for this project?
• Have you worked on a project like this before?
• Do you know how to do it properly?

Cost

• How much would it cost if you hire a professional?
• What is the potential return on investment if you hire a professional?
• What are the cost savings if you do it in-house?

Shelf-life

• How long will this project last once finished?
• How often will it be updated?
• Will you be able to easily update what you create?
• Will you have time to support the updates?

Brand & Impact

• How will this project impact your brand?
• How many people will view or interact with this project?
• Who is the audience for this project?
• Is this project related to other materials?
• Should this project be unique or custom to your organization?

Other

• Will you enjoy doing it yourself?
• Do you need an outside perspective?

We asked ourselves many of these questions when we redesigned this website.  We were torn because we knew we could save money by doing this internally, and also knew it had a lot of potential to be a great learning experience.  In the end we decided it made more sense to invest in professional services.  Ultimately, we would not do it as well as Agency 3, we would not be as efficient, it would distract from our core business, and we didn’t want to maintain something we built.  In the end we definitely saved money, time, and stress.

What else do you think is important to consider?

Our last post was titled “Vector and Raster” and defined what these two file types are.  This post is “Vector or Raster,” and hopefully will shed some light on when and why one would choose to use a vector versus a raster image. 

Why would you want to use a vector image?

• if you will need to use your image at a variety of sizes
• if you need to print something in a limited number of colors (offset printing, screen printing, letterpress, or even embroidery)
• for things that need smooth lines and curves, like type and shapes

And when would you want to use a raster image?

• when you need subtle effects, like depth, shading, or gradients
• for photographic images

Vector drawing of a peacock (we drew the peacock illustration below, cool image huh?)

When you scale a raster image, it will ultimately break down into pixels.

But when you scale a vector graphic the lines remain smooth.

Peacock feather photograph (purchased from istockphoto.com)

A raster image can display all the tiny nuances of a photograph.

But if you convert it to a vector image you cannot replicate the complexity.  The image below was traced into a 15 color vector image.

This one is for you Bernadette!

Our wonderful client and friend Bernadette Coveney Smith from 14 Stories suggested we share some do-it-yourself, DIY, tips for small businesses.  This is our first post on the subject.  We truly believe the best client/designer relationship are partnerships and love to help our clients figure out what they can do internally so that they can invest in design projects with us that will be the most impactful for them.

Please let us know what other DIY tips might be helpful for your business!  Don’t be shy.  We’d rather discuss your “laundry list” of potential projects and help you figure out which ones are worth the investment, and which ones might have a DIY solution or alternative approach.

Q: How would you recommend making photo collages for blog postings?

A: If needed, we’d love to work with you to establish the style, then send you off on your own to keep producing collages.

We really enjoy Picasa and would recommend it for many of our client’s photo-related tasks. Why? It is free, fairly robust, and also relatively simple to use.  We’ll post more tips on what you can do in Picasa later, but for this post we’ll stick to collages.  Yes, Adobe Photoshop is an incredible program, but unless you are really getting into digital photography or design, it might not be worth the monetary investment or time required to learn how to use it.

This is a very simplified glimpse into making collages in Picasa.  There are loads of options to customize and it is pretty easy to figure out.

We recommend that you:

• Play around with different options to determine what style works for you (and if you are our client we’d be happy to consult and advise)
• Take a few notes about what settings you prefer and try to apply these to a few potential collages
• What kind of story are you trying to tell in your collage?
• And think about design.  Image scale, zoom, color, texture, shapes.  How do your images relate to eachother? Think about image scale.  It might be more interesting if you have large and small images?
• Then try to be consistent (but also creative) about your decision-rules, and your collages will look professional

I would be remiss here if I didn’t mention copyright… do you own these photos? or do you have permission to use them? and if so should you add a photo credit?

The first thing to do in Picasa is select what photos you want to collage.  You can select photos from different albums.  Just command (or ctrl) click the images you want to use in your collage.  Once you have selected your batch, then click on “collage” on the bottom.

By default Picasa will set up your collage in the “picture pile” style.  This might work for some photography, but I think it looks cheesy for these photos.

So I chose “frame mosaic,” which almost has a lovely structured appearance.  You can also keep shuffling your photos around until you like the placement.

Then play around with the various settings.  Each collage type has different settings.  I added a nice thick white line between these photos.

Finally, it is very simple to save a jpeg of your collage (and you can even select what size jpeg before you do this).

In a matter of minutes you have your own custom photo collage which you can post in your blog or on your website.

What do you think?  Was this helpful?

Do you have a project that needs to be printed?

Considering print options before starting design helps inform design decisions and often can help you save money.  The printer should not be detached from the design process: the printer is an important part of the design process.

Plan for print early and get your printer involved before the design is finalized.

Here are print-related questions we typically ask our clients:

• What quantities will you be printing?
• Should your materials be designed in full color? or 1-color? or 2-color?
• Do you prefer coated or uncoated paper?
• Will you mail this piece? if so, is it a self-mailer? Or if it needs an envelope, what size envelope? (we always work backwards from the envelope size for something that will be mailed!)
• If this is a multi-page document, what is your estimated page count?

Other questions: (not specifically print questions, but the answers usually inform print decisions)

• What is the purpose for this project?
  
• Who is the audience?
• How will people use the printed materials? (will they put it in a bookcase? in their pocket? in their briefcase?)
• What kind of “shelf life” will your materials have?
• What are other people in your industry doing? (not so we can mimic your competition, but rather so we can differentiate!)

And behind the scenes we think about some of these things:

• The average age of your audience for font-size determination.
• How many items can we fit per sheet? (both to control costs and to avoid paper waste)
• How can we make print-related decisions that make your project stand out without being impractical or expensive?

What other print-related questions do you have?  Please share!

Gathering design feedback from one person is tricky.  Gathering feedback from a group can sometimes feel like herding cats.

Person A says: “I hate blue.”   Person B declares: “this is for business, so we should make everything blue.”  Person C says: “I’m just not loving it.”  Person D says: “This is perfect.”  Person E chimes in: “I showed it to my wife, and she thinks we use illustration instead of photography.”  And so on, and so on…

Try to avoid these situations by managing the feedback process.

For a new project:

• Ask who the key stakeholders are
• Determine when they will be involved
• Let them know they will be involved
• Let them know how their feedback will be used
• Gather opinions early on

Get quality feedback:

• Listen to each other: if possible, plan a meeting or schedule a conference call
• Get people to elaborate on their feedback:  “It just isn’t working for me” is not constructive feedback
• Ask people to consider their feedback after they hear each other
• Gather and batch the feedback.  Do not let it trickle in randomly as the design is being revised

Ask good questions:

• Is the design appropriate for the purpose and target audience?
• Does it match the specifications you need?
• Will this design work with your final content?
• What is working? What do you like best about each design? and why?
• What is not working? and why? (the “why” is the most crucial part)

Every design project is different, and gathering feedback is a unique process for every client.  We would love to hear your thoughts about group feedback and any tips or suggestions that you have.  Please share!

For this post, proofing means verifying accuracy in design in order to approve it, instead of the yummier version of proofing which applies to baking.

What does ‘proofing’ mean in a graphic design process?
It means that you, the client, carefully reviews the design in order to verify accuracy and approve it for whatever next step is part of that design process. Proofing is a critical part of any design project, regardless of the medium. We ask all of our clients to carefully proof final designs before they go to print, to a web developer, to another kind of vendor, or before you get your final design files.

It is your content and you are responsible for any errors in content.

A few things to look for:

• Spelling: Even if you have run a spell check, check again! You might have used ‘to’ instead of ‘too’ just because it didn’t come up as a spelling error
• Layout: Are you happy where everything is on the page? How close are things to the margins?
• Punctuation and hyphenation: Are you happy with where words break? Do you want to adjust any of these things? Em-dashes versus En-dashes? Commas inside the quotation marks?
• Fonts: Are all the fonts correct?
• Image quality: How do these look? too dark? too light? grainy?
• Image rights: Do you have the right to use the images you supplied? Check with the designer about any images they supply.
• Image content: Look carefully at the images.  Is there any strange content in the background that might be embarrassing or misread?
• Page Numbers or other internal references: Check to see if they are still accurate.  What once was page 2 might now be page 10.

Some tips and tricks that might be helpful:

• Pay attention. Please do not multitask while you proof, you will miss something.
• Try looking at your materials upside-down. It is surprising how many things we catch that way since it changes our perspective, literally.
• S-L-O-W down. No one wants to catch things that are wrong, but this is the time to do it!
• Play “Where’s Waldo.” You know there is at least one “Waldo” (error) on the page… where is he?
• Print it out and proof on paper instead of on your screen. Never, ever, ever proof on your iPhone, please!
• Read your text out loud, sometimes you can hear mistakes better than seeing them!

What is a ‘print proof’ and how is it different then when I proof with the designer?
A ‘print proof’ is what the printer will share with you. Once a file is sent to the printer, the design elements should all be finalized. Any changes to the layout, the type, or anything else related to the design is considered an ‘author’s edit’ and you will be charged extra for this. The ‘print proof’ should be carefully examined to make sure that the file is working properly for the printer and that the printer has all of the right specifications. There are many different kind of printers proofs, and each one helps you see a different part of the project. At this point, we typically look only at digital proofs, which not only show you that the job looks like but also give a pretty good sense for the final color of the job. In the olden days (a.k.a five to ten years ago) we looked at blue-line proofs, which reminded me of the solar print kits that we played with when we were kids.

Please share your proofing stories and tips with us!  We would love to expand this post with more useful proofing wisdom.

We recently helped a global client determine what standards to use when listing phone numbers in print and on website.  The challenge was how to list U.S. versus international numbers.  Should we use parantheses? Hyphens? Plus signs?  We learned from extensive research that there are no clear, definitive standards.

Here is what we suggested to this client based on observation and the Chicago Manual of Style’s recommendation.

The Anatomy of a Phone Number

U.S. number:

Area Code – Phone Number

(for example: 617-739-3560)

International number:

+Country Code – Area Code – Phone Number

(for example: +86-10-5920-8207)

The international prefix symbol should be + (plus) and should precede the country code in the international number. It serves to remind the subscriber to dial the international prefix which differs from country to country and also serves to identify the number following as the international telephone number.

1) “+” indicates the option to enter a code if calling from another country
2) Hyphens create separations between country codes, area codes, and phone numbers

We felt that parentheses looked lovely in U.S. numbers but felt “old-school” when you saw them alongside international numbers.  Since it is not crucial to use the parentheses with U.S. numbers we opted to omit them in this international context.

What is your preference for phone number listing standards?

My first post in forever! I apologize, I have been derailed by a lot of work, a bad head cold, and the last straw was my computer was “sick” this weekend.  But everything seems to be coming back together after 15 hours of reinstalling programs and fonts.  I have a new desire to hyper-organize everything in the Studio.  The first task is managing my many fonts.  I just purchased this new software called FontCase that will allow me to preview the font, add tags, activate and deactivate fonts.  Oh, and the interface is clean and simple, which always helps.  Let’s see if this helps be more efficient and creative!