Here’s the secret. If you follow up, you might be the only one who does. Think about it. Would you choose a business who was disinterested at the quote stage? If they’re sluggish then, how responsive will they be when you’ve paid them to work for you?
A quote in the post is good. But it can work harder. Use a folder. A beautiful folder. It gives you gravitas. You’ll look impressive. Use the inside to sell your benefits. Why should they choose you? Fill with photos of other projects, awards or client reviews.
We’re all attracted to beauty and shiny things. It’s in our nature and it’s impossible to override. Your marketing can make the most of these basic human instincts.
One way is to add StarMarque spot gloss highlights to your promo material. The contrasting matt base causes the highlights to shimmer in the light. And get noticed. They bring marketing to life. And make people want to lick it. A lot.
Try it, and save up to £50 on our StarMarque range in June. It’s bio-degradable too, which we’re very proud of!
This stems from an initiative by Action in Rural Sussex :
“Rural communities across East Sussex are full of small businesses and enterprises many run by a single person, often from home or a small business facility.
Running a business or developing an idea into a business can be challenging, particularly when doing so on your own. Complying with regulations and rules can be overwhelming and scary, and many businesses aren’t sustainable or don’t grow as their owners wish, often because identifying and accessing cost-effective support is seen as difficult, expensive or not a valuable use of their time.
In partnership with Lets Do Business Group, [this is] part of a new initiative which seeks to provide an informal forum for local people to come together and explore both specific and general business issues, but also to hear about the wide range of FREE business support on offer to assist them in growing their business and running it effectively.”
Running our business from a home office in Wilmington, East Sussex, we felt this was a pretty good idea so got involved and agreed to host an event, launching the Cuckmere Rural Business Network in November 2018. Having been to many different styles of networking event, we thought we’d start informal and see how it develops. The next meeting is on Tuesday evening, 19th February at the Berwick Inn (opposite Berwick railway station). Although this is aimed at helping the smaller, rural businesses, anyone in business is welcome to come along to meet those not normally seen at town networking events.
We will have a short presentation by Ian Smallwood of Let’s Do Business and a talk about how to stay focussed on your business – let’s face it, we all struggle with that at times!
Arrival time 6.30pm for time to chat, then introductions at 7.15 followed by the talk, time for discussions then more informal networking.
Remember to bring plenty of business cards and any promotional material you may have. Of course, we can help there if you need something designed or printed. We have lots of good ideas for how to show off your business at its best.
These events are supported by Let’s Do Business and Action in Rural Sussex
Many of us know the saying “A camel is a horse designed by committee”, denigrating the aesthetics of a camel. To quote another saying however, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
We all know the camel is in fact a creature perfectly suited to its habitat and that a thoroughbred horse would quickly become the archetypal pile of parched white bones in those arid conditions. Furthermore, unless you take the old testament literally, the camel was not ‘designed’ at all of course – it evolved over many hundreds of thousands of years to become the “ship of the desert”.
“What have camels and horses to do with graphic design?” I hear you ask. Well, very little is the honest answer. I want to talk about the involvement of committees in the creative process and it just seemed like a good introduction.
With graphic design and more particularly branding and corporate identity, things work a little differently to natural selection and evolution. Although sometimes it might seem not as quickly.
Often a client will tell us they want a distinctive logo that stands out and shows their individuality (I do shudder whenever a client uses the words eye-catching, so please don’t). However, in my experience, the involvement of a committee can have the effect of creating bland results – knocking off those corners and ironing out the features that offer that distinction. Imagine a world where everyone had perfect proportions, perfect teeth, a perfect face, perfect complexion, etc. Nobody would be memorable and no-one would stand out from the crowd. Because committees work by consensus, they don’t tend to take the distinctive option, unless a member has the skills to really force something through. That can happen, but it’s fair to say it’s rare.
Often when working on logo design, we will start with a “scatter gun” approach where several designs are suggested, one of which the client should select. This we would then develop further and a logo would evolve. However, what sometimes happens – particularly when a committee or group of people is concerned – is we are asked to see what it looks like if we take the lettering from logo A, the icon from logo B and the colour from logo C and put them together. Sometimes this can work, but more often it can make the brand confused and messy. However the committee will look at their minutes, check it against what we have done and the box will be ticked.
Sometimes a designer will hedge their bets and, as well as distinctive, creative, energetic designs, they might offer a ‘safe’ option. Hoping that the client will go for one of the funky ones but knowing they will almost certainly go for the conservative option. Being pragmatic (I have to make a living) and diplomatic, sometimes it is hard to fight these issues and the designer will feel pressured to just do it and get the invoice in.
What’s the answer?
In my view, it’s about responsibility. I’ve worked on a number of committees and for countless clients and best results are always obtained when FEWER people are directly involved. Committees work best when individuals are given clear responsibilities and have the trust in other members to see their own responsibilities through.
So the approach I would recommend is to make use of a sub-committee of no more than three who will take responsibility to formulate a brief and sell that in to the committee and get agreement. They can then give the designer a clear, well-defined brief. The sub-committee can decide whether the designer has met the considerations of that brief with their designs and, if not, get them to adjust the work accordingly and re-present.
Don’t offer too many options! I would recommend the sub committee just show their preferred choice to the main committee almost as fait accompli and ONLY show other options if there are genuine solid objections.
Opinions
Everyone has an opinion on a logo but actually what’s important is not whether you like it or not, it’s:
1) Is it distinctive?
2) Is it offensive?
3) Does it clash directly with the image we want to put across?
Q: My company is going to have a stand at a big international trade show so want to produce brochures to hand out. Would you recommend folders with loose information sheets or booklets?
A: Well folders/inserts are a very popular product for this scenario and for good reason. They can provide a very flexible vehicle for giving specific information to potential customers. If you have multiple services or products, you can tailor the folder to the customer or at least to the market sector. The other advantage of this is that if you change a product or service, you don’t have to reprint the whole brochure again – just a single sheet. The down side is that you have to hold quite a lot of stock, you have to possibly mess about stuffing sheets into folders, and folders themselves can be relatively expensive compare to a printed booklet.
With a booklet you have everything in one place and there’s no risk of sheets dropping out and getting lost as they’re stapled in! They can be relatively inexpensive compared to a folder – particularly when it comes to shorter print runs. And that can be a very important point if the item is just for one or two shows.
It’s a question of horses for courses (or International Trade Shows).
We are running the 
