Printing & Copying

Flyers are one of the most cost-effective marketing techniques you can use. But for them to be effective, they need to be well designed and well written. Here are some pointers for creating effective flyers:

Start off with a benefits-laden headline. Your headline will be the first, and could possibly, be the only thing a prospect will read when seeing your flyer. Pick words that will stand out and tell the reader how your product or service will benefit them. Some magic words include: easy, secret, unlock, free, how to, discover and proven. There are plenty more magic words that draw people in, but you get the idea.

You should address the reader personally, and tend to their needs, not yours. This means your flyer text should focus on the reader and his needs, not yours. Use “you” and “your” instead of “we” and “us.” Make the flyer about the reader, not about you. Use some magic words along with “you” and you’ve got a pretty good chance of someone reading your entire flyer!

Use complementary colors. Use colors that don’t contrast, like pink and red. Complementary colors are opposite each other on the color wheel. (Google “color wheel” to see some examples.) Red and green are complementary. Blue and orange are complementary. Basically, don’t pair colors that are next to each other on the color wheel and you’ll be fine.

Use colors that bring out your message. If you’re trying to promote a spa where people can come in for a free 15-minute massage, using bright pink and neon green isn’t going to emanate that relaxing feeling. For a spa, you’d want to stick to relaxing baby blues, light grays or pastel colors. For a flyer for an edgy night club, you’d want to use black and perhaps a shock of bright orange and a bright blue. Colors make people feel a certain way. Pick the right color for your message.

Feature testimonials. When people can vouch for you and your product, that brings another level of credibility to your brand. People will believe what other people say about you quicker than they’ll believe what you say about you. Ask satisfied customers for endorsements and make sure to get a full name and location. T.W. from Indiana doesn’t look as authentic as Tim Whitley from Indianapolis, Indiana.

Don’t overdo the design. White space is your friend. White space refers to the space of your flyer that isn’t covered by design, image or text. Don’t try to cram every square inch of your flyer with information – it will become cluttered and hard to read. No one will want to take the effort to try to sift through all that design to find out what’s important.

Lastly, as a bonus tip, you need to proofread! Oh, and did I mention proofread!? Yeah, it’s that important that it bears repeating. Try to get someone to proofread your flyer for you (if you wrote it) or proofread the flyer yourself if someone else wrote and designed it. Make sure all the contact information is correct – correct telephone number, address, etc. You wouldn’t want an extra “o” in 555-BOBS, right? Not only would that be an extra number, but well, I won’t even go there! Proofread!

Some longish time ago, when I first started doing B&W printing via inkjet, I stumbled around trying to replicate the look of gelatin silver based B&W papers. The inkjet materials available then were nowhere as good as what's available now, and in frustration, I turned to matte surface papers - particularly to Epson Ultrasmooth. When I switched to an HP z3100, I switched papers again, to (primarily) Crane Museo Portfolio, which I still think is one of the most beautiful printing papers available.

At the time I switched to matte papers, I thought that because the current crop of glossy papers (things like Epson Premium Luster) were so nasty, and had such icky appearance, that it was the way to go. And, in the end, switching to matte papers freed me from a lot of misconceptions about printing. I wrote about that in an article on my static website titled (going off) The Silver Standard, in which I argued that matching silver prints was not the way to digital printing nirvana.

These past few weeks, I've been doing a lot of printing on Harman Gloss FB Al, and on Ilford Gold Fibre Silk, two beautiful papers of the new baryta surface sort. I've been doing quite a lot of print evaluations, and I've printed multiple variations of the same image on different papers and with different printers, so I've really gotten to know my test images (one of which is above).

As a result, I've become more and more impressed with those two particular papers. The surface finish of both is just incredibly good. The 'look' and 'feel' of the prints is excellent. I'm sure that in the future, there will be papers which are better, but let me tell you right now that any paper which beats these two is going to be so good you get short of breath and your heart races when you look at the prints.

Anyway, out of curiosity, I finally dug through the cabinet and pulled out a box of gelatin silver prints, and compared them head to head against the inkjet prints I've made over the past few weeks. I'm a big fan of the control you get with digital printing, and I pretty much expected that the digital prints would make the silver prints look sad and shabby. What I didn't expect, and what I found, is that the digital prints REALLY make the silver prints look sorry. I won't claim I was the best silver printer on the planet, but I did have some idea of what I was up to and what controls were available. I've written (and gotten published in magazines) articles on using VC papers. So I like to think that I have something of a clue.

And there's just no comparison. The digital prints win on expressiveness, they win on tonal range, they win on rendering of subtle tonal stuff. They win on overall appearance, they win on every metric you might apply. They're so much better than the gelatin silver prints (and than the inkjet prints I was making just a few years ago) that I think that in some way, all this adds up and they're different in kind, not just in quality.

It was not so very long ago that I got email from people telling me that I was delusional, that inkjet printing would never rival gelatin silver or platinum, that inkjet prints would always look 'fake', that inkjet prints were real but were instead 'fauxtographs'.

But inkjet printing was pretty good then, and it's come a long way since, and although all those criticisms linger on in the world of the internet, where they're destined to float around in the Google cache forever, I just don't think there's any longer even a comparison to be made.

Recently, I designed a flyer for my brother, who makes wood crafts and sells them.  I wanted to make an effective flyer that would generate some business for him, because he was just getting started and needed a strong beginning.

So I went back to the basics and thought about the elements that make up a good marketing flyer.  And while I was at it, I figured I would share the results with you.  Here are my tips for making an effective flyer.

Show, Don’t Tell
On my brother’s flyer, I tried to show as many of his products as I could, rather than talk about them.  There is a short list of the products that he offers, but that is the only text on the flyer that has to do with the items he sells.  There are, however, 7 pictures showing the plaques, coffee tables, mirrors, and tissue box covers that he makes.  I am completely certain that those pictures will do far more to entice customers than any amount of words I could have said about them.

Keep it Simple
Along the same lines, you don’t want to include a whole lot of words about anything on your flyers.  In fact, the flyers I made for my brother only have two paragraphs of text, along with the list I mentioned earlier.  Then, at the bottom of the page is his contact information.  I also included a special offer (which I will discuss shortly).  Beyond that, there is no text.  I wanted to keep the flyer as simple as possible, so I didn’t overwhelm any customers.

Offer Something
As I mentioned, I placed an offer on the flyer (with my brother’s permission).  On the side of the flyer, in a very visible fashion, I wrote “20% OFF” in bold text.  Whenever you can offer something tangible to the customers, your flyer will be more powerful.  People love to get something, and they love discounts, so give them what they want.

Provide Plenty of Options
Make it painfully obvious to the readers of your flyers how they can take advantage of your offer.  Make sure to put all of your contact information on there.  If you have a website, make sure it is prominently displayed.    Provide as many ways for them to get in touch with you as possible.

Look Professional
If you have a logo, put it on your flyers.  If you have a slogan, put it on your flyers.  Just be careful not to make these things too prominent.  The most obvious parts of your flyer need to be your special offer and your products.  Still, if you can include a logo and a slogan, you will look more professional.

Even though the technologies enabling businesses to create documents have become more accessible, there remains a hidden cost in the generation of print and electronic media—a cost easily offset with some simple tools and best practices

Perhaps you’ve seen the commercials by print giants like Xerox and Hewlett-Packard, in which they espouse how cheap print has become? Indeed, the cost to generate color print these days is, in fact, much less expensive for businesses than it was just a few short years ago.

While printers and the consumables they use have become more accessible to businesses on a budget, there remains an unnecessary hidden cost in print output and electronic publishing—the cost of ill-prepared content.

The origin of content
The amount of content businesses generate these days is mind-blowing. It’s disseminated in any number of ways—in print products such as brochures, marketing and sales collateral, advertisements, educational and training materials, presentations and so on. In combination with their print initiatives, businesses also have “new media” opportunities—creating content for electronic communications, such as the Web, an Intranet, DVDs and CD-ROMs, and e-newsletters—each medium requiring that the content be prepared just a little differently based on its output intention.

David Creamer, owner of I.D.E.A.S. Training, Bonsall, CA, says that there is greater burden on businesses to develop strategies for both print and e-media, and as a result, must understand the nuances of how content should be prepared for each “product.” A document intended for print, for example, must be created in a very different way than content destined for a corporate Intranet.

Fundamentally, content for print and content for electronic distribution, differ in color space. A file bound for the Web should be set up to enable a monitor—which reads color in variations of red, green and blue—to read and reproduce the file. Electronic files should be also be “low resolution,” meaning there are fewer pixels required (and, thus, a smaller file size) to view on a monitor.

Conversely, print is a bit pickier. Most printers read and process in four-colors (cyan, magenta, yellow and black, “CMYK) and require very-high-resolution graphics and text in order to output crisply.

Clearly, it complicates operations for businesses—dealing with how to take all this content, massage it into a form that’s needed, and then getting it there. When content is not prepared correctly, based on its output intention, there is a cost—sometimes hard, sometimes soft—to “fix” the content.

“Making content” is very much like a manufacturing assembly line. As an automobile is being created, it passes along various production stages, where parts are added until the car is complete. But what happens if the car skips a stage—leaving it without an engine block, for example—and no one notices the error until the car is rolling off the line. There is a cost by the manufacturer to disassemble that car, add the engine, and reassemble it until the car is whole.

Content is no different. Digital files that are incomplete or inappropriately created cost their creator time and money to fix.

“Everyone can make a PDF file on the computer simply by selecting the print-to-PDF option, for example. It does not mean that the file created is a production-quality PDF,” explains Steve Shinnick, vice president of sales for All Systems Integration, an international graphic arts and printing integration firm. In his role, Shinnick consults with businesses across the globe, and suggests and implements technologies that help his clients create, manage and distribute content is the most effective and cost-efficient way.

Fortunately, content creators don’t have to be formally trained graphic artists to prepare good files, suggests Shinnick. There are low-cost software solutions—commonly referred to in the print industry as “preflight” software—that help businesses ensure their content will render appropriately, no matter how it’s disseminated.

A preflight tool like Markzware’s FlightCheck Professional will adjudicate digital files and verify that output specifications are met.

The investment is minimal—just a few hundred dollars for a software solution that promises to save the average business untold amounts of time and money in the recreation of “problematic” digital files.

How funny - As a business we are having the best trading start to our week, the business is moving forward, we are recruiting more staff and we are getting rave reviews about our website..

One of the sales guys who deals with memberships asked me to talk to one of our clients today and as usual I am talking away about the business and generally as i always do over selling the product and as i say to the client "Million Impossible represents all business but especially business that are going through challenges" and as i am talking about how difficult it is to survive in business, i cross my legs and notice that i have two big holes in my shoes.......

I just thought i mention it because there we are trying to promote Million Impossible and where we intend to take the business and i am wearing shoes with holes in them... !!!!!!!!

It made me chuckle

Regards Bradley

www.millionimpossible.com
www.millionimpossible.com/forums/default.com

This is the small team of people who are building the back end of Million Impossible's Entrepreneur Business Network. They are all very dedicated people and all of us have been through a tough time either personally or in business or both.

We are making sacrifices in terms of time, income, emotions, family and friends in order to keep our dream alive which is to build one of the Worlds most successful Entrepreneur and Business Networks with very limited funds...

The reason that we are trying to do this is to prove that regardless of age, race, financial position, gender, religion or nationality that you can make your dreams a reality if you unite with other people and draw upon their strengths.

Heidi is our operations Director and she has a heart of gold, a solid business head and is one of the most loyal people i know. Always an air of inspiration- A true fighter.  She is also very Shy and does not like her picture on Blogs (but ill tell you a secret - our members can see her full picture at www.millionimpossible.com). Heidi definitely holds our business together and she is the BIG CHIEF and when she says no! We all pay attention.

[caption id="attachment_110" align="alignleft" width="128" caption="Brad Chapman "Believing is everything""][/caption]

With the economy in a mess the way it is, a perfect idea for low budget advertising are sale signs.  With back to school just around the corner, retailers can really benefit from this form of exposure.  Chromatek Imaging can come up with cost effective solutions to help anyone!  Some suggestions can be window displays made from various materials such as vinyl banners or posters.  Have you considered hanging a banner outdoors to catch the attention of people or cars going by?

Email Kristine at Kristine@chromatekimaging.com to discuss some ideas and get pricing.  Our Ft. Lauderdale facility is loaded with up-to-the-date equipment and professional staff.

Por lo general, es más cómodo realizar búsquedas de lugares en preparación para nuestros viajes desde una PC que desde el celular. La pregunta es, cómo lo llevamos luego con nosotros? A partir de este artículo van a poder enviar los datos a Nokia Maps y con un poco de 'juego', a TomTom y Garmin para quienes usen esos softwares.

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As I browse the net for an idea about what to write, I was stuck. I wasn’t interested with the latest news. Even the latest gossips lacked appeal. So I just think about what I have been through recently.

I had a very weird dream last night that when I woke up, I set my mind to find out what that means. But first, do you know what dreams are? According to the very reliable Wiki, dreams are what we see or the images as well as the thoughts and the emotions that we experience while we are sleeping. Dreams are highly associated with the rapid eye movement sleep. Throughout history, interests about this topic never waned although with regards to its contents and the biological purposes, those aren’t yet fully understood.

So now that I’ve gathered some “technical” definition, it’s time to give in to my desire. I want to know what my dream means. You never know but it may be good enough to be used as subject for cheap poster printing.

The weird thing about it is that I dreamt of a part of our old house. Everything was new, the house itself, the backyard, the playground at the back. What was weird is that after the house before you reach the playground, there was the comfort room. It was like what we had before. But what’s so disturbing about it is that it looked filthy, the things inside looked primitive. The water was dirty. In my dream, my mother was asking me to use that. She said that it was okay.

Okay, I found the answers at dreammoods.com. But it only focused on the toilet. There are three types of toilet which were given meanings on the site. Basically, seeing a toilet symbolizes either the release of emotions or getting rid of a useless part of your life.

Cleaning the toilet means that you are opening up and starting to lose your shyness. The clogged toilet means that you are keeping your emotions to yourself. And the overflowing one signifies your desires to express your emotions.

Now I’m still at lost so I looked up the meaning of dirt or being in such state. So there it is, under the word dirt. This corresponds to person’s anxieties and feelings toward sex. Now I don’t think I like that sound of that. Such dream, according to the site, rooted from having low self-esteem and when you have a feeling that you are unworthy.

Between these meanings, I think I can better relate with the toilet stuff. I am going through a personal struggle right now and I think I soon have to release the sad emotion that is gripping me. But that will take time. I just thank the dream for reminding me.

Have you ever thought about what your dreams meant? Dreammoods.com is one effective site that can help you solve your dream puzzles as long as you remember them.

Megapixels (million pixels) is the way people measure digital cameras' potential photo size. When choosing a digital camera, the key question is really how large do you want to be able to pint and still maintain quality. Since my company FinerWorks, focuses on large photo prints, we have a chart for our customers so they can see what their "new" digital camera is able to accomplish. The size (in inches) it shows is based upon the standard 3:2 aspect ratio which is the default dimensions of most digital photographs. This chart does not take into consideration any resizing you might do to a photograph once the image is taken and assumes you are taking your photo at its highest resolution. The great thing about digital cameras today is that you can usually make very big prints.

Note: As you can see, it is rare even for the highest end digital cameras to achieve the larger print size and still be rated in the excellent column. Do not worry since most photo enlargements, even from professionals that do such things as bridal portraits or prints for galleries, rarely are seen at the "Excellent" level. Most of your largest prints will tend to hover in the Fair to Good level unless you have a super expensive digital camera. To help with matters, when printing on canvas or the fine art paper, you have more room to work with since the textured surface of the media helps hide any deficiencies.