Category: technology

Graphic design is an art and for professional results you should be utilising the skills of someone that can demonstrate relevant experience in the field of design, advertising, typography, print and the use of colour. Desktop publishing is not graphic design.

It is important that your advertising materials should be well designed to create the initial visual impact before the user reads the information or explores the website.

As the number of companies, products and services increase, an effective eye catching design is a critical element for marketing your business. An innovative design will help differentiate your company from the competition

A professional qualified graphic designer should take an individual approach to graphic design and with each clients project should produce strong creative designs appropriate for that business or service.

Graphic design done for print can be adapted for use on the web and CD ROM which means you can have strong corporate branding throughout your range of advertising materials.

High quality graphics for print should be processed by a highly regarded professional printer, one who has demonstrated that they can consistently produce high quality printed materials. Don’t cut corners and for the sake of saving a few pounds use a printer that will not do the graphics justice.

Do you need to consider branding & image for your companies materials?
Brands are not just for big companies, they can also make smaller businesses stand out from the crowd and can play a significant part in helping your business or services become the first choice for customers.

In increasingly competitive markets, it is important to establish a strong company (corporate) image or brand which will give potential new customers a true idea of what they are buying before they buy it which should make that decision easier to make for them. Existing customers trust strong brands because they know exactly what to expect and they will keep coming back to you.

If you want to build and manage a strong company brand or image you will need to convey a consistent message to your customers in all ways that you communicate with them.

Strong branding is achieved by a consistency in your marketing tools of which the following are examples:

Web site, Business name, Names of products or services, Company slogan, Company logo, Style and quality of your business stationery including brochures, business cards, letterheads, flyers, folders, Product packaging.

It is important that you commission a professional designer to obtain good quality visual images – photographs and graphics, which will ensure that your marketing materials have maximum impact.

A professional graphic design service will provide high quality graphics which can be adapted for use on your website as well as in all your printed materials such as business stationery, letterheads, business cards, brochures and flyers. High quality graphic designs can also be used on your large conference boards and to build interfaces for an interactive CD Rom which is becoming a more popular way of distributing information about a companies products or services.

In order to master the art of web design, designers must follow the subsequent pointers:

1. Web designers are marketers per se. Web sites are all about advertising products, ideas and services. Thus, a web designer has to understand the mindset of marketers in order to create a design that sell.

2. Read, read and read. We do not experience everything. Thus, our tendency is to learn from others. Reading web design books, newsletters and tips are pretty valuable since they can save you time and effort. Basically, books are more conclusive than newsletters and tips however, they are for free and mostly updated.

3. Narrow down your target market. You cannot please everybody same thing that you cannot be good at everything. Thus, this fact calls for the narrowing of your target market. Even in the interface of the so-called web design, a designer cannot claim that he is an expert at anything or everything about the needs of a website. It is better to pick a certain audience and try to be good at catching their attention, preference and choice. This practice allows you to be best at a given area thus developing expertise.

4. Answer your target audience’s needs. In order to answer the visitor’s needs, web designers must know what kind of visitors his site is welcoming. Do they belong to the younger generation or otherwise? What do they want from your site? Are these information, details and pleasures in your site in order to get their undivided attention and loyalty? Bear in mind that colors, font size, style of graphics, contents and the entirety of the site affects viewer’s decision and choice.

5. Know the basics of SEO and copywriting. Though Search Engine Optimization and copywriting are not directly related to designing, still, designers must have basic knowledge about them. This is because web designing is intertwined with marketing, use of keywords and visibility.

Aside from that, designers must also have knowledge of the programming basics. If not, the tendency is waste time or to create a mediocre or unsatisfactory design to the detriment of the sites.

6. The primacy of functionality. If ever you are faced to make a decision between a web site’s aesthetic form and its functionality, you have to be firm in upholding the latter. Not everything that is pretty is ‘saleable’. Besides, you don’t create web sites for the sake of making it nice-looking.

Above anything else, the site must be functional so as to cater to every visitor’s wants and needs. Appearance is a means to catch visitor’s attention nevertheless, it is not the end. If a designer prioritizes appearance alone without considering its primary consideration the web site’s marketability will suffer.

7. Know when to break the rules. Rules are only guidelines, if you feel that the rules are inappropriate for a certain creation follow your heart’s desire and venture on an experimental adventure.