General Design Tips for promotional materials
I wanted to take some time and give all of you out there a few pointers on design. Most professional designers will know exactly what I'm talking about in this blog. If you don't fall into that category then read on and you just might find something that helps your home-made flyers look a whole lot more professional!
1. White space: Generally in my line of work a client will want a business card and then ask me to print the Bible on the back of it, or something crazy like that. White space is something, I'm finding, that most people fear. I think if they see paper that isn't covered by ink, text, and logos then they are wasting their paper and ultimately their time and money. Well folks, I've got news for you, white space is your friend. A design needs room to breath. It should flow well from top to bottom and left to right with little rivers of white flowing through all of it. The attention span of an average American hopped up on Starbucks is like 5 seconds, so your message should be quick, simple and most importantly TO THE POINT! If you have a bunch of info that your potential costumers would need, then use the back.... that's what its for.
2. Internet Images: I wish a had a nickel for every sample business card or flyer I've been given with images downloaded from Google that have been stretched past the breaking point. If your images on your document are beginning to look like a tile-mosaic when you stretch them then your are suffering from this syndrome. Generally, professional printers like to have images at least 300 dpi for printing. The internet image is usually set to 72 dpi for faster downloading times. For many years, only graphic artists really wanted to spend the money to buy graphic resource disks or photo services, but now there are "buy as you need" internet sites for you to use. I suggest http://istockphoto.com/. I really like their library of images and you can't beat the price.
1. White space: Generally in my line of work a client will want a business card and then ask me to print the Bible on the back of it, or something crazy like that. White space is something, I'm finding, that most people fear. I think if they see paper that isn't covered by ink, text, and logos then they are wasting their paper and ultimately their time and money. Well folks, I've got news for you, white space is your friend. A design needs room to breath. It should flow well from top to bottom and left to right with little rivers of white flowing through all of it. The attention span of an average American hopped up on Starbucks is like 5 seconds, so your message should be quick, simple and most importantly TO THE POINT! If you have a bunch of info that your potential costumers would need, then use the back.... that's what its for.
2. Internet Images: I wish a had a nickel for every sample business card or flyer I've been given with images downloaded from Google that have been stretched past the breaking point. If your images on your document are beginning to look like a tile-mosaic when you stretch them then your are suffering from this syndrome. Generally, professional printers like to have images at least 300 dpi for printing. The internet image is usually set to 72 dpi for faster downloading times. For many years, only graphic artists really wanted to spend the money to buy graphic resource disks or photo services, but now there are "buy as you need" internet sites for you to use. I suggest http://istockphoto.com/. I really like their library of images and you can't beat the price.
