If ye haven’t noticed, it be Talk Like a Pirate Day! And since Printshipnow.com raised a new sail this week (better template browsing and a few other goodies), they be giving ye a sale in return! $0.95 / square foot banners til the scalawags run out!
I’ve got a little secret.
The answer to the question that is whispered between your marketing department and your store design department:
“Signage shouldn’t be in taken out of my budget should it?”
Yes, it should. Here’s why.
Signage is the first and last thing your customers see when they come and leave your store.
There are 3 major reason marketers overlook signage in marketing.
It all comes down to ROI and measurably. Keep in mind CMOs have to answer to someone. Their strategic focus is on more traditional broad-based media, so they like to stay with what they know and what they can track. Signage, is NOT on the top of the list. I would be surprised if it’s even on there list.
Marketers believe you can’t drive conversions or sales with signage. What they don’t know is you don’t have to. When people take the time to come into you store, you already have a captive audience that wants to buy something from you. For whatever reason, they’re there! So, you have won half the battle. Now capitalize on the small victory of getting the consumer into your store. This is very prevalent with smaller retail shop. They usually believe they can’t make their storefront look like the larger retailers when in fact it cost less than any other marketing they will do. The image of your store is what makes the difference of you retiring a millionaire or filing bankrupt. Sign Post Publication stated in it’s 2nd Qty magazine that “signage costs about 10% that of broad-based media such as TV, newspapers, and radio, which is usually a one-time investment…”. Broad-based media also falls on deaf ears about 90% of the time. Capitalize on your existing consumers and continue to draw on traffic in/around your store with signage.
Marketers are afraid they will lose control of how and where their ads are placed and indirectly lose their marketing budget. When in fact they will be praised for the increase of sales and the brand recognition by their colleagues. Here’s a little study posted by the SBA.
If your signage is generating 25% more traffic, conversions, and sales than board-based advertising, shouldn’t your signage budget increase? The whole advertising industry is in a flux right now. The golden years of having one agency do it all just doesn’t work anymore and never will again. There are so many new agencies that pick one part of advertising and become experts in it. The same is true in the sign industry. Indirectly, all sign companies should consider themselves as a agency for their client and stop trying to just sell signs. When you stack the numbers up to other medias, the sign industry is one of the strongest. It’s also one of the least understood. PrintFX can be that to every company! Big or small, we can help you create and execute the right signage marketing campaign you need. Check out our sites – www.printshipnow.com and Cheaprint.net.
Remember – Print to Inspire…..Inspire to Create!
Now I am not an expert designer. To be honest, I hardly ever do any design outside of motion graphics like After Effects and Premier Pro – my true passion. However, I do know some basic print standards that everyone should know. Now this isn’t directed toward any specific industry but we will cover a few, Offset Printing, Grand Format Digital Printing, and Screen Printing. These basic standards are not the defacto rules, but will help you in your design whether you’re using our PrintFX module or a full blown design software.
First and foremost you have to know the media you’re designing for. If you’re designing for a web site, then the design will be totally different than if it’s for grand format. Not only the resolution for your images, logos, and any other raster but your design itself, check out the 7 word rule post.
Which bring me to another point: what is considered a raster graphic . Well, let’s see what the all knowing Wikipedia says aboutraster graphics. In my terms, a raster graphic is image with pixels – squares of color that determine the image. The important thing you have to remember is the resolution of the graphic, image, logo is going to determine whether those pixels show.
For example, images made for the web need to be at 72 dots per inch (dpi). This mean the image has 72 square blocks with color per inch. Check out the zoomed in illustration at the top of the page. When designing for offset printing you need your images at 300 dpi for good resolution. A lower resolution image will leave visible pixellization within the graphics. First impressions are the key, and low resolution is almost as bad as typos. In today’s age people notice when something’s crap, especially when it comes to potential clients.
One more side note: when working with logos, almost all logos should be vector. I have added a link, cause that another post in its self. The great thing about vector graphics is that because the image is created using points and a lot of geometry, you can scale them up and down limitless.
In the proverbial nut shell, this following is a basic outline for each print industry. But remember you need to know the size of the graphic that being printed. The rest of this can change, it’s not a set of rules, but a guide.
300 dpi at full size for offset graphics. If you are creating a business card or a brochure look for 2 to 5 mb picture. This is pretty straight forward, and for what I tell doesn’t change very much in the offset print industry.
100 dpi at full size will be good, but this is one of those industry that’s a little fragmented. You really have to be in the industry to understand why, but think of it like this: When you look at a medium image inside of a store (something around 3 foot by 5 foot), you’re viewing from a couple of feet away. When you creating a billboard that 14 foot by 48 foot, then you’re viewing it from hundreds of feet away. Therefore, the resolution for that graphics can be created at 50 dpi or even 35 dpi. This is because your eyes can’t spot the pixels, and really is industry standard. So know what your creating.
This is one of the reasons we have created the Print-Fx module. We help you determine the print resolution for our digital and screen printed products. How? well that’s a lot of math and you would fall asleep, trust me, I do in development meetings all the time when our brainy guys start explaining it. What you need to know when using the PrintFx module and uploading images and files we have built in a image resolution detector that determines if the image is high enough resolution for that specific print. Keep in mind if you’re creating something big look for big photo.
Print to Inspire…..Inspire to Create!
I’m really very good at tweeting updates (www.twitter.com/printfx), but quite terrible at blogging them. So here’s a lump sum of everything that our development team’s done for the print-fx module lately.
Right now the big gem in our crown is the template system. For a while you’ve been able to save your art and come back to it later. Now, with administrator approval, you can share those saved jobs to anyone on your site. Templates are sorted and tagged like clipart, and developers are working now to make that sorting system even easier to use.
Modular front-page designs have also been added to the system, so affiliates can provide a custom layout for the front page without having to worry about the rest of the site architecture.
There’s also been a slew of patches, tweaks, and cosmetic changes which should add to the overall ease of using the module. While we’re quite proud of what’s been developed so far, we hope to continue making all print-fx sites even better. Have a suggestion? Leave us a comment or drop a ticket at http://print-fx.com/support/
Wow, that’s all I can say is wow…..after 10 years in the business, WOW! I’ve never heard of a company, especially a very public sports company misspelling the name of there brand. If you have been on the other side of the universe for the past few days and didn’t hear the Washington National Baseball team or should I say “Washington Natinals” misspell the jerseys on some of there players. Now, I don’t want to take this overboard, I’m sure it was an honest mistake and the company that made the jerseys probably don’t have a butt left after that chewing, so let take it easy on them. At the same time, this gives me a great example to share with you about checking your work before sending it to your clients or if you’re creating it for own company, then it’s even more important. Keep in mind first impression is the key in your branding. Therefore, if you give a horrible impression of your brand with poor color correction, lack of creative, and misspelled words then don’t even open the door, you can cripple your image before start building a relationship with them.
Don’t get me wrong I make mistakes, for example! To say I am a good writer would be a big stretch, yeah Chris Hopper, don’t laugh too load! (Chis is our Interactive Director for PrintFX and occasionally edits my posts) So, a few years ago I was pitching a advertising medium to a new shareholder for my advertising company. The ink on the deal was still wet, and I was submitting a quarterly report within the report I added a cover letter. Well, I usually write letters by just getting my thoughts down on paper then going back and proofing and editing it….which I guess most people do. Or I might be wierd, what ever the case. Well, it was late at night and I was trying to make FedEx, so i just saved it and printed the final draft or I thought, not knowing that I printed the unedited version with misspelled words, it looked like a 13 year old wrote it. Yeah, i mailed it. A month goes by and I get this call from that same shareholder. He makes a crack at my expense, which it take with a grain of salt, but at the same time I could hear in his voice the concern. “Did I make a mistake partnering with this guy.” So, what could I have done, either way if I explained the situation then I would look bad, being that I run the company by the seat of my pants and don’t check my work, or just leave it alone. Either way it didn’t look good. In the end, everything worked out and my shareholder has been with me through great time and bad. But it could have cost me a great business partner!
So, my point is check your work, and especially when it comes to the PrintFX module. One of the great advantage to the module is the great pricing and the quick turnaround time. We are able to provide this because we have eliminated a good portion of designers, sign offs, and time. However, here are some additional things we have working for the PrintFX module…..the secret “business compliance.” The one thing everyone overlooks is the small things. “Did I accidentally change the logo?” man that not going to be good it I did. “Is the resolution of the image I uploaded going to be pixellated when i get my product.” All of this is being remedied by the module, how well that I can’t tell you yet! But, be looking out for a few really important changes in the near future.
Special thanks to uniwatchblog for the picture!
New floating interface!
I wanted to add a few comments about the new tools to the PrintFX module. Our flash mad scientist Mitchum Owen with MiloDigital is building a insane new user interface for PrintFX. Big props to Chris Hopper our Interactive Director for making this happen. The user interface has floating option boxes, this allows for better, and quicker changes to the objects. You don’t have to click on tabs anymore which makes edits a lot quicker as well. If you look really close you can see… yeah we added a duplicate tool. You can not believe how awesome it is. Trust me is only gets better from here!
Rename layers in the PrintFX module!
Renaming layers makes the module so easy to use the masking tool and organize. More on that later! The PrintFX module will be the greatest thing since sliced bread….
If you listen to only one thing I ever say on this blog – listen to this! The 7 seven word rule is the most important thing in Out of Home Advertising. Especially when you are targeting an audience that is moving or the media you are posting the ad on is moving i.e. vehicle wraps or bus ads.
The “7 word rule” is so simple, but often broken. It’s “only use 7 words in your advertisement.” I can’t tell you how many ads I have seen and sold where the impact of the ad was diminished because the creative was so poor. They used 18 words when 7 would have worked. They didn’t have a clear message, or had mixed messages. Why spend the money if you can’t convey the message?
So here’s the simple facts for those companies that are sitting in the cheap seats:
7 words or less!
1 image
1 logo
1 “Call to action”
if it can be edited or cut, then cut it!
We will touch on “Call to action” later!
