Designing a life on the front.
The king of pop, Michael Jackson, died yesterday of a heart attack. And the passing of such a larger-than-life icon inevitably draws the mind to consideration of loss not only as it applies to living, but to art, music, and our relationships with the things that define us.
The Album Cover Ad
The days of vinyl records may be long gone, but that doesn’t mean album cover artwork can’t still come in handy. Next time you’re working on a promotion, consider replace that boring old flyer with a print design that rocks…
But what about our customers?
A grim little news piece on WhatTheyThink reports today that printers have made the list of the top ten most bankruptcy-prone industries. Research firm Sageworks, inc. compiled the list based on the debt-to-equity ratios of various industries over the last 12 months.
On the upside, printers snuck in at the very bottom of the list. Unfortunately, that put nine industries, most of which use print collateral heavily, ahead of us. It's no surprise that printers would be hit hard when industries that buy print – like automotive, real estate, hospitality, and hobby industries – are being so affected.
When any business (or family, or person) is struggling, it's easy to overlook the fact that others are also having trouble, but like the Sageworks' data shows, not only is the printing industry better off than others, the success of all is interconnected.
Many printers are managing to survive and thrive still thanks to the continued strength of industries like IT, education, and health. So instead of bemoaning our fate (as some seem to do incessantly in the WhatTheyThink comment threads), at Hotcards, we believe that our industry should be thinking: what can we do to help out?
Why don't you tell us? As a printer, as your printer, what can we do to make your job easier? How can we make your business strong?
Energizer Monday edition.
Usually, I like to put up cool links to the best print design stuff around the web on Fridays, but a bleary Monday morning seems like as good a time as any for it. At your desk? On your sixth cup of coffee? Sit back, relax, and get inspired by some of the best of print/design from around the web:
Hotcards & the Beanstalk – new print ad from one of in-house designers, Glen Infante. So preeeeetty! And it proves that you don't need tons of $$$$$ to have beautiful print collateral.
If you're a fan of the epic web of blogs run by ImJustCreative, check out TypePosters72, where typography nerds can regularly ogle new poster designs built around type.
Stuart's Critical Printing Blog – Faculty member of the Leeds College of Art applies critical thinking to print media. Don't be dissuaded by the unfortunately tiny and oddly formatted images on the front page. Click on the full blog posts to get a good look. Well worth it!
Artist/writer/creator Rivkah has begun writing and art-ing on LiveJournal about printing, promising of series of 20 posts including very lovely comic panels about our favorite subject. So far, SO good! Scroll to the bottom of the post for the comic.
Head on over to GoogleBooks to take a look at Elizabeth L. Eisenstein's book, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. For hardcore printing fans only, but a great read on the connection between printing, politics, human thought, and revolution.
If Eisenstein's text is a little dry for you, visit Metalmother for a fresh, funny, easy-to-enjoy wedding invitation that puts all other wedding invitations that came before it to shame!
Hopefully the above blend of inspired typography and heavy reading is just what you need to get your week off to a great start! And if you have any favorite links to post, put ‘em in the comments! Happy creating, readers!
6 – 10 on the business blog burn chart.
Yesterday, I listed 1 to 5 of the worst mistakes a printer can make when running a blog. Today, we travel even deeper into that terrifying world of ambivalence and confusion, staring with...
6.
Ugly blog. Sad but rampant throughout the print industry are blogs so poorly designed they look like they were actually set up before the web 1.0 bubble burst. We're part of the advertising world, printers, let's act like it!
7.
Feeling the need to post your entire business philosophy in every blog. This is a major Twitter no-no as well. Readers are not looking to constantly be told who you are, what you do, and what great quality and prices you bring to the table. This does not a regular readership build in the blogosphere.
8.
Breaking the bank on a blog post. Typical rookie mistake. A lot of printers start out all excited about their new blog, and invest a ton of time and money on doing something worth writing about, taking nice pictures of it, and putting together a gorgeous post. This is wonderful, but guess what, you're not going to do it every day. A good blog has to be sustainable.
9.
Writing like it's a college essay. Long paragraphs, too much text, and terms like "in summation," and "I have clearly shown," will turn off all but the most determined readers. This is one of those mistakes that instantly puts visitors on to the business-y-ness of a blog. Not friendly. Unfortunately, this style is rampant throughout print blogging.
10.
Repeating content. I'm a writer, so words are pretty important to me, but you can't look at every blog post like a priceless jewel that should be submitted to article sites and distributed as a press release and reproduced in your newsletter and left on the front page of your site for a month because it's so brilliant. That's not how blogging works. Everything's gotta be fresh and new. Unfortunately, the many printers who don't get this are hurting themselves by reproducing their content all over the internet.
(Without Actually Naming Names)
Printers, and all small businesses, in fact, are under enormous pressure to run blogs in today's web-centric commerce climate. The result is some blogs that offer uniquely personal insights into once stone-faced businesses, and others – many, many others, that are so off-base it would be funny, if it wasn't your industry.
Here, for your amusement, I hope, are the 10 biggest no-nos committed by printing house blogs:
1.
Setting up a blog, posting once or twice, and then never posting again. This makes visitors wonder: is this place still in business?
2.
Posting 1000+ word blogs that no one will read in a million years. This usually happens when someone around the shop is given the task of writing a blog post, has never written anything in their life, and feels the sacred responsibility of penning their magnum opus suddenly upon them.
3.
Posting desperately sales-focused content so fat with links and sale-sy jargon it's too laughable to be considered ‘black hat SEO.' This is a common practice amongst printers hoping to directly convert blogging into sales.
4.
Posting exclusively bland industry news about purchases, awards, and stock fluctuations. Blogging is about connecting, on a personal level, with customers and colleagues. Put your personality in your writing, please!
5.
Posting detailed technical step-by-step blogs that never end. Actually, this kind of content is solid gold, but not when it's 2000 words long. If you're releasing great content like this, do it in parts!
That being said, you'll all have to wait ‘til tomorrow for 6 – 10.
The square business card.
Business cards are one of the tiniest, but most technically difficult pieces of printing. The challenge? Pack all the personality of your professional identity into one tiny card. This Design Idea of the Week asks the tough question: are you SQUARE?
10 Mega-Mistakes Most Printers Make
I was just reading a recent post over at Poor Richard's Printshop. Richard was lamenting the fact that the marketing people representing the franchise he's a part of were kind of putting the kibosh on his un/official blog about the day-to-day goings-on at his business.
Admittedly, Poor Richard spends a lot of time poking fun at typical print customers. Apparently, some people got offended. So what we have here is a classic case of the perils of running a business blog.
All of a sudden, if you're a printer, you're supposed to have a blog. We've been doing it here at Hotcards.com for a while, so we're kind of experts. But for the newbie, the instant fear is this: how do I run a blog that doesn't offend ANYONE?
Folks, it's almost impossible.
Unfortunately, the result of this fear is an ever-increasing army of printing blogs that are so boring and poorly executed, they will bring you to tears. Poor Richard's blog, indelicate as it may be, does exactly what a blog is supposed to do – it's interesting and it provides actual insights, not just bland platitudes.
So what makes a good blog post? I will now demonstrate one way a business can go about writing a blog that is both interesting and relatively non-offending. I'll do this by listing the 10 Biggest No-Nos Committed by Printing Blogs (Without Actually Naming Names)!
Let your ISP know about impending traffic spikes.
Most successful advertising campaigns don't use just print, just web, just TV, or, er, just radio. These days, a good campaign has to be working cross-media to provide a complete marketing experience for consumers.
Of course, most businesses already know that cross-media promotions need to support each other. For example, if your print ad is driving traffic to a website, make sure that the website references the ad in some way (even just in terms of color) so that visitors know they're in the right place.
Seems obvious, but I've seen an ad or two that didn't even include the same business, product, or event title found on the landing page! Poor coordination of this type can kill your ROI. On the flip side, so can failure to coordinate with your IT people.
This weekend, I was having dinner with a group of web design and developer types, and we were discussing how effective a print ad is in driving traffic to a URL. It was a lively debate, until our ISP friend piped him. He said that he always knows (too late!) when one of his clients is running a print campaign, because traffic spikes are so high that he has to scramble to keep the servers from crashing.
He went on to say that he wished businesses would let him know in advance when they were running print ads, so that he could prepare for the increased traffic. Before that conversation, coordinating with technology providers never occurred to me. But there you have it. Don't stop at making sure your campaign's cross-media launching and design work together, make sure your IT people are prepared to handle the results!
Hey! That's a leading question…
Computer technology has come to play a central role in the printing process. GOA recently posted a list of the 10 'Critical Core Technologies' that any printer requires to survive in the unavoidably techno-centric future.
The thing about this list, and the way it's presented, is that it makes the whole situation seem rather grim. Like the print industry has gone from craft to manufacturing process, and, in short, the romance is gone.
Examples of the soul being sucked out of printing may include:
That being said, my position on the issue is STRONGLY DISAGREE. Print has more soul and personality than ever. Technology has connected us, and brought us together, via the web and around the print plant / office. As computers make it easier for us to do specialized jobs, we have more space to bring our personalities to our work and the community.
