Text & Banner Stands - Do Not Overload

When it comes to designing anything to do with promotion or advertising, the task is never an easy one. There’s so much to take into consideration, shapes, images, sizes, colour and the most important factor, the text.

The text is the most vital part, in our eyes, because it gives you the opportunity to deliver a message instantly without beating around the bush. After all, isn’t that what banner stands were designed for?

Yes, we understand that many of you will think that because there is a lot of space, it has to be filled, but we are sorry to inform you, you are wrong.

Overloading your banner stand with text is never the right answer!

Whats the best way to use a banner stand?

A banner stand should be used as a way to interact with customers, whether that be B2B or B2C. In most cases, a banner stand will be used as a promotional tool at a networking event such as a conference or exhibition. The banner stand acts as an excellent advertisement for a product or service you are offering without having to talk too much. If you design your banner stand in the right way, you will literally stand out from the crowd, making your product/service head and shoulders above the rest.

However you choose to use your banner stand, the text plays a vital role:

Using text in the right way for your banner stand

1. Use Less -  In the design world, people always stress the importance of using less. The world moves fast and designers have known this for a long time. Advertising your business in the right way is key. And to do this you need to witty and quick. No-one has time to stand around reading layers of text and examining dozens of images, so keep it short and sweet and you will attract more curiosity.

2. Use Space - People look at an empty banner stand and think “wow, look at all that space!”, but in reality, your space is limited, yes, banners are much larger than your conventional leaflet or booklet but this also means the text and images need to be too. Remember, space is your friend, and you need to be kind to it. Ensure the text you use is short and key to the point you are trying to make. After this, the space will work in your favour.

3. Know the balance - They say a picture paints a thousand words, but that’s only true if you use the right image. Once you know the amount of text you are going to be using then it should make choosing an image or a selection of images, much easier. For meaningful images that create impact by themselves, keep text to a minimum. For meaningful text or phrases, use softer image or maybe just a background colour so your text can do the talking.

4. Use strong text - Cheesy slogans are a thing of the past and people just want to see the facts of what you have to offer. Bold fonts and exclamation marks can make your text stand out, but if you use the right words, you won’t need to use these old tools and people will be genuinely interesting in what you are offering.

5. - Don’t use small print - What’s the point? No-one reads it anyway! Unless you actually HAVE to put something at the bottom due to legal reasons then you won’t need it. If you are tempting to place something at the bottom in small print, think about a better place for it, like your website perhaps? People get irritated by things that are difficult or pointless, so placing small print on your banner stand will only aggravate potential customers or clients!

We hope you have enjoyed our 5 top tips to getting the most out of your banner stands! If you need any advice, or are unsure about any of the points we have touched on, then please don’t hesitate in giving one of our printing experts a call today: 0121 333 6352

Why images are important in printed leaflets

Images

The printed leaflet is one of the most popular marketing tools, used worldwide by small businesses and large corporations alike. With so many different styles, shapes and sizes available, the power is in your hands, meaning you can promote your products and your business in a way that suits you and your customers. The great thing about leaflets is the element of tangibility. With TV adverts, they come and go and you never really get a feel for them, but with printed leaflets, you can physically feel the leaflet in your hand, and take it home with you to read as many times as you like. When offered one, you can read it in your own time, in a place that suits you best, unlike other forms of advertising such as billboards or bus stop signs, when in most cases, you are flying by and never really get a chance to absorb the information or give it a second thought.

One of the main reasons leaflets stand out so well is because they incorporate images. It’s not all about fancy text when you are promoting your company. Images are equally as important, if not more important and play a vital role in the success or failure of your leaflet. A picture can say a thousand words, and when given the time to dwell on photo’s they probably say even more than that. In todays blog, Colprint are going to take a look at why images work so well in printed leaflets.

Using Images In Printed Leaflets

*Using Colour*

The use of bright and vibrant images can really help your printed leaflets stand out from the crowd. Too much text and an overcrowded appearance isn’t something that appeals to many people. If you want loads to read, usually you would pick up a book or magazine, but with leaflets, sometimes less can be more effective. By using colourful and carefully selected images you can instantly grab the readers attention, providing you do your research into what your customers want to see. Make sure you take into consideration the colour of your background too. This is equally as important as the images and text itself. The background colour is the basis of your leaflet, and will often determine whether or not a reader picks up your leaflet. Dull tones or overpowering brightness can put people off and make your carefully selected images look out of place, so please be careful.

*Connecting With Your Audience*

Images play an important role in determining whether or not you connect with your audience. Visual effects are the most important factor in the advertising world and help provide emotion and evoke powerful feelings with your customers. Are you trying to sell something or show a customer how well you do something? Images are the best way to achieve this by highlighting the beauty and features of your company or a product in general. Think about the audience you are targeting and this will help you decipher which images to use. Sometimes quality stock images can prove to play an important role in connecting with your target audience and promoting a certain product.

*Breaking Your Content Up*

When designing your printed leaflets, images are the best way to break up text and provide a healthy break from reading. Giving your customers the chance to enjoy an image in between paragraphs will lead to more success on the sales from than you could possibly imagine. Try using headings and short descriptions that lead up to an image. When people see the product you have to offer after reading a little bit about it then it will have a much larger impact on the customer. Breaking up the content in any printed marketing material is important and images provide the best means to do so.

*Use Images To Showcase Your Product Or Service*

This is probably the biggest advantage to using images in your printed leaflets. The ability to show people your product or service is an invaluable tool in your quest to achieve more sales. If your leaflet is used for promoting a range of products, then using images is far more likely to do so than by using mountain loads of content. Take a food leaflet for example. Food manufacturers would never dream of promoting their product using just text. You might be able to paint a mental picture with words, but it will never have the same effect as a showing the customers a delicious looking cake or a scrumptious looking hot meal. The use of images make your product look desirable to your audience. People think with their eyes and buy with their eyes, so images hold the key to your businesses success when you promote using a leaflet.

Thanks for taking time out of your day to read our blog, and hopefully we have helped you in one way or another. If you are still stuck or would like any advice about how to go about a leaflet project, feel free to call one of our expert printers/designers today. We’re always happy to help!

Colprint.

10 top tips to designing a great printed brochure

In our last blog we took a look at the difference between litho and digital printing to give you a better understanding of the way we work and give you an insight into the best options when it comes to promoting your business using printed marketing materials.

In our newest blog we are going to take a look at Brochures and give you some helpful tips that will ensure you are moving in the right direction.

Brochures are an extremely popular tool and prove to be an invaluable weapon when used across a wide number of industries. Being specific to your business means you can fill them with only the important information that you want your customers to read and take in. The thing to bare in mind in all circumstances is the design aspect, with each little detail tailored to individual businesses. So how do you produce a brochure that has the desired effect and overall massive impact. Let’s take a look at Colprint’’s top 10 tips to help you get the best out of brochure marketing.

10 elements to help you succeed when producing printed brochures

1) Original Designs & Sketches

The first thing you need to do before you even turn on your computer or contact a graphic designer is sit down and think about what you want to achieve from your brochure and what information you want to include. Start drawing up some design sketches and seeing what works well and what doesn’t, use every idea you have to create a few different concepts. Everyone’s input and opinion matters when working in a business environment so take colleagues ideas on board and see what you can come up with in a mini brainstorming session.

2) Target Audience

Brochures are no different from any other form of marketing in the sense that you only get out what you put in. The thing to remember is you are catering for a wide audience and your opinion isn’t necessarily the thing that will determine your brochures success - keep your customers at the forefront of your mind. How about doing a survey to find out what your customers want to know about in relation to the product or service that you as a business offer. Think about the things you like to read about in relation to the businesses you regularly use, and you will start to gain a better understanding about what it is your audience will want to read.

3) Brand Focus

Always remember that your brochure acts as an extension of your brand, so please ensure you remember your brand values when you start to design your brochure. Make sure you remember the theme of your business, the colours you follow and the fonts you use throughout your business on a day to day basis should be something you incorporate into your brochure. With a consistent look and feel to it, your brochure will become instantly recognisable, especially if you’re at some kind of networking event. The connection is instantly made between brand and brochure, allowing your target audience to familiarise themselves with your brand as a whole.  

4) Limited Fonts

Brand guidelines will frequently dictate which fonts to use and how to use them within your marketing material. Although the power is in your hands and you have the freedom to do what you like, please bare in mind that going overboard can kill your efforts in one quick swoop. Try to use the same font throughout, only varying the style for things you want to stand out like the brand name or a slogan. You should only ever use 3 sizes - one for a heading, sub heading and general text.

5) Simplicity

One of the most important aspects of your brochure in terms of the tips we are giving you is how clear and simple it is. Make sure it reads well and the content is clear enough for your customers to read - it terms of style and layout. Always be aware that space is something you have at your disposable, providing a simple but effective way of making images stand out, without cramming mounds of text around it. Ask for a second or third opinion to make sure the colours and text work well together. If you struggle to read your own leaflet, regardless of how nice it looks, your customers will have no hope.

6) Cover Pages Play a Key Role

This is the most important aspect of your brochure is the cover page. Think of it as the entrance to your shop or business, the thing that makes your customers want to come inside. The same applies to your brochure, the cover pages have to be easily distinguishable and make the readers want to turn the page and find out more. Keep the main message clear on your front page - your brand logo and a short insight about what’s inside. Sometimes only the branding is necessary if your business is well known. The front page of your brochure is a lot like a fishing rod trying to catch people and reel them in...

7) Contact Details

A Printed brochure is usually created with the purpose of selling a product or offering customers some form of offer. If you want your customers to act on your information you need to make sure you have supplied them with the relevant information so they can get in contact with you and find out more. This can be a web address, email, phone number or simply your address. Leaving this vital information out will only mean your business and the success of your brochure will suffer.

8) Quality Images

When designing your brochure, ensure your images are of the highest possible quality to make your brochure look stunning - this will do your brochure the world of good, transforming it from a schoolboy project into a powerful business marketing weapon. Use original images where possible to offer the reader something they haven’t seen before. Copied and pasted images can become pixelated and blurry so when the time comes to print your brochures, the quality will suffer significantly! Please don’t fall into the copy and paste trap and try to maintain as much originality as possible.

9) A simple Guide For your Readers

Be sure to keep every customer in mind when you are designing and writing contenting for your brochure. Although you have a target audience, these will not be the only people to read your brochure, so you need to make sure everyone can gather all the information possible. The best way to do this is to carefully plan the layout of all pages, so that it reads easily and provides a clear guide to all readers, avoiding any kind of confusement.

10) Checks & Proofreading

Last but not least, the 10th top tip from Colprint!

Proofread every single page at least 3 times to make sure there are no spelling mistakes. Get a second or a third colleague to proofread your brochure before you even think about printing a copy. If you have the budget, hire a professional proofreader to make sure your brochure is fit and ready to go. The importance of fresh eyes cannot be underestimated - someone else might pick up on something that you have missed, which is true in a lot of cases.

Well that’s it from us today! We hope our latest blog has been a pleasure for you to read and hopefully you leave this page having learnt something new!

Be sure to bare us in mind next time you think about printing brochures or starting a new advertising campaign and we can give you all the fuel and ammunition you need to set you on your way.

Thanks for reading - Colprint   

What’s the difference between digital and litho printing?

When it comes to producing the perfect finish, you will have already gone through the process of planning, designing, and creating marketing material for your business or company. The next step is to choose a style of printing. This is all well and good if your company has it’s own printer, but for many of you who don’t, there is still the problem of finding a printer that will deliver the results you are looking for, in the way you imagined before you even started your project.

The two main options for printing are digital and lithographic, with digital printing being the far more popular option. This is probably because the advantages of digital printing have been recognized far more over the years. With excellent quality and turnaround time, digital printing is probably the way to go for you…

The main reason people tend to go for digital printing is the speediness of the process, with lithographic printing proving to be a much longer slog. Otherwise know as ‘offset printing’, lithographic printing takes longer because the images and text is first embedded onto a plate, before being transferred to a rubber blanket and then onto the printing surface. This process is far more costly due to use of oil and water but produces fantastic results. If you have a larger budget when choosing the method to use for your advertising means then lithographic printing may be the way forward, however for many of us, it’s all about tightening the purse strings, not loosening them.

With digital printing, a lot of the steps used for litho printing are cut out and the process is kept relatively straight forward. Straight forward does not necessarily mean ‘basic’, with the most modern technology still being incorporated. Once the appropriate files have been prepared, you can then RIP the components to produce a bitmap. The bitmap is then sent electronically to the digital printer ready for output.

Alot of people still think that digital printing requires no human input, but in Colprint’s case, this is untrue. Once the file has finished the RIP process, Colprint then copy the file to press and one of our printing specialists selects the paper script having physically loaded it onto the machine. A proof is then carried out for quality, assuming this will be approved the job is run, packed and distributed to the customer.

Digital Printing has a number of different benefits compared to litho printing which we will now explore:

• Shorter turnover time - this allows for a quicker process and in turn allows your business to function faster and more smoothly when it matters the most.

• Economically friendly - because less sheets are used during set-up, there is less waste

• Cost effectiveness - digital printing is generally a lot cheaper than litho printing due to the work that has to go into each litho printing job

• Quality - this method of printing has been widely recognized around the globe and offers a similar quality to that of litho printing. (Colprint use the highest quality digital presses to ensure there is no sacrifice in quality when providing our customers with marketing materials).

• Variable Data Printing - this form of printing is customised based on digital printing. Using external files from a database you can change the information on each piece without stopping or slowing down the press. For example, you can personalise individual pieces with different names, logos or addresses, giving you more flexibility when it comes to producing your specific marketing materials.

• Precise Proofs - digital printing offers you the opportunity to see an actual sample of the printed piece which can often be difficult during the litho printing process. Seeing samples is also cheaper than litho printing as the plates have to be prepared to create a ‘wet’ proof.

If digital printing seems like it would be a good option for you and your business when it comes to producing marketing materials in a cost effective manner with quality results, then please feel free to get into Colprint today. If you have any queries or questions our professional team are always on hand to answer any questions and give you any advice that you may need.

Thanks for reading our latest blog - we hope this has been a good insight for you!

Business Cards Still Matter!

With so many current businesses using modern means to advertise their business, the business card has been seriously overlooked over the last decade or so. With social media aiding us on a day to day basis, it is easy to build networks, communities and spread the word about what you do as a business and who you are.

However, the crucialness of having a noticeable business card is still as important today as it was before the internet was invented.

How often do you get handed a business card and instantly throw it away or store it in your wallet to dispose of at a later date? The truth is, 88% of all business cards that have been handed out are thrown out in less than a week. This is probably because the majority of business cards offer the same information as the next, the same dull background, the same shape and size and similar layouts. In reality the size and shape will never change because of the convenience of it being able to easily fit in your wallet or purse. Or can it?

Every day people visit networking events and business meetings and exchange business cards that rarely get looked at.

So we ask the question… What’s the point in spending money on your website and investing in your business if the people you target don’t take notice of your advertising methods?

Colprint recognise the need for a top quality business card and understand how often people don’t bat an eyelid at what you hand them. Regularly people spend a lot of time and money redesigning their business cards and making them look ‘jazzy’. But how jazzy can a 2D, rectangular business card really be?

So we suggest injecting a heap of creativity into your designs and coming up with something that requires a bit of imagination!

How about business card stickers that you can give to someone and stick it to their shirt for them to come back to later that day? Ever considered creating something 3 Dimensional like a paper plane or a card that when you open it an image or character pops up?

We urge you to give people something to remember when you hand it over to them, and because of this, you will stand out in their mind next time they require a locksmith or a carpenter, to name a couple of examples.

So why not give us some feedback? Call us, email us or send us a message on facebook/twitter and we can work together to come up with a design that is right for you as a business owner!

Top Tips to make your business stationery stand out from the crowd

It is really important that you make sure that your business stationery is boosting your company's brand awareness.You need to think, What does your business stationery say about you? and to make sure that your business stationery is memorable and significant to your business by making sure you use specific colours, images and logos throughout your business stationery as well as your website, social media accounts and commercial vehicles.

Having high quality stationery says a lot about your business, if you present your customer with a flimsy and poorly designed piece of business stationery then your customers are likely to compare the quality of  the product with the quality of the services you provide. Whether it is compliment slips, notepads or business cards, here at Colprint we are able to provide you with all the top quality business stationery you could need. We are also able to incorporate and company logo or artwork on to all products or if you don't have any our team of designers can work with you to provide you with the very best design possible.

Making sure that you have a wide range of quality printed materials helps extend your ranch outreach and also allows you to stand out from the crowd against your competitors. We have 3 top tips to ensure that you get the very best from your business stationery.

1. Quality- This is extremely important to ensure that your business stationery is top quality. If you present your customers with a sloppy marketing product then they are going to expect sloppy workmanship. Make sure you provide the best first impression possible for your customers.

2. Continuity- Make sure that when designing your business stationery that you use the same colours, images and logos across your whole company such as on your website, commercial goods, printed materials and social media accounts. By doing this you make sure that your business is recognisable.

3. Details- Make sure that when designing your business stationery that you include your contact details on all of your business stationery items to make sure that your customers and potential customers find it easy to find your contact details.

If you are interested in high quality business stationery for your business then make sure that you get in touch with us here at Colprint.

Finishing options to make your business cards stand out

Your business cards are a very important part of your business stationary and allow you to make a good first impression. A quirky and well designed business card can allow you to stand out from the crowd and be noticed as well as making you memorable. Business cards used to just be a rectangular piece of card with your contact details and the business logo but the business cards that are available today have a lot more to offer when it comes to design. Your business card is a representation of yourself and your business that you give to other people, therefore you need to make sure that you use all the tools available to get the very best out of your business cards as possible.

Print finishes are now a a major part of making your business cards extra special and is one of the best methods of making sure that you enhance the design of your business card. We are going to discuss 5 different ways in which you can print finish your business cards to make them really stand out head and shoulders above the rest.

Emboss and Deboss

The visual effect created by embossing is created by heat being pressed in to the card paper without any use of ink or foil. Embossing gives a feel of texture to the business card and in some cases can offer a 3D visual effect which can be really eye catching when applied to a business card.

The opposite effect of embossing is debossing. This is done by depressing the print and gives the same feel as embossing but alternatively the paper is pressed in instead of popping out. Debossing can also provide your business card with a 3D visual effect .

Fold

The folding of business cards allows you to have more space to provide the relevant information but also gives the business card a quirky feel and the method of folding can be implied cleverly to make sure that the business card is unique to your business.

Foil Bloquing

Foil Bloquing is the method of pressing a coloured foil in to the business card with a heated die and is mostly used for enhancing typography and logos. Foil bloquing gives your business card a nice texture as well as being visually attractive.

Cut Die

Die cutting is becoming a very popular method when it comes to the design of business cards. The fact that business cards aren't seen as having to be rectangular anymore, the creativity of those designing business cards are proving that business cards can be any shape and can be shaped according to the needs of the business. Die cutting is the simple process of cutting the card in to different shapes and allows you to see beyond the business card and to give it a shape that us unique and can make your business stand out.

Varnish and Spot UV

Varnish and Spot UV is the most common method used to finish business cards and today most business cards that are printed in any graphic environment already include a varnish feel instead of the old paper feel that was used on business cards. A varnish finish gives the business card more durability and protects the paper meaning that it lasts longer as well as improving the feel and visual effect of the business card. A varnish finish gives the business card a plastic feel to it and gives the business card a shiny effect.

Spot UV is where an ultra violet varnish is applied to certain areas of the card to make the colour appear richer and to make it shine as well as having the varnished coating feel to the business card.

If you would like to imply any of these design methods to your business cards make sure that you get in touch with us here at Colprint in Birmingham to ensure that your business cards stand out from the crowd.