Photo Collection - Graphics Arts, Amazing Designs and more » Freebies

1,000 Business Cards for Free from 1800Postcards.com!

Garlak — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Why not refresh your image for the New Year…for free? 1800Postcards.com is offering you the opportunity to win 1000 business cards!

So why trust 1800Postcards.com with your design work? 1800Postcards.com is the retail branch of Circle Press, a high-end commercial printing firm with a roster of Fortune 100 clients that includes Dior, Tiffany, Disney, American Express, Broadway Shows and most of the world’s leading brands. These companies demand nothing but the best in quality. To be specific, a quality standard called “G7″, which is only granted to printing firms that meet a very strict set of best practices and production quality. These clients sit with pre-press, have color proofs printed for spot color matching, they come in when the job is printed to make color adjustments and watch it run on the press to see the final results, the whole nine yards. They also pay tens of thousands of dollars for this type of service level.

1800Postcards produces your print work in the same facilities, with the same press-men and production staff, and adheres to the same quality standards as high-end commercial jobs. The only difference is that your job is “gang printed” or run together with other 1800Postcard clients, which is the secret of every online printing company and why they can be so cheap in pricing. However, 1800Postcards.com just brought it up to an almost unreasonable level of quality

But what if you don’t need postcards? Well they’re capable of more than just postcard printing. They offer brochures, business cards, flyers, posters, banners, stickers and pretty much any custom work your creative mind can imagine.

Bottom line, the print results are unbelievable… no one in the online printing space comes even close to this quality and attention to detail. You can see it yourself by requesting free samples @ 1800Postcards.com/freesamples.

The Giveaway

Winning the 1,000 Free Business Cards is easy… Just click on the “Participate” widget below and leaving a brief comment on this post tell us why you should win.

We will accept entries until February 1. Winners will be announced February 2.

Step 1. Participate by Clicking on This Link and Entering Your Info

Click here to Participate

Step 2. Leave Comment Telling Us Why You Should Win

Sticker Printing Can Cost Much Less Than You Expected — Find Out How!

Garlak — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:09:34 +0000

Sticker printing is something that can really enhance both your online and offline marketing efforts. However, many business owners often skip over this type of advertising because they feel that it’s too expensive. That might have been the case a long time ago, but it’s definitely not the case today! Indeed, you can get effective stickers made at a price that’s truly affordable even on the most “bootstrap” of budgets. The key here is that you have to go online.

Online? Yes, definitely online. The reason why people go online is because everything is usually less expensive. This is because there is less overhead involved with maintaining an online presence for inventory purposes, so the cost savings can be passed on directly to the consumers. Think about it — wouldn’t you love shopping at a store that gave you a discount simply because you chose them for your business? Of course you would.

High quality stickers can be used in a wide variety of formats — giveaways, additions to direct marketing pieces, and even just to pass out among the staff to increase morale. There’s no argument that stickers are powerful — it’s just that traditionally speaking printing them has been a lot of hassle and hard work. Many suppliers would charge a premium for such a service, which often made business owners think twice about booking their order.

In order to get started, you’re going to need to think about the quantity that you need, as well as the characteristics of each sticker. Are multiple colors going to be involved, or just one? If the colors are complex, then you might have to pay a small premium for the print job. On the other hand, a very simple sticker is going to be very, very affordable online because there is not that much work involved. You also need to ensure that you have the image prepared in a file that is accepted by the printer of your choice. Far too often there are delays because the image file submitted was absolutely unreadable by the printer.

Even if you have a tiny amount of sheets that need to be created and printed for you, there’s nothing stopping you from pursuing such a thing online. No matter how small the order, you can definitely find a supplier to fill it — why not check it out today for yourself?

4 Tools for Creating a Logo

Anna Bailey — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 11:32:47 +0000

Your logo is a visual representation of what your company stands for. It’s important to develop a logo that both accurately communicates the features of your business and can be easily translated for publishing online and in print. While it’s often a good idea to hire a designer to create a logo for your business, there are many tools available to help you create your own logo if your budget can’t be stretched to cover design services.

Types of Logos

NYU’s Visual Communications department teaches its students that logos can be of three basic types:

Typography – Just your business name
Type and a mark – Your business name plus an image
Just a mark – A conceptual image only, like the Nike Swoosh

Deciding what kind of logo you want to create for your business is important and worth taking time to consider. Is your business name unique? If so, a simple font-based logo might be enough. If your business delivers a product or service that is easily captured in an image, consider including that image in your logo as well. For example, a business called Speedy Plumbers might include a lightning bolt to visualize their lightning-fast service.

Think long and hard before going with a completely conceptual logo. Companies like Nike and Pepsi spend millions of dollars in branding to educate consumers about their logos. Without their marketing budget, it’s unlikely that your target audience would see your logo and immediately think of your business.

When designing a logo, Entrepreneur Magazine suggests that its important to consider the following:

It must be clean, functional, and professional-looking
Use your logo to illustrate the key benefits of your business
Avoid clip-art and trendy looks
Use a maximum of two or three colors to increase your print options

Design Tools

Depending on your profession and level of design skill, there are various tools you can use to create a logo. Tools like the Adobe suite are powerful but complex, and can aid you in creating a professional logo. They can also be overkill if all you want is a simple image or font.

Adobe Photoshop & Gimp

Adobe Photoshop is considered the gold standard in professional image editing software. It’s a good bet that any professional designer you might hire will be using Photoshop or its free alternative, Gimp. If you’re a photographer, or your business involves design in some fashion, you may have a copy of Photoshop and can use it to create your own logo. If you don’t already have experience using professional editing programs, the learning curve will be steep; however, you’ll have the ability to completely control the look of your logo and will gain some new skills in the process.

Word Processors

Font-based logos are easily created in a word-processing program like Microsoft Word or Open Office Writer. If you don’t have the time or skills to develop a logo in Photoshop, you can quickly create a simple logo using Word and a set of fonts. Simply download any fonts you may want to use into your computer’s font folder, and use Word’s layout tools to create your new logo. You can easily experiment with colors, sizes, and layouts to quickly create a logo that best describes your business.

Logo creation software

There are many options in this niche, online and for use on your computer. Logo design software automates the process of design and can present an intermediate option between complicated tools like Photoshop and very basic text editors. They work by allowing you to choose fonts and colors, and then presenting various images and concepts for editing. It’s possible that you might end up with a similar logo to someone else using the same logo library

Font Types to Consider

Fonts and types are an important part of logo design. Unless you prefer to go with a completely conceptual logo, your logo will incorporate your business name in a font. It’s important to consider using a unique font outside the basic set included in word processing or design software, since it’s likely that those fonts are used in many logos.

Type foundries develop fonts and types in many different styles and sizes. There are literally thousands of fonts available, and it’s likely that you will find a font that works well with your business name and concept. Fonts can be tested using custom text on the website, and you can download as many as you like for use in your design software.

When choosing a font for your logo, here are a few tips:

Legibility is the most important factor.
Choose a basic style for your font or type that matches your business: serif, san-serif, old style, modern, etc.
Consider where you will be using the font. Make sure it looks good in print and online.
Make sure your chosen font has all characters available, and multiple sizes.
If your logo uses more than one font, choose types that have similar shapes.
If your business name has multiple words, consider bolding or coloring each differently.

Designing a logo is an important task in the branding of your business. A well-designed logo will be simple, but convey the qualities and ideas of your business to your customers. Your logo will appear everywhere that your business goes: brochures, business cards, banners, sponsorship materials, etc. Keep that in mind when developing your design.

Do you have any tips or ideas that have worked when designing your own logo? Let us know in the comments!

The 3 Finer Points of Quality Brochures

Garlak — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:04:41 +0000

Do you have brochures? If so, then you’re definitely moving in the right direction — though there’s always room for progress! However, if you don’t have brochures already in your business, chances are good that it’s because you haven’t really found a way to create brochures that get attention. Like other forms of advertising, brochures are downright vital and key to building a great business. Even if you’re talking about trying to build an online business, you will still get a lot of value from brochures.

Yet a lot of people that don’t have a background in graphic design have a hard time getting quality brochures that actually work. Thankfully, it’s not really that difficult to build an effective brochure — there’s just three points that you need to keep in mind.

First and foremost, you will need to make sure that your brochure is easy to navigate. That means that the graphic elements of style should be present, but not overwhelming. People will still need to read the brochure to figure out the highlights of what you’re trying to offer them.

From here, your brochure needs to be on good paper. It’s tempting to just go with the most inexpensive paper choice, but you send a message to your prospects that your business isn’t as serious to you as it should be. This can turn away people that would have actually purchased form you if you had made a serious investment in the quality of the brochure that you send out. Sometimes when we think that we have a layout that’s worth sending out, it can help to have a colleague or a close friend check it out — they can often catch things that you might have missed, like spelling errors or two colors that just don’t match up right.

Finally, you will need to make sure that you really spend time checking over the entire layout of the brochure as a whole. Yes, this is something that you touched on in the first step, but the final step should really be devoted to finishing. Brochures sell, inform, educate, and they do one thing above all others: they build a connection between your prospects and your company. If people feel a connection and a true desire to help them, and they will be much more receptive to hearing about what products and services that you offer. It just makes sense to take steps to build a winning brochure, and if you follow the steps in this guide, theres no way that you won’t get that!

25 Amazing Photo-Camera Icons

Garlak — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 23:28:50 +0000

We all have many folders on our computers with photos. Most of us have usual folder icons, but there are few people who love to have shiny folders. I collected best photo-camera icons for you, and you can use them for free. They are really good, I used some of them. Also all icons all linked to its source, so you can check more if you want.

1. Camera, Photography icon

Photo Collection - Graphics Arts, Amazing Designs and more » Freebies

1,000 Business Cards for Free from 1800Postcards.com!

Sticker Printing Can Cost Much Less Than You Expected — Find Out How!

4 Tools for Creating a Logo

The 3 Finer Points of Quality Brochures

25 Amazing Photo-Camera Icons

20 Beautiful Photoshop Brushes That Will Make Your Work In Photoshop Easier

35 Really Creative Music Icons

15 Fantastic Horor Fonts

50 Beautiful Examples Of Poppy Photography

30 Beautiful Sunset Photos