Money can be easily wasted on vehicle signs. Fear of leaving something out is the biggest killer when designing your vehicle signs. The builder is always the easiest to pick on so I’ll use them as an example. The builder come’s to me and says “I want some signs on my van and this is what I want: My logo, phone number, Licence number, fax number, web address, email address, a tag line, and a bit about what I do for example *House Extensions, *Bathroom renovations, *Kitchen Installs, *Garages, *Carports, *Floor Tiling, *Roof Tiling, *Plastering……..” You get the picture. IT IS SIMPLY NOT GOING TO BE READ on a vehicle. It is too much information to be taken in by other road users. The most effective designs for vehicles are those that are geared towards Impact or brand awareness.

Bigger isn’t alway’s better but it can be more effective. Having your logo as large as possible is obviously an effective way of drawing attention especially if it is placed to compliment the shape of the vehicle. We have all heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”. A large image can also have that head turning ability if used right. Smaller well placed logo’s and designs although may not have the same impact can also send a lasting message especially for businesses who have large fleets of vehicles all incorporating the same design. Something as simple as using the same stripe in the same colour with a small logo can be a powerful message on a fleet of 100 vehicles.

The emphasis I am trying to make here is to keep it simple. Use your space wisely. Dont panic if you dont have 15 different points of contact on the side of your car. Dont panic if you didn’t list every single product you have on your van door. As long as your logo is on there and maybe one point of contact eg a website OR phone number and it is well designed you will get a better result than clutter will.

I don’t like to use the phrase “graphic design is expensive” but I hear it a lot from some of my clients. I like to think that GOOD design is an investment not an expense. It is my job to give my clients the best value I can when it comes to graphic design. Graphic design is one of the hardest industries to estimate pricing in due to the vast variations and expectations from different people and organisations. I can assure the public that most designers even my competitors genuinely want to impress their clients and do a good job for them, so first up we need to keep in mind that your designer isnt “ripping you off”. In saying that there are many consumers walking away unhappy with what their designer has given them and the price they paid. What causes this? Is it always the designers fault? What can you do to make sure you get the most out of your designer for a fair price that both you and your designer are happy with. Here is a couple of idea’s.

1 BE PREPARED.
*Get a pen and paper and write a list of things you think you will need the designer to take into consideration, eg. If you need a logo designed, make a list of the major things you will be using your logo for. Obviously business cards, letterheads, brochures etc are the first things that come to mind but also think of things for example “I need a logo designed which also has to be engraved into a piece of steel and still look right” A good designer should know the basic process (or at least find out) and be able to supply the correct format. A good designer should also be able to guide you as to limitations for such things for example there is no point at all designing a full colour logo which will often need to be printed one colour, faxed or stamped, but that same full colour logo would look fantastic in print and web applications if that was what it was intended for. In short tell your designer what it will be used for before they design it not after.

*Think about colours. Using colours that coincide with your industry are just as important as choosing colours that you are attracted to.

* Have all images, photo’s, illustrations, logo’s ready and labelled. Most designers charge by the hour and they will charge for searching for stock images and they will charge to redraw logo’s. If you have logo’s you need on a flyer or card etc supply them in a usable format usually a vector or high res file. High resolution photo’s are always best and even better when taken by a professional photographer who knows what they are doing. Good photo’s are often what makes good design and unfortunately graphic designers don’t have that magic button which “fixes” bad photo’s, it can be done sometimes but once again your designer will charge. www.istockphoto.com is a fantastic resource for finding professional royalty free images.

* This may scare some people but if you find a designer that you trust, tell them your budget. A good designer will want to give you the best work they can do for the money you want to spend, after all the way I’ve always operated is to make every design worth putting in your portfolio. Quite often they can come in under budget with a job your extremely happy with.

2 IDEA’S AND RESEARCH
* Look at other businesses (take photo’s if you can). Remember or write down things you like about that business. Keep flyers, business cards and brochures that have inspiring layouts. A good designer will never copy them but it helps dramatically when they can see the sort of theme you are attracted to, they can then use it to be inspired to create an original artwork tailored to you. When doing this research you should be starting to think about the theme or look you think your business would benefit from. Try not to give your designer too many TOTALLY different examples because that means your designer has to design MORE by giving you totally different mock ups.

* Keep samples of colours that interest you.

* Talk to employee’s, friends, family and your customers about idea’s. Remember what you think is “pretty” may not always be best for your business.

3 THE PROCESS
* Ask to be updated. Usually a designer will show you a progression after an agreed amount of hours of work. This eliminates the chance of a designer producing fifty hours of work only to find it is nothing like what you had in mind.

* Make sure all the key elements are well thought out before giving the designer the go ahead. If you change your mind half way through, the designer is still going to charge for the time they have spent on it already.

* When you get a proof for a design study it carefully. Make a list of all the changes you would like to see, so the designer can make them all in one go rather than a change here and a change there.

4 IN SUMMARY
* No one knows your business as well as you do. Be prepared and you will save money. Don’t be frightened to tell your designer if you don’t like what you see, just try to do it early on in the process. Lastly and most importantly be nice to your designer and they’ll give you their best work…
seeya in a couple of days

A good client of ours came in last week and told us a story that surprised us a little. She had been in a networking group who every month put together a package to either mail out or distribute in person to prospective clients. This package is basically a bunch of flyers that go inside a booklet which is supplied by the major sponsor. As usual the four or five small businesses print their flyers up (on a budget) and expect them to be placed in the package. This particular time there was a problem. The owner of the major sponsors business which is quite a small business in itself had rejected some of the flyers on the grounds that they need to be high quality glossy flyers. Now I can understand if some of these guys had thrown together a black and white dodgy old photocopy but upon viewing them they were actually very well designed pieces which were printed onto top of the range 100% recycled paper. They looked fantastic in my opinion. Although nice and white you could still see the beautiful grains of the paper and the full colour print was pulsating with vibrant colours.

Considering many of the top designers in the country will now recommend or specify uncoated papers to their clients makes me realise just how far behind the times some business people are especially when they make calls as the guy above did. I work in the print industry and when I see a business card come through production these days which is gloss laminated it screams “old fashioned” to me. Many top designers are using UV coatings and the likes which can look great if used properly but although it has become the latest trend so too has recycled uncoated papers which is quickly overtaking the UV market which may be short lived unless it tackles its environmental issues.

It is important to remember that any printed product which is laminated, celloglazed or UV coated is not able to be recycled, so we should really be trying to avoid it. As any good designer knows a good design and good copy will always be the selling point. Adding the “printing bling” such as these coatings and laminates are simply aesthetic. Why not spend the extra money you would spend on the “bling” on something that will really make a difference to your print products and thats your designer. I wont go into it here but it amazes me every day that people will bargain to get the cheapest possible design price but are happy to fork out plenty of extra money for the “printing bling”

Remember SHINY doesnt sell…. good design does
seeya in a couple of days

The human race is a lazy, impatient bunch when it comes to reading or taking in information. They want their info, they want it now and they only want to see what they need. How many times have you read or heard the saying “keep it simple stupid” yet we continue to see business owners, managers and marketing professionals flood their advertisng colateral with as much information as they can possibly fit. As small as they are I am constantly asked to fit more and more information on the business cards I design until it is jam packed full of copy.

Many years ago a business cards sole purpose was to give someone your contact details. These days they are used by businesses to try and tell the customer their life story, list every possible product or service they sell, a photo of their van, business phone, mobile phone, ABN number, licence number, fax number, web address, email, myspace address, building address, qualifications and dont forget to make the logo as big as possible, no bigger, bigger still. I mean really….. do you think your potential customer is going to contact you over your competitors because you have more information on your business cards than what your competitors do.

As I said above people are lazy. If they are confronted with a business card or advertising that is loaded with excessive information it is more than likely that none of the info on it is going to be read at all, its too hard, if they dont know where to look to get the most important piece of info within about 1/2 a second they will skip the lot and move on to the next ad or card.

Im quite lucky as I have access to top notch machinery to print my own high quality business cards. I conducted my own experiment by designing two sets of cards. The first was our usual card which had all of our contact details, some nice pics of our equipment on the front and a list of services on the back. The card looked quite nice as far as Im concerned (and Im pretty fussy). The second card simply had our logo very small in one corner our corporate colour as a background and our details small in the other corner which consisted of a name, phone number and email address. 250 of each card was printed and they were placed on the reception desk in our show room right next to each other in their own business card holder. As I said above both designs looked nice but not surprisingly the cards with less info were the ones which were getting taken from the desk, in fact we had to print more of them before even ten were taken from the other pile. The reason behind it was that it was easier for them to find the info they wanted at a glance.

Next time you have your designer tell you “I think there is too much copy” take their word for it and dont be frightened that you cant tell your customer on your cards everything that you do, you may be surprised that “less is more” bet you’ve heard that one before too….

seeya in a couple of days……