Top 7 Print tips

Most people who are not in the design/marketing business think printing is no big deal. We all have a printer at home right? How different can it be from that? Well, it’s quite different.  And here are some things you should consider.

The first step when getting your marketing materials printed is to talk to your printer. Tell them what you're hoping the final product to look like, let them know your budget, quantity and timeline. Often printers will have some ideas to help you, whether it's cost saving measures, different paper types, sizes, quality, coatings to name a few. They usually have a lot of great ideas. Once you've done this, let the fun part begin! Design it.

Once your material is designed there are a few things you should do before you send it to print. Here are some tips that may seem obvious, but very valid. 

1. Make sure you are not the only one looking it over. Get a 2nd (3rd or 4th) pair of eyes on it. Many people are blind to their own mistakes, and 9 times out of 10 that second person will find something wrong.
2. When you check it over make sure you zoom in. Sometimes objects/text gets shifted slightly. You're spending the money on printing, you want it to look perfect.
3. Print it out. For some reason it is easier to spot mistakes on paper rather than on screen. But know that your home printer colours will not exactly match the professional printers. If you think colour may be an issue, make sure you get a printer proof.
4. USE SPELL CHECK. You'd be surprised how many spelling/grammar mistakes go un-noticed
5. Read it aloud. This will also help with spelling/grammar, and how it flows
6. Most of all, don't rush it. That's when mistakes happen. You want to give yourself some extra time to find those errors. You also have to remember that your printer may need extra time for cutting, ink drying, etc.  They are also working with many customers, so your job will most likely be in a printer queue, or line up. Depending on how big of a project (and how much you're paying them) they may be able to bump you up a couple spots. Be your printers friend, and work with them like it’s a partnership, it will get you further, believe us!
7. Always remember if you approve it and there is a mistake, it is your fault.

Insert clever title here. This is about colours

When starting a project colour is a major influence in the design.  It conveys a lot more than the average consumer thinks about.  For example when designing a movie poster for an action or horror movie you would not likely use pastels or lighter colours, but deeper darker colours like red. Colours like font can create a feeling as we wrote about last time.  Here is a movie poster Dragon Creative did for a documentary about heath and diet.

So let’s talk about what some colours can make you feel unconsciously.  Warm colours are like orange, red and yellow are stimulating and positive.  Remember that big red SALE signs when you were at the mall?  That was no coincidence.  The retailer is trying to get your senses going and make you stimulated about their sale.  Red is a colour that has the quickest understanding of all colours.  This means that you can read and understand a red sign quicker than any other colour.

Blue is a favourite colour of men and represents security and trust that companies want you to see in them. Blue is used often with banks and companies where there is a high level of trust involved.  There are several Canadian banks that use blue as their primary colour

All the above being said some colours evoke more than one feeling.  For example Black (the absence of colour) can be sophisticated, elegant or mysterious, but it can also symbolize death.

If you use black combined with gold it can provide an exclusive, expensive feeling, but if you use black with orange or lime green than it creates a Halloween, or spoke feeling.

Can you think of an example where a colour has influenced you?

Dragon Creative works hard to know our colours and we will make sure to create an image and positioning logo or design right for your business. 

Give us a call!

Lets Talk About Fonts Baby..

So as promised we are going to talk about fonts in today’s blog.  After over 9 years of design work we have learned a thing or two about fonts and we are going to share some of those insights with you here today.

People can read simple type faced fonts faster than stylized type face. When trying to drive traffic to a web page this type of info can come in handy.  Fact people look at a web page on average for 3 seconds to see if it is what they are looking for.

Another thing that helps people read quicker is the spacing; a lot of people do not realize that a little extra space between letters can really help the reader.

However a fancy type face can really convey to your customers you’re positioning.  Fancy font should in our opinion be used sparingly not as body text.  Knowing this if two fonts of different feels are paired together the end result can be something very special.

Below is a good example of how to mix fonts.

In this example we see light and bold fonts, compact fonts, and wide, as well as one stylized font.  If we used the stylized font “Amazing” the body would be much more difficult to read.

When using these different fonts they help to draw the eye to different areas of text using this technique is great for points you wish to emphasize.

Where have you seen some examples of mixed fonts?

New Logo For You

This week on at Dragon Creative we did some design work for a local entrepreneur opening a chain of Greek restaurants. We got a lot of artistic freedom from our customer at the start of the process and we were very happy about that!

The gentleman informed us of a few things he would like on his logo and we were off!  Rachel started off with some great drawings that had tons of personally.  The cartoons really jumped out at you and made you want to go in and grab some delicious chicken. 

We wanted to find a font that really was bold and represented the logo well.  Sounds simple right?  Well it did take some time and it was more challenging than even we originally anticipated.  After searching through and screening we found the font that really complemented the logo well.

Now as stated earlier the customer gave us a lot of artistic freedom to create the logo for him.  This actually presented its own set of challenges.  We had to actually ask quite a few qualifying questions so that we did not design in the totally wrong direction with the new logo.  No big deal here at Dragon Creative we were happy to do it.  (It is after all the Dragon Standard).

So we have told you about two entirely different customers, one that was very hands on though the creative process and one that was very hands off. 

What one would you prefer?

Next week we are going to talk about different fonts and where they work well and why.  Below is the logo we created for the Greek restaurant.  

Tell us what you think!