A designer’s portfolio is like an audition for the job. You have to show your best work. In the design world, instead of submitting a cover letter and resume, you submit a cover letter and show examples from your portfolio. When you go in for an interview, your portfolio is basically the star, the focus.
You [...]
Design Portfolio Do’s and Don’ts
WSJ Editor Says Print Advertisers Are Returning
With the economy now officially in a recession, the outlook for print advertising budgets looks grim. But according to Robert Thomson, managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, advertisers are “slowly returning.” Thomson told the Reuters Media Summit in New York: “You’re starting to see them emerge in the sunlight after this period of darkness.” [...]
Do’s and Don’ts of Blog Design
If you’ve got a Web site for your business, or even a personal Web site, it’s easy to think that a blog will be no problem to build – you’ll just copy your Web site. But that’s not the best way to go. With pro bloggers out there, you’ll need to design your blog to [...]
5 Tips that Will Improve Your Business Card
I’ve got well over 100 printed business cards. And looking them over, I thought I should create some tips from the ones that stand out from the rest. Here’s what the best business cards of the bunch do differently from the others.
1. They have colors or use colored card stock. This isn’t too hard to [...]
Market Today, Get Paid Tomorrow
I’m not sure whose idea it was for publishing and creative professionals to do work “on spec” before getting a job, but I’ll betcha it wasn’t a creative pro! It was probably a greedy CEO who didn’t want to pay for something that he might later regret. According to Answers.com, “spec” has been used to [...]
Measurable Marketing Helps Create an Effective Marketing Plan
When you decide you need to redo your marketing strategy, what do you do first? I hope you create a detailed marketing plan. Fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants when marketing won’t get you very far. You’ll never know if your marketing strategies have been successful if you don’t have a plan in place to measure your efforts against. So [...]
SmartAds Ruining Your Online Videos
The latest idea of how to market to people online? Inserting ads into empty spaces of online videos. Keystream, a California-based company, launched the SmartAd November 10, which is “an SaaS platform that enables publishers and advertisers with falling ad revenues to start inserting advertisement overlays into Web videos right into its ‘empty spaces,’ meaning [...]
Numbers in Advertising: Effective Even When Untrue
A study in the Journal of Consumer Research suggests that when consumers see numbers, especially higher numbers that are related to a positive product experience, like higher mega pixels on a digital camera, they are more apt to buy that product.
The study, conducted at a Chinese university with students, found that there’s a gap between [...]
Beware of Advertising Scams
When you’re first starting out in your business, it’s easy to jump at whatever advertising opportunities come your way. Discount magazine ad? Sign me up! Free month of radio ads when you buy one month? Where do I sign?
But you have to research all advertising opportunities. If the medium doesn’t have your target audience or [...]
