Is it REALLY a brochure you need?

15th December 2009 by Frank Norman

Design Inc receive many requests for brochure design. This is down to two main factors:

  1. we are specialists in brochure design
  2. we invest in SEO, specifically for ‘brochure design’ and for ‘website design’

One interesting statistic however is that approximately 50% of people requesting brochure design do not actually need a brochure. They may want one to be designed, but they certainly do not need one. It just may be it’s the first thing they thought of.

One of the first questions any design & marketing agency should ask the customer here is “What do you really want your brochure to do?”

Of course, there are many answers including;

“…to bring business in.”

“…advertise a new product range.”

“…provide a back up to our sales force.”

“…inform my customers about the company.

The team at Design Inc delve further. We want to work out whether the brochure route is the most appropriate for the campaign. This research includes finding out about:

The recipients – is there a suitable list to send the brochures to? What sort of companies/people are they?
The industry – what approach is expected? What is frowned upon?
The competition – what is the competition doing? What makes our client different?

From here, we can work out the true options for our clients. Don’t get me wrong, often a brochure is the correct medium, but sometimes alternate approaches may be more appropriate:

  • - direct mail
  • - website
  • - SEO / PPC campaign
  • - advertising campaigns
  • - leaflet design
  • - exhibitions
  • - sponsorship
  • - face to face presentations

Check out our portfolio to see these alternatives.

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Private Jet Charter and Aviation Marketing

4th December 2009 by Dan Gilbert

Since Design Inc first took flight 13 years ago we have provided design services for many aviation clients. This includes design services for major aircraft manufacturers, aerospace engineers, systems and software providers as well as airline operators and private jet charter brokers. Specifically, our jet charter marketing services have helped global companies in proposition development, messaging, content development and creative branding work.

All our aviation clients look to us for integrated, targeted and specialist design & marketing for their spend. Click here to view some of our aviation brochure designs, jet charter website designs and general aerospace marketing collateral.

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The lie of the land

4th December 2009 by Dan Gilbert

The science of experience
Whilst every brand is unique, navigation of the market landscape in which a company operates will always benefit from familiarisation. Picture for a moment the rallying co-driver shouting instructions to their driver so that he can concentrate on driving – what they do best, according to what’s around the next corner. And not having to look at the map!

Working with an agency that has driven the course before has many benefits. No nasty surprises. No schoolboy errors. No time wasted on duplicated briefing. The agency adds value in terms of experience – what works, what doesn’t in that specific market.

These learnings are applied to the strategy, the creative as well as the delivery and measurement mechanisms of a project. Allowing greater focus and genuine innovation within the experience-based parameters of what will work and what won’t or can’t.

Our portfolio pages now group together some of our main market specialisations:

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What is social media, and what are the benefits?

3rd December 2009 by Dan Gilbert

The power of social media cannot be ignored. More and more it’s becoming crucial to create a social network to build awareness about you and your company and engage with your present and potential customers.

Services, products and expert opinion within your organisation should be showcased as widely as possible and promoted by strategic use of the main social media cornerstones such as LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter and blogging. Doing so will create a powerful and integrated cross media campaign message, which in turn will have both SEO & PR benefits in this new ‘Attention Age’.

Social media marketing can be used for:

• Announcing a new service or special offer

• Addressing media related issues regarding you or your company

• Strengthening your brand and raising your profile

• Promoting new advertising campaigns online or offline

• Launching your new logo and brand identity/strategy

• Guiding your network to your newly designed website

• Support a new direct mail and email marketing campaign message

Social Internet Marketing you can do:

• Answering questions within LinkedIn will raise your profile as an expert in your/your companies field

• Ensuring your LinkedIn profile is 100% full of informative and ‘keyword rich’ content

• Enter regular company/industry comment in your blog, link that to Twitter and sign up for alerts. A great way of getting free advertising on the web

• Always quickly respond to comments posted within your blog

• Create an ‘entertaining/viral’ presentation by yourself and post it on YouTube, and then promote/share it through your network

This is the least any company/individual should be doing as part of their internet marketing strategy, and should you need any assistance with any aspect of social media management, you know where we are!

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iPhone Apps for the Creative Designer

25th November 2009 by Frank Norman

Many designers – both Mac and PC based – have been taken with Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch.

iPhone for Creative Designers

iPhone - iDeal for Creative Designers

There is no denying that there are many different applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. But how many of these are useful to those of us involved in the creative industry?

Below we feature four iPhone apps that may be of use to graphic designers and those in creative industries. Some looked to be useful organisational tools, others we thought might help inspire or motivate creativity, whilst others we have included simply because captured our imagination.

Whilst researching this, in many cases we found that there was more than one App which performed a similar function. We have simply listed the ones which appealed to us most. So it may be advisable, when at the iPhone App store, to do a search for similar Apps, as there may be one which is better suited for one purpose over another.

Anyway, in no particular order, here are four design Apps that we liked the look of from the iPhone App Store.

Palettes is an iPhone App for creating colour schemes. With Palettes, it is possible to sample colours from websites, iPhone photo album images or other colour schemes. It will import and export colour palettes to and from Adobe Photoshop and supports a number of colour modes, including RGB, HSV, HSL and CMYK.

There is also a Lite version of Palettes, which does not cost anything, but has some features removed (such as importing and exporting palettes from Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and other programs.

Another colour-based app, which functions by providing a swatch library and interactive colour wheel to help enable creatives to select, showcase and identify colours. Colour Expert includes various Pantone swatches, web safe and HTML colours. It is also possible to add custom colours and email Adobe Swatch Exchange (ASE) files.

PhotoWizard is a photo fixer. It can auto fix the under exposure photos taken from iPhone camera. A manual tool is also available to manually adjust brightness, contrast and color saturation. This App supports  five filters;

  • oil paint effect
  • fish-eye & anti-fish-eye effect
  • sketch
  • block waves
  • monochrome

We know there are many more useful applications and new ones being created every day. We would love to hear from other designers regarding any other apps they think worth mentioning.

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