A fun, quick read. This book takes a glipmse into the lucrative art industry of the 80’s. I’ve always been a big Warhol fan, and this book is a wild ride in the life of art dealer Richard Polsky and his quest to add an original Warhol to his personal collection.

The book opens with Polsky explaining about how he’s set aside $50,000 to put towards finding his perfect Warhol… Maybe I’m in the wrong industry…

The story weaves in and out of the craziness of the highbrow 80s art society and all the wackiness that came with being a part of that crowd. The book reads like a collection of asides put together just to illustrate how lucrative a task buying a specific piece of art can be.

Very entertaining for those who may have an interest in art, or for those who just want a good, fun, quick read with a good number of laughs thrown in.

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In the early days of the Internet, only big businesses and the rich could afford an attractive and functional website. Today hosting prices have come down dramatically allowing most anyone to have their own domain. An online presence can be an effective marketing and sales tool for any business. I was at a design conference a while back, hosted by Andy Anderson - one of the top 40 designers in the U.S. and he stated that it’s just not smart planning for any small or home-based business to not have a website.After careful consideration I see his point.An effectively designed website can be a huge asset to any business. Here’s just a few facts to consider:• Establish Credibility - Just as a listing in the Yellow Pages shows you are serious about your business, having your own company domain reinforces your legitimacy as a serious business. (According to IntelliQuest 68% of US web users shop online.) (ie. “yourname@yourbusiness.com”), while this may not seem like a huge benefit, personally I have a hard time taking a business seriously when they’re using a Yahoo! or Hotmail account for their business email.• Low cost for ’round the clock advertising - Your business may shut down at 5:00 p.m., but the Internet doesn’t. Having a web presence allows your business to be seen 24 hours a day• You can use your website to obtain feedback from customers.  It is easy to see what your customers respond to on the website, whether it’s by tracking the number of hits your site responds or by a poll catered to track more specific data.• Global Reach - There’s no cheaper way to get your business seen around the globe than by having a website. period.• Promote New Products or Services for Free - Once your site is up and running you’ve got a whole new medium to advertise any new products and servicesWe’re just touching the tip of the iceberg here on how your business can benefit from a well prepared website. Give me a call if you have more questions on how to get a site started for your business or have further questions about how a site can help your business grow.-c

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Back at the beginning of the year, I posted a pointer on my blog as to why successful businesses should have a regular newsletter. We’re approching the half way point of the year and I thought I’d re-touch on that issue. 

Any well thought out newsletter will only reflect a positive image to its readers, eventually turning them into your loyal customers. The desired result of any advertising piece is to bring customers to you, newsletters are no different. Think of them as entire publication focused on why you’re business stands tall above the rest.

For those of you who may be thinking that the costs associated with a newsletter may be unbearable, print costs are declining and technologies like direct mail get your message to your exact targeted audience, costing you less in waste in the form of overruns. You can even save more money in postage if you follow the Post Office’s rules for automation rates.

Still think it’s too much for your advertising budget? 

You can always test the waters with an emailable newsletter. With eNewsletters (such as this one), costs can be cheap to nearly free. In most cases, the only costs associated are your time (for generating quality content and putting together a tightly targeted email database) and a designer who knows how to build a quality newsletter template and implement your eNewsletter for you!

As for the benefits of having a newsletter for your business, refer to my posting on why your business or organization should have a newsletter!

3amdesignstudio.com/blog/?p=41

-c

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Many of us will be enjoying the upcoming long weekend at the beach somewhere, whether it’s at the favorite lakeside barbecue or the ocean - and with all the advances in photography (and the popularity of digital now) all of us want to take great pictures to help remember the special moments.Sand, Sand EverywhereSand at the beach is inevitable. Remember to keep lenses covered when not in use to reduce the chances of scratching your glass. Sand is also notorious for getting into any and every crevice imaginable, try to avoid leaving your camera in areas where sand may be blown or kicked up onto it (like a beach towel). The other big issue with sand is that the sun’s reflection from the sand can blow out the highlights in your pictures. If your camera has manual adjustment settings, you may want to stop down your exposure to slightly underexpose your image so your images aren’t washed out.ISO What?The ISO rating (for film and digital) refers to the film’s (or digital image sensor’s) sensitivity to light. The lower the number, more light is required to properly expose your image. For shooting at the beach, I’d recommend using ISO 100 (or slower if you can find it) film, or setting your digital camera to its lowest ISO setting. Unless it’s extremely overcast, you should have more than enough light to still use a fast shutter speed to catch all the action, and the slower ISO rating will help keep colors saturated and graininess to a minimum.Remember the Rule of ThirdsDon’t just line people up with the beach behind them, place subjects to one side with the shoreline filling up the rest of the frame. This makes for a more interesting photo while still making for a nice portrait.Foreground, Middleground, BackgroundTo add more depth and interest to your shots, try to include subjects of interest close up (like a beach ball, person, coconut, etc) in your foreground, a curvy palm tree in the middleground, and still include that beautiful sunset in the background. Don’t be afraid to let your main subject fill up a third or more of your frame.Gotcha!Not all pictures need to be posed. Don’t be shy when it comes to picture taking. Catch your friends playing volleyball, building a sand castle or just chatting it up.This is a great way to catch memories, not just picture after picture of your friends squinting at the camera and other cheesy poses.Enjoy the long weekend!

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With the costs of process color work on the decline (or maybe it’s just that fewer designers these days know the ins and outs of spot work), spot color seems to be more and more of a mystery to the average print designer.So what is the difference between spot and process color?

Process color, (or CMYK, or full color, or four-color, or photographic color - depending on your background and who you’re talking to) uses four ink colors to create full color spectrum. The inks used in this process are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (Key). These inks are semi-transparent when applied to the paper on a printing press and are combined in various densities to closely reproduce photographic (or natural) color.

I say “closely reproduce” because due to the color combinations available as well as the press operator’s eye for color (and the fact that the CMYK color spectrum is considerably smaller than gamut of color the human eye can interepret), it’s not always possible to get the exact color reproduction as you may see on your monitor, or from your inkjet printer.Spot color, on the other hand, includes only the color inks specified in your print document. For this method of print to work correctly, you must first specifiy your colors correctly in your document. This is most commonly done by specifying Pantone colors as “spots” in InDesign or Quark (and can be done in Illustrator and other applications as well).

Why print Spot instead of CMYK?Many businesses have certain spot colors assigned in their logos (for example, Mercer University’s branding colors are Pantone 158 and Black) to ensure that they are printed with consistency from printer to printer, project to project.Costs is a factor as well. It doesn’t make too much sense to pay for color when printing a letterhead… Only the two colors used in the branding piece are going to be used, no photography, etc. With these types of projects, it’s generally cheaper to print using the two spot colors instead of the more complicated four-color process (and color printing sometimes cannot reproduce Pantone colors).

The process of spot differs a little from full color printing as well. With spot printing, pre-pigmented opaque inks are used to print. So if your business’ branding piece used Pantone 300 (a light blue) and Pantone 032 (a bright orange), these color inks would be used on the printing press instead of the being built using the translucent CMYK inks.

So to recap, when to use spot vs. CMYK printing?

CMYK:When full color is preferred.

Spot:When creating a piece that uses only a company’s branding colors.
Cost.

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Again, it’s been a little longer than I would have liked since my last post, however things have been rather busy in the studio lately. My new family and I were cotemplating a move out of town, however, decided otherwise. I’ve also been working on a quite a number of projects. Since my last posting, I’ve left my day job and am now pursuing studio work full-time.

Running from meeting to meeting, doing a good deal more self-promotion and sales work has cut into my computer time, but it’s time I get back on the bloggin’ wagon and update the rest of my site as well.

Though I try to provide a good mix of advanced marketing and design tips, it never hurts to go back to your basics and remember the fundamentals. So this installment is all about the things we should know when beginning a design project, but may have forgotten after getting in our daily routines…

Know Your Colorspace

An oversight here can easily ruin any print project, or cause a web projects colors to look funny. Always work in CMYK for print projects and RGB for web work. For photography work that’s going to press, I’ve found it’s best to make the CMYK conversion after doing any image manipulation or color correction. For fine art reproduction, talk to your printer first, some printers prefer to do the conversion themselves.

Resolution, Resolution, Resolution

Just like the relevance of the three “L’s” of real estate establish property value, resolution determines the quality of your reproductions. When starting any project, know it’s final output and set your resolution accordingly. This is primarily in relation to working in Photoshop. If you’re producing a graphic that is to be used in a print project, 300 dpi is generally the minimum resolution you’d want to use. Once again though, it’s never a bad idea to check with the company that going to be doing the printing for you. For example, newsprint generally prints at a resolution of 150 dpi because the paper that’s used in newsprint won’t hold an image much clearer than that, at the opposite end of the spectrum, some fine art publications request resolutions as high as 600 dpi. There are also some oddball requests out there as well. One printer I work with for glicée work requires 302.6 dpi resolution. Why? I have no clue, but just goes to show, when in doubt, ask your output provider what they prefer. It’ll save you money and headaches in the long run.

Use the right Program

Simple. Use a photo editing program such as Photoshop for editing pictures. Use a page layout program like InDesign for publication layouts. Each program is catered to a certain type of work. Sure, you can lay out a brochure in Photoshop, but that’s not what the program was designed for and as such, you’ll be causing yourself to do more work to get the project done than if you did it in a page layout application such as Quark or InDesign. The same goes for logo work, this is Illustrator’s forté, not Photoshop’s. I’m always amazed at what designers try to do in Photoshop when it’s clearly not what the application was designed for.

Remember the Bleeds!

If your document has color that is supposed to run to the edge of the finished sheet, you need to make your artwork bigger than the actual finished size. For example, if you’re creating an 11 x 8.5″ trifold brochure that has a graphic taking up the entire background, your artwork should be 11.25 x 8.75″. The reasoning for this is that your printer will be printing your brochure on a piece of paper larger than 11 x 8.5″ and then cutting it down to size. The .25″ allowance is called a bleed and ensures that should the paper shift during the cutting process, there will be no white fringe at the edge of the paper.

Preflight, Package, Send

Probably the biggest faux pas I’ve seen from a disappointly large number of designers is submitting artwork without preflighting. All page layout programs worth having include a Preflight tool. Preflighting simply checks your document to make sure you’ve got all your art in the right colorspace, resolution, all fonts are either embedded or available for packaging (not copyright protected) and all links are up to date. Running a preflight on your document will instantly tell you if there are any problems with your files and what you need to do to fix them. Again, saving you time, money and headaches with your output provider. Packaging is done after preflighting. Packaging your document places a copy of your working page layout file, all included fonts and graphics as well as a .txt file containing any special instructions and your contact information in one folder. Essentially creating a copy of all your working documents in one location for you to stuff (or zip, depending on your platform preference) and send to your output provider.It may seem elementary to the seasoned professional, but in my experience working with other designers and marketers, these are the steps most often overlooked in many, many projects.

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