Sep
30
Advertising through magazines is staggering nowadays. It has become a major part of mass media where it targets a much bigger consumer base. It is believed that advertising in newspapers and magazines return investments much better than advertising on the web media. By advertising in the newspapers and magazines, companies can target those people who do not have access to the net, since not all people are tech-savvy. Both magazine and newspaper advertising has a common goal. To persuade those who may become customers who will use their products or services. Although both medium share a common goal, their effectiveness when it comes to business marketing varies.
The difference between Newspaper and Magazine Advertisement
Newspapers have been around for centuries and they have been a consistent part of every day hold up of most people. Newspaper ads are the oldest form of advertising. Advertising started with newspaper ads and today has grown so much that even internet advertising has become a reality. The good thing about the newspaper ads is that though the costs have increased tremendously, they still are reasonably priced as compared to other form of advertising.
Newspaper ads are printed and priced on per square basis. The cost of color ads is higher as compared to black and white ads. Ads that have color as well as design or graphical representation or a photo in them cost more. Large color ads with designs are the costliest newspaper ads.
Magazine ads are also very good way of advertising and marketing. Since many people read magazines, it helps capture a larger audience. It caters specific market; designer clothes, high performance cars, luxury living, etc. It can directly feature a product or services of a specific firm. Magazine advertising can also be viewed as an advice giver, and their potential for pushing a product is huge. It can market a product to millions of people through recommendation in the magazine.
In a magazine, the front cover ad and the rear cover ads cost more than the ads that are printed in the middle pages. In a magazine, poster size ads can also be printed, but are costlier than the normal as well as the cover ads. Magazine ads are generally colored ad. Hence the minimum cost would be the same as the maximum cost a color news paper ad.
Things to consider in choosing the right Designer
Selecting the right man for the right job at the right time is an extremely difficult task. Clients, who are looking for graphic designers to do their work, often do not know how to select the appropriate graphic designer. Since the selection of a graphic designer is a very daunting and tiring process, clients tend to get frustrated and select the graphic designer they can easily locate.
There are several ways a clients could go about searching for a graphic designer. Some of these include: 1. Checking design companies and freelance graphic designers. 2. Contacting established companies and their hired graphic designers. 3. Asking your business associates and relatives who have previously hired a graphic designer. 4. Posting free classified ads on online design forums.
How to Choose a Professional Graphic Designer
Many clients have difficulty choosing a graphic designer, simply because they aren’t sure what to look for. Here are some things to consider when choosing a professional graphic designer:
• A strong portfolio. The imagery should be memorable as well as appropriate for each project. For instance, an ad directed at senior citizens should not include very small type.
• A strong sense of marketing. Pretty images are a dime a dozen. The designer should be able to clearly articulate the goal of each piece and how it reached its audience. Good design communicates and motivates; it does not merely decorate. Designers should be able to tell you how their work translated into higher sales figures, greater attendance at clients’ events, or some other concrete result of their work.
• Excellent business skills. A good designer stays on top of all the details of your project and makes the best use of your time and money.
• Formal education in graphic design, not just software skills. Graphic design is an art and craft with foundational principles that have a direct impact on the effectiveness of printed communication. A designer’s software skills have little impact on their ability to translate your brand.
• Personable and professional demeanor. Since you choose whom you’ll work with, hire someone you’ll enjoy partnering with and who provides professional service.
While it can be helpful if a designer has experience with the particular product you envision, it is not always necessary. Good design skills can transcend most media and good designers will tell you up-front if they aren’t right for the job.
So why choose a Professional Ad Design over a Free Lousy Design?
It’s simple! It’s quality that matters, not quantity!
Most magazines and newspapers offer a somewhat attractive scheme to their clients. Their In-house designers offer clients free ad design to allure them to take the offer. The risk is, since it is a free ad design, quality is an issue. Poor quality produces poor results.
Whereas, professional designers understand the client’s financial commitment to their design project. They are skilled in selecting the appropriate and effective strategies. Quality and efficiency are key factors. By using a professional designer to create ideal concepts for your business, both time and expense are greatly reduced and great results expected.
A good advertisement takes part in building the legacy and credibility of a business. So don’t let people with “some software skills” play around your business. Hire a PROFESSIONAL!
If you want success, let’s talk!
Our most experienced and highly qualified professional designers at One Source Graphics are more than happy to talk about your business! Our passion for quality and dedication to our work assures 110% satisfaction guaranteed! The success of your business is our success!
To learn more about One Source Graphics’ design and Advertising services, Please contact us today for a no obligation consultation
eMail: tonymack@onesourcegraphics.org
Phone : 1-800-974-5580
Incoming search terms:
Sep
21
We read when we are online. It is a very simple statement, but we read an awful lot of text and we do so without realizing that much thought goes into the design of the text that we are reading.
Just as there are trends in the imagery, use of color and other design elements, the actual fonts and type that make up the words go through trends, too.
Smudgy, droplet laden greys and greyish blacks in lettering symbolize the gritty, deeply urban or post apocalyptic/industrial grittiness of image that has been popular for a time with Gen X’ers. There are incredible and infinite font and designer alphabet possibilities these days.
These fonts are fine for logos, site names, titling, headers, labels and other limited uses, but there are limitations to fonts that are acceptable for presenting larger blocks of text. Thus, the trend for presenting straight text is actually toward traditional type fonts.
Another trend is toward less clutter on a web page. Instead of crowded and cluttered pages, a single statement or concept, with “billboard” style of presentations of larger and bolder lettering and more empty space to make the main statement is one trend. The range is from large to huge letters that sometimes go off the edge of the page.
Layering is another trend, where the main set of letters is translucent, allowing another set of letters, backgrounds, 3D textures or imagery to show through.
Typographic or font face implementation is another trend that is based in the @font face CSS rule. This rule allows the freedom to use fonts that are not on the end user’s machines. In other words, more and more fonts, with nuances and more customizing are now available to cross platforms, browsers, and to get past the limited font selections on people’s home computers by using server resident CSS technology. Typekitis one of the @font face CSS based services that allows designers to choose from a vastly wider variety of fonts, and to focus on typography effects that will cross any barriers to provide universal readability.
Continue Reading: Click here
[color_box title="About the Author" variation="primary_blue"]Elizabeth M. Young
I promised myself that I would write a blog every day for a year. This started last November, and I haven’t stopped since. I publish most of my rough work at Open Salon as “Zumalicious”, at WordPress as Xenonlit, and at Blogger as Zumalicious at Blogger.
I’ve decided to put just my poetry and fiction here, as titles permit. I hope that you enjoy my work!
I am a former Air Force Officer, very sick and retired on disability, and have nothing but time to write. I have been an artist, and have completed some serious works. When I figure all of this out, I’ll put some pictures up.
[/color_box]
Incoming search terms:
Sep
06
Photoshop is one of the most versatile tools available for the graphic designer or artist. Many people don’t realize how truly powerful the program can be when it comes to altering and enhancing images, but the fact is that most commercial images have been touched by Photoshop at some point. When it comes to using the application, well, anyone who has ever opened the program knows that Photoshop’s versatility comes with a somewhat steep learning curve. Fortunately, Photoshop tutorials are available for those who would like to learn how to use the program but need a little bit of extra help.
Here are some of our favorite Photoshop tutorials suitable for beginners pulled from the TutorialBlog.org archives:
Photoshop Basic Tools Overview
Photoshop Tutorial: How to Fake a Holga Photograph
Changing the Eye Color of Your Photograph
Make Repeating Seamless Tile Backgrounds with Photoshop
Photo Retouching – Skin Photoshop Tutorial
Create an Ornate Website Header Photoshop Tutorial
Learning how to use Photoshop is a process that takes time and focus. Tutorials are meant to start the beginner where he or she belongs — in the beginning. The biggest hurdle beginners have when learning how to use Photoshop is avoiding jumping ahead and trying more advanced techniques. Just like learning to drive, you can’t successfully pull off advanced techniques if you don’t learn the basics first.
Beginner tutorials will start by explaining the overall scope of the program, including what can be accomplished and what each tool is capable of doing. Familiarizing yourself with the tools is the first step towards crafting a versatile piece of art. If it feels like the process is going slower than you’d like it to, remember to just breathe and have patience. The slower you go, the more your brain will take in, and the faster you’ll actually learn Photoshop inside and out.
James Mowery is a computer geek that writes about technology and related topics. To read more blog posts by him, go to laptop computers.
Read Source Article: Beginning Photoshop Tutorials: Start Here
Incoming search terms:
Sep
05
How to Create a Hover Effect Using CSS
CSS / Design & Media / HTML / Web Pages & Web Graphics / Websites, IT & Software Posted by Tony Mack
/
0 comments
Hover effects, rollovers, super-fancy link styles — regardless of what you call them — are a great way to get extra bang for your buck when putting together a website.
Today we’ll be learning how to add a unique and creative feature to your website’s links using CSS. Using CSS Pseudo Classes, we can alter every aspect of a link when a visitor “hovers” over it, or puts their cursor over the link.
Change a Hovered link’s background color with CSS:
a.link1:link { color:black; background-color:white; }
a.link1:visited { color:black; background-color:white; }
a.link1:hover { color:white; background-color:black; }
a.link1:active { color:black; background-color:white; }
In the above example, the link class is set to “link1.” Text with this class will appear as solid black text. Once the link is hovered, it will appear as white text with a black background like so: my super awesome class link1.
Using CSS to change the background of hovered links can have a striking effect. Try setting the background-color to “yellow” for a CSS highlighter effect, or using two different background colors like so: my super awesome class link2
You can create CSS hover effects using just about any combination of CSS styles you can imagine. Pure text effects can take advantage of “text-decoration” effects such as strikethrough and underline; or change the font color, font-family, or font-style.
More advanced CSS hover effects can also be used to simulate buttons without having to create image rollovers or using any javascript.
Other CSS Hover effects to try:
a.link3:link { text-decoration: line-through; }
a.link3:visited { text-decoration: line-through; }
a.link3:hover { text-decoration: none; }
a.link4:link { font-family:Georgia; font-weight:bold;}
a.link4:visited { font-family:Georgia; font-weight:bold;}
a.link4:hover { font-family:Georgia; font-style:italic;}
a.link5:link { padding: 2px; border: 1px solid #2F818D; }
a.link5:visited { padding: 2px; border: 1px solid #2F818D; }
a.link5:hover { padding: 2px; border: 1px solid #efefef; background-color:#2F818D; }
And here is how each link class will look with the hover effect in place:
The “a.link3? class will output the text with a strickthrough effect when a user hovers over it. The “a.link4? class will change the font face entirely to Georgia (or any other web font you specify).
And finally, “a.link5? is a more advanced CSS hover effect that combines borders and background-colors to simulate a simple button.
One thing to keep in mind when creating a CSS hover effect for your links is that unless your new link class specifically overwrites the styles of your global link class you may have some unexpected effects.
You will notice that each of the above sample links has an underline when you hover over the text even though an underline is not specified in the link class a:hover style. This is because the global link style of TutorialBlog.org has an underline applied to the psuedo class a:hover.
In order to remove global styles from your new link class simply over ride the original CSS. For instance adding “text-decoration:none;” to the CSS will remove the underline from any of the above hover effects like so:
a.link6:link { font-family:Georgia; font-weight:bold;}
a.link6:visited { font-family:Georgia; font-weight:bold;}
a.link6:hover { font-family:Georgia; font-style:italic; text-decoration:none;}
my super awesome class link6
Any of these CSS hover effects can be applied globally to all of your links sitewide by using the standard a:link, a:hover, etc. instead of creating a specific link class. These styles can attract a lot of attention to your links or add some extra style just where it’s needed. Be creative!
Now, that you know how to use CSS to create hover effects, next time we’ll talk about styling your “unordered list” elements (ul and li) to create drop-dead gorgeous navigation without a lick of javascript.
Source:How to Create a Hover Effect Using CSS
Incoming search terms:
Sep
05
When I first decided it was time to add Facebook Connect to a website, I figured it would be no big deal. Facebook is a social media powerhouse, I figured, so they must have tools to simplify the process. Plus, I use WordPress! So I was fairly confident that some enterprising developer had already created a plugin that would add Facebook Connect to the blog with a few clicks.
Boy was I naive. Adding Facebook to a WordPress site is harder than it sounds. I spent days testing out plugins with varying degrees of success. Each plugin had it’s own set of quirks, Facebook features that worked or didn’t, one plugin even shut down the whole site!
Luckily, integrating Facebook was not a total FAIL. After much testing and tribulation, Facebook Connect is now humming along happily. Visitors can login and comment using their Facebook ID, post comments back to their main stream, join the fan page with a single click and a handful of other nifty Facebook features that encourage visitor loyalty and interaction.
Take the benefit of my experience, and read this article before you begin the process of adding Facebook Connect to your WordPress website. Here are 3 different WordPress plugins for installing Facebook Connect.
Facebook Connect from Socialble.es
Easily one of the most popular FB connect plugins, Javier Reyes claims his plugin will: Build a community, Login using your Facebook account, Send comments to Facebook profile feed,Invite your friends to the blog community, See last visitors, Facebook share counter, Facebook fan page widget, Facebook comments box, Facebook user email store.
In truth, the plugin looks awesome on his site. And some users claim that it’s working great. However, I tried for three days to force Facebook Connect from Socialble to play nicely with my website. Most often, the plugin would work for an hour and then lead to a blank screen. Every page on the site (both front-end and admin) would just be a white screen. Often, this is a sign of memory issues. But, even reinstalling and turning off every other plugin on the site didn’t make it work.
The final reason that the Socialble.es plugin was a no-go for me is that the developer does not respond to help requests. I don’t expect developers to spend all their time offering up free assistance — especially on an already free plugin. But, the comment area and support forum are full of questions and the developer is conspicuously absent.
(* It seems that just after finishing this article, a new beta version of the Facebook Connect WordPress Plugin became available. It may solve some of the problems I talked about.)
WP-FacebookConnect by Adam Hupp
Adam is a Facebook Engineer, so using WP-FacebookConnect can be a good place to start. The plugin adds Facebook functionality to WordPress using the Facebook Connect APIs. Features include: signon with your Facebook account; Publish comments to the newsfeed; Comment avatars display Facebook profile photos.
Using this plugin is pretty simple. Install, activate, configure and you’re done. WP-FacebookConnect works well. Users could log in and Facebook avatars showed up in the comments section.
There were a few things I didn’t like, though. One is that the plugin creates a new WordPress user for each person that logs in via Facebook. In some cases this might be desirable, but it’s not really what I wanted. Second, was that after seeing all the “potential features” of the Sociable.es plugin, WP-FacebookConnect seemed limited.
If your Facebook integration needs are simple and you don’t want to work too hard on the configuring side, then WP-FacebookConnect is a great plugin. I have several clients where this plugin will be perfect.
Simple Facebook Connect
Ultimately, Simple Facebook Connect is the WordPress Plugin I decided to use for my site. Simple Facebook Connect is a modular plugin that breaks down the available Facebook features into separate plugins anchored by a base plugin.
Basically, the base plugin installs FB-Connect on your site and the secondary plugins add bits of code to add whatever Facebook goodies you’re looking for. In face, once you’ve activated the base plugin your website is Facebook Connect enabled and you don’t even need the other plugins. If you’re technically inclined you can now use XFBML tags to add any number of widgets directly into your template.
Here is a list of the currently available FB Connect sub-modules: Comment using Facebook Identity, Share button, User status widget (display your status in a sidebar), Fan box widget, Live Stream widget, Bookmark widget (get your site into the Facebook bookmark bar), Connect widget, Publish posts to your Facebook Application Page (manually, after the post is published).
Simple Facebook Connect was as easy to set up as it sounds and the developer, Otto, is responsive to user queries. He replied to my comment in just under two hours and has an active help stream going on his site.
Each of these Facebook Connect plugins behaves a little differently. You’ll need to judge for yourself what will work best with your current WordPress set-up. Just remember, all of the developers put a lot of time and energy into making the plugins. So after you settle on a plugin that makes you happy, send a little something to the developer. It’s the right thing to do, but more importantly, it will give them a reason to keep updating and improving so that the plugin you’re using today will still work down the road.[...]
Source:Facebook Connect: Plugins to Integrate FB and WordPress
Incoming search terms:
Sep
04
The benefits of a planned marketing strategy are numerous. Business owners often rely solely on their intuition to make business decisions. While this informal knowledge is important in the decision making process, it may not provide you with all the facts you need to achieve marketing results. A marketing strategy will help you in defining business goals and develop activities to achieve them.
Difficulty: Average
Time Required: 2 hours
Here’s How:
- Describe your company’s unique selling proposition (USP).
- Define your target market.
- Write down the benefits of your products or services.
- Describe how you will position your products or services.
- Define your marketing methods. Will you advertise, use Internet marketing, direct marketing, or public relations?
Tips:
- Your Unique Selling Proposition sets you out from the rest, don’t try to develop a marketing plan without one.
- It’s important that you have a budget developed for your marketing plan. Marketing is an investment.
- Revisit your marketing plan at least once every quarter. Are you on target? Do you need to revise it?
What You Need:
- A place to concentrate.
- A pen or pencil.
- A notebook or journal.
[color_box title="About the Author" variation="glossy_blue"]
Laura Lake
Marketing Guide
Sign up for my Newsletter
My Blog
My Forum
[/color_box]
