You can design your own business cards and stationery in Microsoft Word, and print them out on a color laser printer. If you want printed stationery, there are many online sources that provide a professional look for reasonable bucks.

optical communications
I’m sure they think this is good advice but in reality anyone believing that:

These low-cost, common-sense ideas allow you to come across as a savvy professional without wasted expense.

is in for a surprise. Not only are the tools the wrong ones to achieve a savvy professional appearance but the costs are going to be higher than they would have been if they’d used a good designer.

Let’s look at why.

Word. A great application for writing. No argument there. But for designing anything? No. Word’s layout tools are simplistic and lack real functionality for anything other than word-processing. This is because it is a word processor. A writing tool.

Color Laser Printer. Really nice. Expensive ($300-$700) but very nice. Consumables (toner cartridges) are costly ($75-$130 per color) as well.

Look, here’s the bottom line. Looking professional—savvy or not—requires more than just plopping some generic clip art into a word document with a name and contact information adjacent. Generic looks generic and if you do not know how to do layout and even less about typography all you have is a 2.5 x 3 piece of stock that screams boring and unprofessional. You don’t have to like that statement and quite honestly, you shouldn’t.

There seems to be a penchant for non-design creatives to promote the misconception that it’s easy to look professional without the skills or the tools that make that happen. It’s not.  It’s no more true than telling a designer who has never written so much as a blog post that all they need is a notepad to appear professional. Just as there are designers who don’t know how to write (especially true when it comes to copywriting) there are writers who don’t know the first thing about what is going to look professional in design. And even the simple, most basic business card, should be a professional reflection of your business or purpose. In fact, it is not outlandish to say that the simple business card should be the most professional looking piece of marketing you need. Despite it’s small size and liberal delivery to anyone holding their hand out, it may well be the first and onlypiece of marketing you get to deliver to a prospective client.

Writing is much more involved than merely typing. Writing is a beautiful and highly creative art that requires a great deal of skill in crafting words that convey images for the reader. The writer’s canvas is a blank sheet, be that in a notebook, napkin at a bar, or a page in Word and the tools of the craft are words. The writer’s skill is knowing how to write effectively. Knowing how to put the words together, grammatically and contextually to convey the message they are trying to deliver. So it is with design.

Designers use images to communicate ideas in the viewer’s mind or to reinforce the content being delivered. Design skills, such as layout, typography, color, and how art conveys content, are learned often over many years. And the tools are specific, and costly. For real design work you need, at the very least, the right tools—a layout program, such as InDesign or Quark, and a graphics program, such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or even GIMP. For logos a vector program such as Illustrator is invaluable.

I’m not saying you should go out and buy programs such as these. In fact, it would be foolish for a writer who does not also do design to do that. What I am saying is that if you are the writer who is not a designer you need to find a designer to work with you in the development of your business card/stationery at reasonable prices. There are numerous designers who do excellent logo work for $50-$100. Printing services, such as Vistaprint, will print 500 cards for less than $50 and often run good specials. The result is going to be much more professional than anything you create in Word using its clip art library and the cost will be less than feeding toner into that pricey color laser recommended.

If you are on a shoestring budget you need to use what money you do have most effectively. Rather than spend money on a color laser printer you really don’t need, and waste your valuable time creating unprofessional looking cards/stationery, spend your money on getting the design look that will make you look  professional and spend your valuable time using Word to do the work you already know how to do: writing.

This morning, after going to bed way too early last night, I read several blogs and all of them are essentially about the same thing: breaking away from the same old, same old.  Ironically, in their mass message they are at risk of becoming the “same old, same old!”

Still, in their message I have been reminded of my own youth, when the non-conformist was called anti-establishment (bells, lights, and whistles should be going off now for anyone over the age of 45). Somewhere along the line I (and many others of my generation) seem to have misplaced their place in the sun and settled for being nestled and lost in the shade. 

I’m not happy in the shade any more and I really hunger for the warmth of the sun so I’m going to follow the pull on my heartstrings.  I’m going to do what I do the way I do it and not worry so much about the way others do it. There’s room for everyone and no two have the same voice or vision. It’s now time for my vision to shine and it’s just pretty damned difficult to shine in the shade.

I’ve been working on some new design projects and will get them into my portfolio (yes, I’ve got one although I’ve succumbed to my apathy and ignored updating it in a long time). I’m also going to be writing more on my writing blog glossings.

char@illuminatedesigns.com

Go Media, of which I’ve purchased several volumes of their products, has just announced that they are raising their prices but …

don’t panic! 

because they assure us that …

We’re taking care of you and the rest of our existing customers. Use the discount code “legacy” and receive 25% off. This reduces the new prices back to their previous prices.

and then to make things more interesting, and to  they offer  …

rent a car bulgaria

. . . to help ease the burden of the price increase, we’re giving you a BIGGER discount.  But this one is only valid for one week.  It will expire on June 24th at 6pm EST.

so, they are giving you an initial discount of 25% to reduce the cost of their product to the old price but if that’s not enough they will give you an additional 10% to get you to buy from them … ultimately, however, they are disregarding your reality of increased cost of living expenses and asking you to spend as much, or more, for something it is costing them no more to produce. 

Ethical?

No.

Business savvy?

Absolutely, for a public that doesn’t evince the ability for critical thinking.

What makes one an expert? 

Is it past performance or just the ability to do research and write prolifically about a given topic?  In many cases it’s the latter rather than the former.

It may be that we are going through an ‘expert glut’ right now. There are so many ‘experts’ that we have lost the ability to discern who is/is not real. It’s an interesting marketing tactic to establish yourself as an authority/expert but the reality is that many who claim they are … are not. But they rarely admit that because they are convinced that doing so will lose them  your hard-earned dollars.

I’m not an expert.

What I am is a designer who continues to hone her craft and learns more about design each day/project. I’m a professional who realizes, and appreciates, that there are teachers to learn from.

What I know is that I know more about my craft than the average consumer/business owner does and ultimately s/he doesn’t care what my expertise is as long as I provide him/her with the end result s/he expected. 

So why all the hyperbole about “expert” or “authority”?  Because marketing says that’s what works.

How about stepping outside the box and being honest, real, and up front for a change? 

It’s called ethics and integrity.  I think healthy shots of that are important if not vital to our continued success.

Microsoft Word is, without question, a superb word processing application.  It’s the perfect choice when doing any documents involving large quantities of text that need creation or editing.  It’s the elite program for office work, correspondence, memos, and even neighborhood announcements.  It’s spectacular as part of a superior suite of applications designed to be used in an office environment and meets the needs there beautifully.

Word,  however, is not a design application.  It has minimal formatting capabilities and utterly destroys any graphic files used within it’s confines.  Embedding an image of any sort in a Word document renders the image useless in any other application.  The degradation is intentional and unrecoverable, if you haven’t kept a copy of the original source file.  If you have, you can use that file in another application without loss of quality.  Trying to copy an image from Word to use anywhere else will result in disaster.

I learned all of this first-hand while working in Corporate America. I used to work for a company where I was told to use Word to design/layout/format workbooks, stationery, fliers, brochures, and manuscripts.  I suggested that they get InDesign for the layout/format work and use Word for the office documents and manuscripts (no typesetting or presentation formatting involved). I earned myself a benign smile as they told me that $600 was too much to spend on an application when Word could do the same thing. 

They didn’t understand, anymore than other Word “designers” apparently do, that Word couldn’t do the same thing at all.  Their bottom line was up front costs and they didn’t realize that it cost them more in the long run in terms of time–my time since it took me longer to finagle the documents in Word than it would have taken me to do in either InDesign or Quark. 

In all things,  using the right tools for the job is not only a good idea, it’s smart.  Why on earth would someone try to use a spade where a trowel is the best tool for the job?  Sure, the spade will turn the dirt but the trowel will do it quicker, more efficiently, and more competently. 

I see the same thing with Web Design. People who think because they figured out how to buy a template and use it they are now “web site designers.”  Anyone can buy a template (I’m even going to be offering some myself soon) and if it’s a good template customizing it to use for your site is a breeze.  That, however, does not mean you know how to design a site.  The actual designer was the person who designed your template!  That’s the person who understands navigation, css, html, and image preparation. 

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using templates. Most designers develop their own set of templates to use to save them time as well.  However, it is unethical to call yourself a web site designer when all you do is buy someone else’s design and then turn around and get paid to plug-n-play their content. 

For those who are sitting there wondering “How can I tell the difference?” Look at prices. If someone is offering an entire site solution (design, hosting, domain name, maintenance, etc) for $29.95, start looking at their work hard.  If you see the same layouts over and over, or you look at the source (View | Source) and see something like:

       <meta name=”generator” content=”Starfield Technologies; WebSite Tonight 3.3.9″/>

you can be almost certain that this is not an original design no matter how the template user refers to themselves.  A quick search for Website Tonight shows that Starfield Technologies is offering a turnkey solution and it is that, that the so-called “designer” is selling w/o being explicit about it. 

Some would call this deceptive practice but I’ll just say it’s not quite what it would seem to be.

Be careful when shopping for a designer; make sure the person who calls themselves a designer, or offers designer services, is really providing you with actual design services.  While the price may reflect a non-design service sometimes it doesn’t and you can find yourself forking out a lot of money for a small return.

This is an ongoing and slightly disturbing trend I’ve seen growing over the last several years towards minimizing the need for study of a craft before trying to sell the practice of said craft professionally. And it’s not about formal education either. Rather, it’s about understanding that there is so much more to being a graphic designer than simply knowing how to add a reflection to make a flat blue dot look like a glass orb.

It’s understanding the how’s and why’s of what they did that made their novice attempt turned out so well. Do they understand that there are properties and principles regarding light, shadows, textures, and angles? Do they grasp that reflections require not only the right attributes but correct placement and opacity and why?

Maybe I’ll start doing this for others!

Please. Don’t.

It’s so easy to follow a step-by-step tutorial and get a great result but the real learning comes when trying to apply the same technique to something else without the benefit of a step 2, step 3, and step 9.

Study and learn the craft, then maybe you’ll be ready to sell your “graphic design” services.

Technorati tags: Graphic Design, Learning Design, Design Techniques

If you are in the market for new hosting, I can readily recommend two providers:

Bluehost (host of Illuminated Designs)

Host Monster (host Illuminated Designs affiliates and some clients)

Both providers understand that customer service is best meted out personally and also understand that not everyone is a total tech!

Pricing is comparable and I encourage you to compare.  Either will more than likely meet your needs and both will make you a satisfied customer.

Tell ‘em Char from Illuminated Designs sentcha!

Of course, yes, that means they are HTML.

This surprised me because I’ve long been an advocate of text-based mail for several reasons.  But the reality is that text-based newsletters seem blah, boring, and yes, even cheesy. 

Now, I don’t mean that they are!  But for me that’s how they come across.  One of the first thoughts to cross my mind is ”another wannabee solopreneur“; while the presented newsletter, such as DM News or RainToday, immediately grabs my attention and almost inevitably will result in my following at least one link to read the rest of the article (it helps to have really good article content, too).

Note that I’m not talking about flashing neon ads or even heavy duty graphics. At most I’m talking about highlighted and formatted text, styled links, and header/sidebar/footer graphics.  What I’d call a basic, well-styled web page in email.   

I know Content is King but sometimes it is about getting their attention, first. If no one’s looking at you they can’t see what you have to offer. Once you have done that then you can wow ‘em with your content.