Graphic Design Resources Blog - Business Card Tips

HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Welcome to All Graphics & Design Portal's Web Blog. Today's Blog Article includes tips for Business Card Design. Below this article, you will find useful graphic design resources that we have found in the last few days.

Please submit your articles, tutorials, & valuable links to submit (at) allgraphicdesign (dot) com

Graphic Design Article - Business Card Design Tips

A business card is often the single most important item you have to attract a new client or business partner. Getting a small piece of cardboard to represent you and your company philosophy is often challenging – learn how to do it in this article: 

Often, your business card is the only item left with a potential client or business partner. After a conference, meeting or display of your products, you are likely to meet dozens of people and leave your business card with them. It is essential that the business card design is complex and complete. This means that your logo, name, title and address (including contact details such as phone, fax, e-mail and web site) should all be present. When you are having your business card designed, aim for an image and a “feel” that best represents you and your company. Do not go for a flashy business card design if you are working in the financial field as this might give a feeling of sloppiness and insecurity to your clients.

Adapt the business card design to your clients

It is not important that you like your business card – but it is very important that your business partners and clients like it. Of course, you should always aim to get a business card design that you become attached to, a fact that will give you even more confidence. One useful trick is to print out a few dozen business cards and give them out to potential prospects and conduct an “on the spot” interview about them. Gather their opinions and make any necessary changes to improve your business card design.

Business card printing

If a professional graphic design company created your business card, you can rest assured that they also followed all the necessary guidelines to make the business card printing process a good one. This means that the business card designer saved the files in a format suitable for print (such as a TIF or EPS) and left a bleed area sometimes required by printers. Many advertising and creation agencies also offer business card printing, either with their own printers or by using a dedicated printer’s services to do it. Quite often, a graphic design company will offer you a package for your card: both the design and the business card printing.

Costs of business card printing

Because there are many design and print packages and a variety of prices for business card printing, we will not stop to analyze actual costs. However, the general rules are as follows:

• Black and white business card printing is the cheapest, but do try to print on high quality paper, or the business cards will look unprofessional.
  
• Using 2-3 colors (plus white and black) can produce good visual results and is also cheap.
  
• Full color business card printing is more expensive, but can also produce some great visual results.
  
• The larger your order, the cheaper you get with the individual business card printing cost.

More information on logo design, business card creation, graphic design tips and other useful resources can be accessed on author's website (http://www.platinum-first.com/business-card-tips.php)

Valuable Graphic Design Links:

All Graphic Design Business Card Page - style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt">Here is a page that we have devoted to links to articles, tutorials, and resources for Business Card Design and Printing. It will be very beneficial for you to look through these helpful links. And here is a page that we have devoted to Free Templates Resources for business card designs.

Make a Design Spire Folder on Your Computer - This tutorial will help you create a SPIRE folder on your computer to use as reference as you work on your graphic design projects.

Top 10 Photoshop Tutorials of 2005 - A list of the top Adobe Photoshop tutorials published in 2005.

Free Gift Box Templates - Since it is Holiday Season, I figured that I would list Paper Zone, a site that includes a page of free gift box templates. You can design your own graphically pleasing boxes and use them for your Christmas or Hanukah gifts.

The Ten Commandments of Freelancing - Ten things that will help you keep your focus as a freelance designer.

Completely Free Stock Photos - You don't normally see free stock photography ...however, Pixel Perfect is an archive of free stock photography on the Internet. I recommend this site as a great design resource. There are also graphic design resources and tutorials on this site.

100 Do's and Don'ts of Wed Design,- Want to create a great website? Have a look at this Style Guide that contains 9 categories with exactly one hundred do's and don'ts about making web pages

Idea Generation Methods - This website lists and explains idea generation methods for the creativity process.

Ever Wish You Could Rewind Time and Start Your Design Career Over? - I sure do. Sadly, the luxury of such is never afforded. However, they say prevention is better than the cure, so perhaps the following eight points will provide a strong start for budding designers and a strong refining point for those of us more experienced.

How to Design a Resizable Box with Rounded Corners and Borders - Have you ever wanted to make a resizable box with rounded (or any shape) corners, custom borders, and a transparent shadow? Did you also want to do that without cluttering your markup with a bunch of non-semantic div elements? Now you can.

Our Sister Sites : Graphics Tutorials Search - All Web Design Resources - All Graphic Design Resources - Education Directory - All Schools & Learning - All Traveling Family Vacations

How to Start A Graphic Design Business & Graphic Design Resources

Welcome to All Graphics & Design Portal's Web Blog. Today's Blog Article is about How to Build a Successful Graphic Design Business. This article should be helpful to designers who are considering going out and starting your own business. Below this article, you will find useful design links.

How To Build a Successful Graphic Design Business

by Katrina Rauch (KaTasidy  - Solutions)

Being in the graphic design business is very competitive – you have to learn to swim or you will sink fast. I’ve been a graphic designer for 12 years and I’d like to share the journey I took to owning and building a successful graphic design business.

One of the first things I recommend to help develop skills and learn tricks that you would never learn in school is to get an internship.

I got my first taste of graphic design in high school and by my senior year I was working as an intern for a small graphic design firm and also a print shop. I took an active role in my job to learn as much as possible by asking lots of questions to the senior creative director and also to the head print shop pressman. My skills and thirst for design blossomed from there. I majored in graphic design in college and had landed a very high profile graphic design internship and was taught a vast amount of tricks of the trade by highly skilled designers.

The next thing I would recommend is to read.

Read as many books as you can find on graphic design and soak up as much of the industry as you can from the people who know it best. A friend of mine always says that the only thing that makes you stand out from your competition is the knowledge you gain from the books that you read. I am a visual learner, so for me I like to collect books that are informational as well as provide examples. I use design books as inspiration for a lot of the graphic design work that I do.

Having confidence in your ability and being able to apply that to your business is essential to your business success.

When I first started my business, I was nervous, but confident in my ability to run my business with class. I plunged right in with both feet by developing a business plan, company name, web site and logo. Once I had the logistics in place I began the tedious task of marketing. Marketing is the hardest part of owning a small business and takes immense amounts of confidence and strength of character to do well, but if done effectively it will catapult your business to success.

Sell, sell, sell.

Building a successful graphic design business is all about selling and marketing yourself. You can never stop selling, no matter how busy you are, you have to keep marketing in the forefront of your mind. Every person you meet is a possible client. Every contact you make has a sphere of influence that might need your services, and every vendor you work with might know someone who needs your help. Some practical ways I have marketed my business is by: joining my local Chamber of Commerce, building a strong web site that is correctly optimized, adding numerous reciprocal links to my web site, handing out business cards that function as a mini brochure, joining a leads group, joining special interest clubs, attending business expo’s and conventions, and networking with other business professionals. The key to marketing your business effectively is to become well known in your community by attending any and all networking opportunities you have. Marketing is all about building relationships with others and then capitalizing on the opportunity to sell your graphic design services.

Customer service is key to your success.

The clients you gain and the customer service they receive from you is imperative to your success. I’ve learned from my clients that they appreciate a quick response from me all the time. I recommend that you be available to your clients by email, phone and fax at all times. I make a special effort to respond via email to my clients within 2 hours 6 days a week. I try to return phone calls even sooner if at all possible, even if it’s only to say that you received their call and will get back to them a little later. Every client has a sphere of influence and their referral will be dependant on the customer service they receive from you at all times. A prompt response is a good indication of solid design work and will give your client confidence in your services. If your client has a pleasurable experience with you they will happily refer you on to all the people around them. In the beginning, referrals are the quickest way to build your business on solid ground and with minimal costs.

The last thing I’d recommend is to keep your costs to a minimum as much as you can.

I’ve built my business by starting out working from my home. The great thing about graphic design is the ability to do the job from the comfort of your home and this is a great way to minimize costs. Operate on a debt free basis, paying for all your business expenses with cash. You can still use older versions of software to build solid designs without your clients ever knowing the difference, and without the constant cost of upgrading. While you are working from home, plan to meet with your clients at a local coffee shop or their place of business. Send design proofs via email instead of printing them out on costly paper. In fact most of my business operates over email. I send invoices, proofs, contracts, and estimates via email so I don’t have to pay for the paper, ink, envelopes, and postage. There are a lot of corners you can cut in order to save money.

I hope this article has helped by giving you some practical ideas on how to build a successful graphic design business with minimal costs.

Some Valuable Graphics & Graphic Design Sites That I have Found:

A FUNNY LINK - adland: The Unspoken Rules of Graphic Design.

ANOTHER FUNNY SITE ABOUT GRAPHIC DESIGN - The Patron Saints of Graphic Design

I PROMISE THAT THE REST OF THESE LINKS ARE VALUABLE :-)

Before and After Magazine - Before & After magazine has been sharing its practical approach to graphic design since 1990. Because our modern world has made designers of us all (ready or not), Before & After is dedicated to making graphic design understandable, useful and even fun for everyone.

Cool Text - An online graphics generator for web pages and anywhere else you might need an impressive logo without a lot of work. We provide real-time generation of graphics that are customized exactly the way you want them. (Lets keep this one hush hush so we don't lose Logo Design Business).

Designer's Toolbox - I love this site. This site includes both online and printing tools for graphic designers, including really cool proofing marks, Envelope Sizes, Die Lines for Typical Folders, Die Lines for CD Covers/Labels,Templates for Postcard Sizes, Templates for Standard Foldings, Fraction to Decimal Chart, List of Special Characters, List of Standard Banner Sizes, Font Size Control, CSS Generator, Form Elements, and more.

Creative Public - CreativePublic is your graphic design & Web design business guide for resources such as: forms, contracts, pricing guides, manuals, policies and more! I have heard nothing but good reviews for this site....good customer service, and great product all around. There are both free and fee-based for resources on this site.

All Graphic Design List of Free Printing Templates - This is a section of our site that we took a long time to develop...we have a list of 100s of free templates for print jobs that we have found over the Internet.

Typophile - Review of Type & Fonts, as well as discussions based on questions & reviews about fonts, as well as Type News. Maybe not the most exciting topics for most designers, but I know that we all have needed a place to ask about font related issues in the past, so this might be a good bookmark for the next time you need it.

Our Sites: TutorialSelect - Tutorials Search Engine ... All Web Design Resources ... All Graphic Design Resources ... Education Directory ... All Schools And Learning ... All Traveling Family Vacations

All Graphics & Design Blog 12-13-05

Welcome to All Graphics & Design Portal's First Web Blog. This Blog will be a journal of the best Graphics & Graphic Design Sites that I find on the Internet. Although this is exactly what our site lists, this blog will be used as a journal of Newly added sites to our directory, as well as a way for webmasters and visitors to suggest new resources. We will also list articles submitted by fellow graphic designers, web designers, and digital artists. Below is an article posted by Katrina Rauch by of KaTasidy  - Solutions

A Typical Day As a Graphic Designer

by Katrina Rauch

A typical day in my life as a graphic designer doesn’t really exist. Each day can be quite different. Owning my own graphic and web design business is challenging and exciting at the same time. To be frank, I get up each day around 6am and hit the gym. After I get home eat some breakfast and shower it’s near 8:30am. I walk into my office, which is in my house, and check my email. I typically get about 30 a night from existing clients and new ones who are inquiring about my business. After answering emails I’ll make a list of the things I need to do that day ranging from projects I need to work on as well as phone calls and meetings I need to go to. Since I’m a business owner, I know I’ll always be in the process of growing my business so I have joined my local Chamber of Commerce and am part of numerous Leads Groups and business networking lunches. I have about five of these networking meetings each week and I find new clients and new business contacts each time I attend a meeting.

After I’ve organized my day, I get to work on my “To Do” list. Today for example, I’ve been working on two different company logos, a brochure, and web site. I try to make sure I give ample design time to each of my current clients and continue to make consistent progress on their design project. By 1:00pm if I’m home, I’ll grab some lunch and return any phone calls or emails I’ve received during the day thus far. Once that is complete I’ll try to focus on some marketing opportunities to help grow the business for an hour or so each day. Today I’ve spent some time writing some articles to submit online as well as gather info for our upcoming free monthly eZine that I send out to all our clients and mailing list each month. I’ve also spent some time developing a direct mail campaign for our business. When the afternoon mail comes, I’ll catch up on the business bills, incoming accounts receivable, and send out new invoices. As the day winds down, I’ll continue working on client projects and then send out proofs via email for my clients to view. As you can see, being a business owner and graphic designer is hard work, but if done well, can lead to a successful business.

Some Valuable Graphics & Graphic Design Sites That I have Found:

Tutorials Search Engine - A Graphics Software and Web Development Tutorials Search Site that has about 9,000 tutorials in its database and still growing.

All Web Design Resources Directory - Our sister site, All Web Design Resources, is part of the AllGraphicDesign.com site. Here you will find web design resources, tutorials, tools, and more.

Cloford - A huge color resource, including Web-Safe Diagram, Web-Safe Colors
by Hue, Named Colours, and a List of 500+ Colours

Color Scheme Generator - Use this for either your Print Design or Web Design Projects. You just insert the hex or rgb codes from or into Adobe Photoshop or any other image editing software and voila you are on your way to a great color scheme! Or instead use The Corcell Website to find Color Combinations that work together well.

Guidebook - website dedicated to preserving and showcasing Graphical User Interfaces, as well as various materials related to them.

What the Font? - Ever wanted to find a font just like the one used by certain publications, corporations, or ad campaigns? Well now you can, using our WhatTheFont font recognition system. Upload a scanned image of the font and instantly find the closest matches in our database.

Is it Fake or Foto? - Today we're presented with images in movies, on TV, and in the press that are of such good quality we don't even think to consider whether the picture is of something that exists in reality or if it was generated by computer software. Spend a few minutes with our reality check and see if you can tell the difference...

Simply the Best Fonts - Browse through the alphabetical font listings or the font categories to view the available free fonts. Each font has a full preview page with proprietary details.