by Kirby Hasseman
Graphic design is about the eye and the mind. It’s about finding a new and creative way to solve an old problem. A trained designer will understand how to answer these questions and solve these problems in the best way possible.
But sometimes, a quick job or budget constraints mean that you may have to create the artwork yourself. In this case, there are also plenty of measurable skills that almost anyone can use to improve how the final product of their design will come out.
Print is a physical medium, so there are many practical problems that need to be considered when making your artwork. Today, we’re going to cover three things to consider due to the process of cutting, or trimming, the paper. In general, any print job is run on a sheet of paper larger than the final size. For example, if you are making a flyer that is 8 1/2″ x 11″, or the size of a sheet of copier paper, it will most likely be printed on a sheet of paper that is 9 1/2″ x 12″, give or take, and then trimmed down the final size afterward. This physical process gives some speed bumps to consider when creating artwork.
Margins
An easy way to ruin your final job is to put your content, like text or important images, close to the edge of the sheet. When setting up a page, it’s easy to look at your white space and think you can fill all of it with your artwork. This isn’t the case. There needs to be a margin on the sides, top, and bottom to avoid anything important being cut off. If your headlines or text get too close to the edges, they run the risk of being trimmed off by accident. In this case, the printer is not to blame for it, and you are left with a job that is basically unusable. A safe distance to put anything important on your page is at least 1/4 inch from the edge of the sheet. This will give the printer enough room to work with the wiggle in the sheets as they trim them down, without worrying too much about cutting anything off.
Bleeds
In print work, and color or background that is supposed to run to the edge of the page without white showing is called a “bleed”. In order to correctly get this effect, the image needs to “bleed” over the edge. This means that when the art is printed on the larger sheet, the background will be a little bigger than the trimmed size. This may sound like opposite advice from the margin section, but the difference is that the background shouldn’t have anything important, like pertinent information or images, it should be a simple color or an image that isn’t of absolute necessity.
Alignment
Another aspect to easily overlook is the alignment of the artwork. Are all the elements centered on the page, or are they a little farther left or right? This can wreak havoc on your design. Without properly centered artwork, the printer will cut it as sent, which will make your page look lopsided. Sometimes, printers will try to correct it for you and center the page, but this can lead to problems with bleed, or even frustration from the printer from dealing with troublesome artwork.
Simply following little guidelines like this will instantly make whatever you create begin to look more professional. But remember, whenever possible, you should hire a professional to make the most out of your project and show your company in the best light. When the need arises, remember we at Hasseman Marketing offer full-service design, start to finish. Give us an idea, and we will take it to new heights.
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by Kirby Hasseman
It’s nearly Thanksgiving (a great holiday) and we wanted to give you something to be thankful for…more content! 🙂 Here is the week that was at Hasseman Marketing! 5 Lessons from Delivering Marketing Joy: Each week we talk to business leaders from across North America about how to grow, create great culture and more. In this blog post we take a look at 5 (recent) lessons from Delivering Marketing Joy! Speaking of Delivering Marketing Joy…and speaking of Content, we bring you some great Content Marketing Lessons. Here we take a look back at some of the best in the business at Content Marketing. Learn the hows and whys in this episode of Delivering Marketing Joy! Messages: In this post Jeff Wickerham reminds us that we are sending messages to the world…so we might as well be intentional about it. Here is what Jeff learned at a high school football game. Weekly Word: The best salespeople have always been story tellers. What are you (and your organization doing to tell your story? The better the story…the stronger the sales. Learn more in the Weekly Word here. Growth Begins: In this blog post, Kirby Hasseman tells us that we are not the person that can reach the big audacious goal…but we can be. Learn more here. And that is how we do it. Want to keep up all the time? Make sure to join our VIP List! Our VIP’s get an email with the latest content…and other special offers as well. Join here.
by Kirby Hasseman
Each week on Delivering Marketing Joy, I get the chance to interview fantastic leaders, entrepreneurs, authors and thought leaders on the best way to grow and run an organization. What started as an interesting way for me to be able to create great content, has become a weekly class for me to attend. I have learned so much from listening to these leaders. While your best bet to get the most from this #MarketingJoy class is to subscribe to the channel here or to sign up for our VIP list, let me give you some of the most recent lessons I have taken away from Delivering Marketing Joy! Customer Service Drives Sales: In one of the most recent episodes, I had the chance to chat with Ray Jimenez about his sales philosophy. Ray says sales is constantly driven by customer service. If you want to have long-term success in sales, you better take great care of the customer. Listen more here. Be Authentic: and Know Your Audience: It was hard to pick one lesson from this special episode with Bill Petrie and Dana Zezzo. As I have said before, this was like a Master’s class on sales and social. But Dana and Bill remind us to be authentic, but to know our audience in order to be super efficient in sales. Watch the full show here! Own Your Media: One of my favorite new episodes included Joe Pulizzi. He is the King of Content Marketing and he reminds us that we need to have a process in place to actually get our leads to give us their information. If we have Facebook friends, Facebook owns them. Joe goes into more in the full episode here! Make an Impact and Grow: Danny Rosin and I talk about the way to grow your business is in the “right way” here. Danny tells us that he envisions Philanthropy will become the new “marketing done right.” Through making an impact, we can grow our business too. Learn more here. Listen to Your Customers To Drive Business: On this episode of Delivering Marketing Joy I talked with author and entrepreneur Tim Fargo. He told us how his newest venture TweetJukebox took off because he had an idea, then listened to his customers tell him how to change it! Here is the full episode. And these are just 5 great lessons from 6 great leaders. Please subscribe here if you never want to miss an episode. Or you can join our VIP list here so you get into the inner content circle! Let’s grow together!
by Kirby Hasseman
It’s time to catch up on the week that was in Content at Hasseman Marketing. What does that mean for you? It means lots of great insight into running a business, growing an organization and creating success. We hope you enjoy! An Open Mind: Learning and truly growing are important steps toward success. But in order to take those steps you have to enter with an Open Mind. Do you have one? Weekly Word: The Weekly Word this week lets you know how to be a 1%-er! The way to do that is to CREATE. You need to create content…check that out here. Delivering Marketing Joy: You won’t want to miss this Delivering Marketing Joy! This week we talk with Dr. Jason Carthen, The Leadership Linebacker! Great interview about finding your destiny, helping others and leadership. Good stuff here. What You Consume: This week Jeff Wickerham reminds us that if we put “good in” we get “good out.” Great concept here. Don’t Make Excuses: Love this! This week we had our first Guest Blogger. Mr. Bill Petrie wrote this awesome blog post to help remind us that if we want success, we have to DO. No more excuses. Check out his cool blog here! And Kirby’s Guest Blog: And in a cool turn of events, Kirby wrote a blog for Bill on that same day! You can check that out here! Learn how to Stand out! West Rock Interviews: For those in our community of Coshocton, you know that employees of West Rock were dealt some bad news with the closing of the plant. So on Saturday November 21st, from 10:30am to 12:30pm we will do quick video interviews for those that are going to be looking for work. We hope this, in some small way, helps them. Have a great week everyone! More great stuff to come! Want more great content like this? Sign up for our VIP list! Get access to our weekly content and special deals…by simply going here! Sign up today!
by Kirby Hasseman
It’s time for our very first Guest Blog on the Hasseman Marketing blog! This one comes from Bill Petrie from brandivate. Bill is a rock star in the promotional industry with wisdom that translates to any industry. Take it a way Bill! Excuses. Excuses are insidious little beasts. They provide convenient, if not somewhat accurate, reasons we tell ourselves – or others – why we can’t accomplish certain tasks necessary to build our business. From the ubiquitous “too busy” to “we’ve always done it this way,” excuses manifest themselves in many different forms. Despite the various excuses readily available to avoid uncomfortable and/or unpleasant business tasks, the outcome is always the same: stagnation.
The real problem with excuses is that they become a habit – a bad one. For example, often people will say they are “too busy” to do something without giving it any thought. The habit of making excuses to avoid difficult or challenging tasks creates a false sense of comfort that prevents growth.
Bad habits, however, can be broken and the habit of excuses is no different. The key is to respectfully challenge the person using the excuse – and that person may be the one in the mirror. Next time you hear an excuse, simply ask, “What do you mean by that?” This will cause the person using the excuse to not only think about what they are saying, but why they are saying it. For example, when someone says they are “too busy,” it usually means that the task really isn’t important to them. By giving pause to understand WHY someone is habitually using an excuse, it will begin to break the habit and stop stagnation.
Don’t make excuses, make time. Bill Petrie is an executive leadership guru in the Promotional Products industry. He has over 15 years of experience helping companies grow, and he brings that experience and passion to brandivate. Bill has a fantastic blog on the brandivate site (that you should read).
Oh, and in one interesting turn of events, we both have Guest Blogs on each other’s sites today. You can read mine (on his) here!
