Design Matters: Let your fingers do the walking
November 3, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
Yellow Pages, in our opinion, tried to draw the gap between the 2 media, print design and web design, to be much closer. Though we cannot confirm this, from TILT’s perspective, “Let your fingers do the walking” was the tagline which Yellow Pages developed to bridge the gap.
Some may argue that of course, the tagline itself is very apt as they are encouraging the end users to browse the hardcopy Yellow Pages. We argue that they try to bridge this gap simply because of the fundamental difference between print design and web design and we say that Yellow Pages understands that!
Print design is about letting your eyes walk over the information, selectively looking at key messages and using spatial justaposition of every element on that page / product to enhance and further explain themselves. Just remember, the very last time a brochure / poster caught your attention, was it a case where your eyes had “walked” to the information? Or was it your hands?
Web design functions by letting the hands walk to the information. This can be achieved either through scrolling or clicking. This relationship of information release is part of the interaction with the human body. Do you remember the details of a webpage? More often than not, you will find yourself bookmarking a webpage so that you can “walk” back to that page one day when you need the information.
If you understand this key difference, you will understand why TILT has an alternative view to “Let your fingers do the walking!”
Design Matters: Designing for a web design compared to a print design
November 2, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
After we had shared on our previous experience in the fundamental difference between a website design and a print design, in this issue of design matters, we will be touching on the difference in designing for these 2 very different media.
First and foremost, you will need to understand their differences. We will touch on 2 of the key areas that differs between website design and print design can be compared in some major areas.
Types of Media
As simple as it may sound, TILT decided not to leave any tables unturn and just elaborate a little bit more on the above.
As a print designer, projects which you will handle can be:
While as a web designer, projects which you will handle can be:
The softwares which you use will be fundamentally different as well. As a print designer, you will realised you are constantly opening up Adobe Indesign, Adobe Illustrator, Freehand and of course Adobe Photoshop. As a web designer, the softwares are largely Macromedia Dreamweaver, Adobe Photoshop. Some may use text pad, note pad, sharepoint designer or perhaps even microsoft frontpage.
Audience
Typically, when you attend a project design brief, you will find yourself asking your client, “Who is the target audience?”. This is where you will find that the difference begins.
In print design, the marketing message is the king! Faced with a very limited area, it is important for you to capture your audience in the shortest amount of time for the message to stay for the longest period. Of course, physical property such as texture, shape (remember when we mentioned form in our previous post), will assist you in achieving your goal. However, on the web, you need to try to keep your audience within your website for the longest possible time. You find that you constantly tease your audience with snippets of content to get them to navigate them around. Animation, navigation, sound and interactivity all play a part in this area. The key difference? You have unlimited number of pages to play with!
The fact is that anything that is a great print design is likely to be a lousy web design. Understanding the limitation and playing to the strength will allow you to come up with better design.
“Know the rules, then break them!”
Sounds familiar?
Design Matters: Web Design vs Print Design
October 30, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
In this next edition of design matters, TILT will be touching briefly on the difference between web design and print design. In fact, we decided to write this post also due to a very recent incident that happened to us.
Very often, there are companies who had requested for a print media design to follow that of a web design or vice versa. Though this can be done to a large extent, companies need to be aware of 1 simple point. For print media design, permanence and stability can be achieved with ease. However, this simply cannot be done on the web.
The Web Design World Is Just Different from the Print Design Media
With CSS, it is possible to get very precise layout. However, no matter how precise the web design layout is, it can never be as precise as print design. This is something that is, unfortunately, a fact which companies need to accept.
The web design can follow the print design by breaking the grid, having specific layout, font and other design elements. But are the tradeoffs worth it? Have you considered the download speed and maintenance issues?
It looks different!
In addition, in the web design world, it is so easy to build a web page and test it on your browser and you get it looking exactly the way you want it to be. However, the moment you test it on a different browser, it looks different. Not to mention about moving it on to another platform. It can look differently again!
At times, we hear from clients that they have staff who view the web site using a specific browser and it does not show up properly. Upon checking, very often, we realise that these users typically belong to 0.5% of the world’s web browser users. Is it worth then to make a perfectly working site look that way just to cater to that 0.5% and then risk ruining it for the remaining 99.5%? Simple mathematics. You decide.
VersionCue!
In print, it is very easy to export under another file name or overwrite the original file. So long as you path the fonts, the end user will definitely see the file as it is. However, for web, it is dependent on cache as well. Especially if you are working on CSS, it caches longer on the servers and it can take a long time to be cleared for you to see the updated version.
In fact, recently, one of our clients insisted that we had not made any of the changes simply because they cannot see the changes. They even went to the extent of copying out the source codes and sending it to us to show us that the source codes are wrong. We explained politely to them that if you are viewing the wrong page on the server, naturally, the source codes which you extract will definitely be wrong. Time is what is needed by you. Give it a bit of time and the right web site will show up soon. The end result was that 4 hours later, the client called us to ask us to make more minor changes and they said that they finally can see the updated changes and reminded us not to take so long to make the new changes. We politely informed them that since our last email correspondence with them, we had not worked on the website and the fact that they can view the website correctly now is simply due to the cache being cleared.
This few key differences between print design and web design is something which TILT seek for all companies to understand. If you can understand the difference and optimise it such that your workflow can be better, we are sure you can have a good relationship with your design company and your web design can then be truly optimise to be like a print design.
Design Matters: Is Your Brochure Design up to it?
October 26, 2008 by aoelof · Leave a Comment
We have been discussing about brochure design in our past few posts. We certainly hope our readers have beneffited from it. As we all know, you usually get only one chance to make an impression with your brochure design. The stakes are high and you definitely need to ensure it is a favourable impression.
As a recap of all the things which we had discussed previously, an effective brochure design is not about spending your entire budegt on it, which is the way TILT functions as well.
Regardless of the size of your company, we will like you to take a step back and look at your most current brochure design and put your brochure design to this test for effectiveness. As you go through each point, score your brochure with a “+1″ or “-1″. If you have more than 3 “-1″s, perhaps you can drop us an email at enquiry@tilt.com.sg and we can do a makeover for your brochure.
Emotional Appeal
Does your brochure design strike an emotional chord with your prospects? If you can touch the heart of your prospects and connect with their pains or desires, chances are, they will not take your brochure and throw it into the rubbish chute. With the emotional connection, the logical justification will happen.
Professionalism
Does your brochure design look professional? When we talk about professionalism, we are not referring to the brochure design feel but rather more with regards to form. Are the graphics of poor quality? Do you make use of clip art? These will put you on the fast track to downgrade your brochure design.
Personalise
Does your brochure refer to the situation from the prospect’s perspective? With this, we are referring more to copy. If your copy is such that it spends more time talking about your business and not connecting personally with your prospect (from their perspective), then your brochure design is in trouble.
Readability
Is your layout neat and readable? This is with reference in terms of the actual designing. Your brochure design should be pleasing to the eye and where necessary, include bullet points, arrows, boxes or any other graphics. This will guide the prospect to the information which you want them to read.
Say It Their Way!
Does your brochure design include technical language / jargons which your prospect will not understand? We all know that sometimes, it is impossible not to include technical language or jargons but it is vital to remove as much of it as possible. You need to talk in a manner in which your prospect can understand. The simpler the usage of language, the easier it is to connect with your prospects.
Be Focus!
Does your brochure design have only a single message? It is tempting for companies to try to include as much information as possible. Again, this will put your brochure design on the fast track of being thrown away. Packing it with a multitude of messages usually confuses the market and the end result? A waste of money by your company.
Action!
Does your brochure require the prospect to take an action? This is the key item which most brochure designs missed out on. Your brochure design should always be able to direct the prospect to take specific actions (perhaps to email you, make a phone call to enquire or to visit your website).
Vital Statistics
Does your brochure design include vital information such as contact details? This is something which is very obvious and yet is sometimes left out.
The Marathon!
Is your brochure design worth keeping? Sometimes, your prospect may not need your services / products at that particular moment. Make sure when doing the brochure design, there is a reason for the prospect to keep your brochure design.
Brochure designs can really help to brand your company and is a good and effective marketing tool. We hope that through these series of design matters, your or your company have benefitted from it.
Design Matters: Optimising Your Brochure Design
In this next edition of design matters, we will discuss more on optimising your brochure design.
As discussed earlier in Brochure design results with just 3 simple steps, there are elements which can make or break your brochure design.
Optimising Your Brochure Design
Here at TILT, we do hear from clients pretty often that “We need to design a brochure.” When we probe further to ask for the materials, very often, we find that the information (especially copy) is not ready yet. To add on, the clients will usually ask for sample designs. There are several times where we will advise the client that the design of the brochure cannot be done unless we have sample copy.
Know Your Objective or Intention
The fact is, to optimise your brochure design, the objective or intention of the brochure needs to be determine first. Having said that, this does not imply that by knowing the target audience, the brochure design objective or intention is known. Of course, knowing the target audience is a must but knowing whether the brochure should be one of an advertising nature or informative nature will bear a huge significance.
Brochure Design Copy
Next up, the copy which will be used is of great importance as well. Should it be written in a formal manner or perhaps in an informal manner? Can we do it in an interview style? How long should the text be? All these are of great importance. This is where copywriters come in. Don’t save the money. Pay for the copywriters as they can better represent your company with the copy which they come up with. With better branding, it is a better representation of your company!
Look Good!
Elaborating from our previous post, Let The Brochure Cover Out, the use of images are also of utmost importance. This can be done through a photoshoot, purchase of stock photographs or usage of high resolution photographs from your stock library. If all things fail, we can always rely on illustration as well. The choice (whichever of the above it may be) can be complicated. Again, on numerous occasions, TILT get requests from clients to
In the former case, this is an infringement of copyrights. While for the latter scenarion, these will result in the loss of resolution. We could say that choosing an image or picture is more complicated than writing the text for the brochure.
The text and images have to be ready before starting with the brochure design.
Brochure Design Form
In the previous section, What’s in a Brochure, we had given some examples of form. To optimise your brochure design, this is one which has utmost importance as well. When your target audience receive the brochure, the sense of sight and touch is activiated. All that we had discussed previously was based on the sense of sight. In holding the physical brochure, we are now touching on the sense of touch.
The type of paper, format and size holds just as much importance as the concept. In using, for example, recycled paper, the design can be very different from designing based on a gloss artpaper. To illlustrate this, perhaps you can imagine a brochure that is to be printed on gloss artpaper to be very colourful. The material allows the colours to be brought out in a vibrant manner. Whereas for recycled paper, perhaps the design can then be more pastal to bring about a more rustic feel to it. Though in the marketing area, there has still not been a thorough investigation about the importance of senses, but through our experience, we do see the trend where a successful brochure usually has the abovementioned elements.
If you ever need a brochure design, do feel free to drop us an email at enquiry@tilt.com.sg. We will be glad to have a chat with you such that the brochure design for your company can be optimised in the end and you can have a successful marketing tool.
Design Matters: What’s in a brochure
Typically used as a small, lightweight and cost-effective measure by companies, do you know that a brochure can be more than just that? A brochure can be a powerful and an impactful, yet informational and promotional tool for branding your business and thus in the process increase your exposure for your company, be it in Singapore or anywhere in the world.
Here at TILT, our cilents had requested at differing times to ask us to design corporate brochure, product brochure, product update brochure, event brochrues, sales brochure and others.
Most clients prefer their brochures to be of DL size, simply for the logical reason of easy letter-shopping. The truth is, your brochure can be in any size and comprising any number of pages. What is the most important is that the brochure carries the correct message and is able to catch the attention of the target audience. This can be achieved through form, design and copy.
At TILT, we specialised in advising the clients the unique forms at an affordable budget for the clients such that at the end of it, the brochure is something that can reach out to the target audience. This, afterall, is the primary aim.
Touching on the form of the design, below are some of the common forms.
Less common designs
Depending on the information available, purpose of the brochure, each of the brochure design has its own strength and weaknesses. To hear our professional advice, just drop us a note at enquiry@tilt.com.sg anytime and we will be more than glad to advise you on what’s in a brochure.
Design Matters: Let the Brochure Cover out!
Previously on this blog, we discussed on getting results following 3 simple steps to brochure design. Now we look a bit more at the cover.
What should we take note of when doing up the cover:
1) Logo Placement
This should be placed in a prominent location. The worst thing to happen is when people are attracted to the brochure, picked it up, took a quick read, put it back (or throw it away) and could not remember which company this brochure is from after just 5 minutes. The logo do not have to be big if it is put in a location where it does not have to compete with attention from other design elements.
2) Product Display
If product images are decided to be placed on the cover, it should be sparingly used. We leave the catalogue kind of placement to the content pages rather than make it look like a flyer with 101 products on the cover. Of course, certain kind of industries do use this to good effect but as a rule of thumb, one to three product images are the best we would recommend.
3) Tagline/Motto
Do you remember taglines like ‘Good food at great prices’ or will you remember ‘Fingers lickin’ good’? I will assume that the latter will be the more commonly remembered amongst us. Fingers lickin’ good works so much much at conjuring an image than ‘Good food at great prices’, isn’t that right?
Simple and easy remembered taglines are used in corporate branding to ensure that the identity ’sticks’ with the audience. Just think about Nike ‘Just do it’ tagline which they have used for decades and it is easily one of the most recognisable tagline. Even Macdonald’s simple ‘I’m Loving It’ is working real fine and people remembers it because it is short and sweet. People can use it in their everyday language and straight away, it conjuries the brand in the mind. A good tagline is therefore, imperative as it helps to reinforce the brand and ensures consistency in all the marketing collaterals.
4) Colours
The guideline is largely based on the corporate colours which have to be fine-tuned to suit the brochure intention. Colourful or pastel colours works in various ways to emphasise the product or provide that professional look. Both might work. Broadly speaking, there are a fixed set of rules to adhere most of us will follow. Luminous or bright colours should be carefully chosen and sparingly used. Other than this, the rest of the colours are up for grabs.
5) Images
Most clients would like abstract images to be used. Example would be closed-up shots of just coloured items or blurred objects.
We feel that this should only be used for background. You might feel it looks nice but it stops there. There is nothing else the image portrays. It does not lead you to remember the product nor the brand. After going through the brochure, the result of it is most likely to be one of you remembering that there is a nice abstract picture used which you cannot remember what it means. The meaning is lost. So background is the place for these type of imagery.
Typically, we will recommend images more relevant or direct if it is to be used on the foreground. It is not all the time that we manage to find a powerful image that fulfills the brochure requirements so most of the time, each of the above design elements have to work together to provide the intended look.
Conclusion
Though we have mentioned the above, that does not mean that we follow strictly by it as it really depends on the requirements and the intended audience. Wed do break the guidelines when the need arises. The important matter is for the brochure to serve its purpose well. We do not claim perfect brochure designs but we do follow a certain thought process before coming up with a design. The brochure cover has to look complete and be cohesive with the remaining parts of the brochure.
So the next time you look at a brochure, take more notice of the reason of being there for all the cover elements.
Previously on this blog
Brochure design results with just 3 simple steps
Design Matters: Brochure design results with just 3 simple steps
July 5, 2008 by kimo · Leave a Comment
When TILT receives a project asking for {en:brochure|brochure} design, one of the favourite question that clients like to ask is – “How much is it going to cost me?”
We would like to respond with, “as much as you can” but that might seemed unethical and it makes people think we are not professional. So we have not used this answer till now, at least not yet. Probably our clients understand that you-get-what-you-pay but sometimes, negotiation is a trait and skill that we all like to employ from time to time.
And of course, effort vs cost is a tricky combination to balance. After all, we pride ourselves on providing value that clients grows to appreciate after completing the first project. It is evident as recurrent sales account for about 80% of our revenue.
What we would like to focus on, however, is whether the design of the brochure will suit our client’s purpose, appeal to their {en:target audience|target audience} and make the sale.
Let me just list down 3 main key points below:
- Let the Brochure Cover Out – Something has to SHOUT out here. But what is it? Something that sells! An attractive or interesting photo, a clever {en:tagline|tagline} or loud tagline. Basically, the cover have to provide the draw for people to walk over and then pick up a copy of it. Sometimes though, a simple relevant image or logo will do the job, it all depends on the job scope really. It’s purpose is to attract.
- Amplify the Key Points – Cut the unnecessary information and text if possible as these just distracts the reader. Just provide the selling points and exists to maintain the reading interest. It is supposed to evoke emotions.
- Get the Sale – Once you have gotten this far, this is the last chance before the reader decides to throw it away, chuck the brochure aside, keep it for reference, or contact you for the sale. Put in the sales clincher statement or an easy-to-do action like ask for quotation or request for a discussion. This is an action-trigger.
Just 3 simple tips to remember for now. The design is to get the bite and leave a good memorable aftertaste. It is as important, if not more so, than the text copy.
For more detailed tips that expand on the above 3 points, do keep a look out for our upcoming articles.
Let the Brochure Cover Out!
Be a Fan
