In follow up to last week’s brochure design tips, we thought we’d discuss why you should consider printing your brochures digitally, rather than rely on good old lithographic.

Digital is being hailed as a revolution for small business’ print marketing: compared to litho, digital is quick, often cheaper and can deliver messages personalised to your customers’ interests.

Why is digital printing different to lithographic?

Traditional litho ‘offset’ printing requires the creation of a plate for every print, which is then used to transfer the image via a rubber blanket onto the paper.

Litho is great for printing 1000s of catalogues, magazines and books at a relative low cost. But its cost is less attractive when you’re only after a few hundred brochures and flyers.

Digital printers, on the other hand, don’t require the creation of a plate. Instead they use software to render digital images directly onto the press, bypassing the need for an expensive plate altogether. This offers numerous benefits…

What are the benefits of digital printing?

Cheaper – without the need to create a plate for every image, small businesses can print small quantities of brochures, flyers and business cards cheaply. There are already a few web-to-print businesses (such as moonpig.com and lulu.com) that have sprung up to capitalise on the low cost of small, customised print runs.

Faster – each litho print run takes a long time to setup. Digital presses, however, can be setup quickly and are capable of enabling next day, or even same day delivery.

Greener – the elimination of a plate, and shorter make-ready, means you also don’t need all the other printing materials and waste that go along with them. So you no longer have chemicals, ink and paper filling up your bin; and because you only print what you need, less chance of obsolescence. Some digital printing machines are even designed with their own recyclability in mind.

Customisable – every print can be customised to include unique content, such as the customer’s name, personalised URL and relevant images. Personalising marketing helps improve the response rate because people are more likely to engage with content that’s relevant to their interests. Litho, on the other hand, only allows a static ‘one size fits all’ message per print run.

High quality – the quality of digital printers is rapidly improving, and is almost indistinguishable from traditional litho. Their reliability is also getting better, and eventually they’ll be just as consistent, and competitive, at long print runs too.

Digital printing puts one-to-one marketing into customers’ hands

Digital print has opened up print marketing to small businesses by making it cost effective to deliver timely, relevant and personalised messages. This is the type of marketing weary consumers are crying out for, so digital print technology has arrived at just the right time.

Here at bda we’ve experienced first hand the benefits digital print offers for one-to-one marketing. In a recent campaign for Siemens, digital printing enabled us to create individual brochures personalised to match the responses customers logged on their website. This enabled Siemens to not only deliver marketing finely tuned to their customers’ interests, but also saved cash because they only needed to print what was requested, rather than end up with a pile of unwanted brochures gathering dust.

Litho still has a role to play in printing mass produced materials. But for fast, cost effective and personalised one-to-one print marketing, you have to go digital.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

With all the fuss about the internet, it’s easy to forget about one of marketing’s workhorses that’s helped businesses promote themselves almost since the invention of the printing press. The fact is that a large proportion of people still prefer to receive offers in print, which is why the humble brochure deserves to be respected.

A brochure should reflect your expertise, professionalism and the quality of your products. And it needs to be eye catching and captivating if you want it to effectively promote your company.

But even creating a simple brochure in which all the elements are working together can be a complicated process. So to get you started, here’s bda’s top ten tips for designing brochures you’ll be proud to hand out, and are more likely to be read and responded to:

1. Identify its purpose – what do you want the brochure to accomplish? Do you want it to announce a new product? Raise your company profile? Or generate sales? Deciding on your brochure’s aim early on in the design process is vital because it will influence its tone, appearance and the result you can expect to achieve.

2. Work out the hierarchy of info – write a list of all the points and information you want to include in the brochure. Then put them into a prioritised list ensuring all the most vital info is at the top. This will make it easier to plot out what needs to go on each panel of your brochure.

3. Use high quality images – your brochure should provide a visual feel for who you are and what you do. So you should invest in high quality stock images or professional photography that reflects the expertise of your company. Trying to save money by using free clip art or pictures from a friend’s camera is only going to cost you in the long run in lost sales.

4. Make sure it’s well written – your brochure’s words need to appeal to your target customer, sell your benefits and reflect your personality. So choose your words carefully or hire a copywriter to choose them for you.

5. Select an appropriate font – the style of lettering you use will influence your brochure’s visual appearance and reflect the personality of your company. Try and avoid over used fonts, and don’t necessarily copy whatever’s popular at the moment. Font fashion changes quicker than that on Oxford Street.

6. Proofread – read through it several times, read it out aloud and read sentences backwards before you sign it off. Spelling mistakes can damage your credibility, and lead to your freshly printed brochures only making it as far as the shredder.

7. Paper quality – select paper that’s within budget and reflects the quality of your product. Normal weights for brochures range from 80gsm to 350gsm, whilst there’s a wide range of qualities to choose from. Choose paper that reflects your brand message without bankrupting your marketing budget in the process.

8. Choose a finish that enhances its appeal – there are a huge range to choose from, such as gloss varnishing, embossing, foiling, laminating and special finishes such as flitter etc. So choose the type you think best enhances your brochure’s feel, look and message. As with paper quality, some special finishes can be expensive, so ensure you get different quotes before committing to production.

9. Personalise to improve response – customising your brochures with personalised URLs (PURLs) as part of an integrated campaign can increase the response rate because people love seeing their own name in print. Modern tracking also enables you to capture data you can use to make future campaigns even more personalised and targeted.

10. Be realistic about what your brochure can achieve – after you’ve decided on all the elements above and sent your design off to the printers, you shouldn’t sit back and expect the sales to come rolling in. Ultimately, your brochure is a teaser for building intrigue and interest in your products, services, company or event. Long-term marketing success lies in capitalising on the interest your brochure builds through follow up activity, such as email campaigns and sales calls, and continuing to deliver relevant messages your prospects are happy to receive.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

Whether it’s a golden arch, a half eaten apple or pink jagged numbers, a logo is the visual embodiment of a brand’s identity. It has the power to inspire trust, admiration or even disdain, so you need to think carefully about how it’s designed.

Creating a logo isn’t simply a case of doodling for a few hours and picking out your favourite sketch. You have to find the magic combination of shapes, images and colours that will reflect your brand’s ethos and appeal to your target market.

Designing a logo which also remains relevant for years to come is far from simple, but here are a few tips to get you started:

Logo design rules

At a basic level, your logo should achieve the following:

• Describable so people can easily interpret what it represents
• Memorable so people will recognise it and associate it with your business
• Effective without colour in case it’s printed in black and white
• Scalable so it’s legible even when small enough to fit on a business card
• It shouldn’t be too complex otherwise it will ‘gum up’ and appear messy when shrunk
• Have fairly equal dimensions. People prefer logos which are square or circular, rather than tall and thin or short and fat

Logo design types

Logos generally fall into three main types:

• An illustrative representation of what a company does e.g. the WWF’s panda
• An abstract iconic image e.g. Apple, any sportswear brand or car manufacturer
• Font based with a unique typeface e.g. Harley Davidson, Google or Coca Cola

The logo type used should reflect the nature of a business’ industry and appeal to its target audience. An obvious example is the WWF’s panda, which is far more effective at conveying animal conservation than if they’d chosen the sort of dynamic, abstract logos favoured by sportswear brands.

Whichever type of logo you choose, it’s sensible to keep graphic and text elements (e.g. your company name or slogan) separate. Designing these elements independently gives you more scope and flexibility in how they’re used in the future.

For example, when your company becomes rich and famous you might want to drop the company slogan altogether, and let your logo spell out your brand message on its own.

2012 Olympics logo – disaster or genius?

Despite a national outbreak of disappointment, a petition to get it replaced and claims it causes epileptic fits, a series of brightly coloured, jagged numbers are what will be used to promote the London 2012 Olympics. The fact that the logo cost taxpayers £400,000 to design probably didn’t soften the blow.

When launched, the Olympics council hailed it as ‘the vision at the very heart of our brand’ and an effort to reach out to the nation’s youth. The nation’s marketers, however, are less enamoured. In a recent survey, three out of five said they thought it was ineffective and didn’t quite give the impression of the UK being a world leader in entertainment, culture and sport as everyone had hoped.

However, 2012 is still four years away, and the logo is designed to be used in a variety of animated guises yet to be unveiled (and possibly still to be invented for that matter). And as people get on with supporting their country, they yet might find themselves warming to it, particularly if it starts being associated with yet another Team GB triumph.

The Nike Swoosh – pure genius

Ordinarily, designing a logo is a complicated process, requiring weeks or even months of research, sketching, conceptualisation and reflection. However, occasionally stokes (or one stroke to be precise) of genius can occur.

Perhaps the greatest example of how a brand’s logo can grow into a globally admired symbol is the Nike ‘Swoosh’, a simple yet effective representation of the wing of Nike, the Greek Goddess of Victory.

Created by a graphic design student in 1971 for a mere $35, the Swoosh was partnered with the ‘Just Do It’ slogan to brilliantly symbolise a lifestyle choice for millions of athletes and casual sports fans worldwide.

People are seduced into buying sportswear and equipment decorated with the Nike Swoosh because of how it makes them feel, the holy grail of brand marketing.

A logo should be for life

It takes time to build awareness of your logo and what it represents. So deciding that it doesn’t promote your brand message adequately and changing it a few years down the line can be expensive and counterproductive, which is why you need to get your logo design right first time.

So, whether you spend £400,000 or $35, designing your logo will require obeying the rules (whilst also daring to be different), hours of perspiration and a few strokes of genius.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

‘If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola, the company would go out of business.” – unnamed Coca-Cola Exec

A business’ brand is the set of thoughts and feelings people associate with it. More than just an eye catching logo, a brand can provoke positive emotions, such as excitement, trust and desire, which seduce people into wanting a relationship with it.

People prefer to interact with those they like and trust. So a business’ brand is its biggest intangible asset because of its influence on customers; if you can influence the way they think you can influence the way they behave.

People don’t buy Nike trainers because they feel more comfortable, but because they want to buy into the lifestyle promised on adverts and endorsed by some of the world’s biggest sports stars. When Nike’s customers see their ‘swoosh’ logo they see a status symbol and feel a set of positive associations which they want to be a part of.

“A great brand raises the bar – it adds a greater sense of purpose to the experience, whether it’s the challenge to do your best in sports and fitness, or the affirmation that the cup of coffee you’re drinking really matters” – Howard Schultz (CEO of Starbucks)

It’s not always the best product which wins, but the one with the best branding

When people are in a shop choosing between two products they’re not merely pondering which has the most speed settings or loudest volume, but how the products make them feel.

People make buying decisions based on pragmatic and emotional triggers. So to encourage them to pick your box from the shelf, you need to make them feel good about you when they see your logo.

People are often happy to pay extra for a branded product because of the positive emotions triggered by the brand’s charisma (and advertising).

“Coca Cola does not win the taste test. Microsoft does not have the best operating system. Brands win.” – Bob Pittman (President of AOL)

Defining your business’ brand

When assessing what your brand should say about you and how it should make people feel, you need to consider:

• What’s your big idea – what makes you special? What’s at the heart of what you do? Ikea, for example, sells stylish furniture at affordable prices based on the big idea that well designed furniture should be available to everyone.
• Values – What do you believe in? What do you strive for in the service you provide? Easyjet’s brand is built on the values of easy and cheap.
• Vision – what are your aspirations and plans for the future?
• Personality – How do you want to talk to your customers? In a witty ‘Innocent’ drinks style or like a straight talking ‘John Smiths’ Yorkshireman?

These questions provide a blueprint for the thoughts and feelings you want your brand to communicate to your customers.

Communicating your brand

Once you’ve identified your big idea, values, vision and personality, you need to communicate your brand’s message through everything you do, including your business’ culture, customer service and advertising.

The tone, visual identity and appeal of your advertising must be consistent and carefully designed to reflect want you want people to feel when they see your logo. Whether it’s trust, excitement, reliability or prestige, the emotions triggered by your brand will influence how people respond to you and whether they’ll buy your products.

Selling bottled water is environmental insanity, with water being shipped half way around the world from Fiji and millions of barrels of oil used to make the plastic bottles.

However, the successful branding of bottled water as a purer, more natural and healthier alternative to what you can easily pour from the tap has seen sales increase 60% this decade and created a market worth £2 billion a year. This just goes to show that if you can influence how people feel you can influence what they’ll buy as well.

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) blog – real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.