Graphic Design is an Investment

In the current economic climate it has become an all too often experience to see clients trying to save money by designing their own marketing items. In some cases this works for them and gets them by for a time, but more often than not it comes to us to ‘tidy up’ or start afresh. This is usually at a very late stage due to so much time being spent trying to do it themselves.

We would love to have more of our clients viewing graphic design as an investment, and here are a few points to help substantiate this notion:

END PRODUCT

The cost of printing the finished item is the same no matter who designed it and an investment in itself, so don’t waste that money producing a budget-looking item that is not going to aid your business in any way.

PURPOSE

Consider what you wish the marketing item to do for you. If it is a flyer or brochure to be displayed along with other company’s brochures at an event or tradeshow, you want it to stand out and yell ‘pick me’ from amongst the crowd, you want it to represent your company as a professional, trustworthy & established business.

Does something your receptionist has created in Microsoft Word do this for you?

RETURN

What do you want to get in return for producing the item? Consider the value of the item or service you are promoting, and balance this against the cost of producing marketing items to promote that service. Is it beneficial to your company to have a budget-looking brochure advertising a $1000 product or service?

COST

What is it costing YOU to design the item yourself? Consider how long it takes you or one of your staff to attempt to produce a design in the only tools you have available – Microsoft Word or Publisher, when that time could be better spent doing other tasks. You then send it to a print company only to be told that what you have supplied is not suitable – they need it in PDF format, the file is not set-up at the right size, it needs to include bleed & trim marks, the fonts need to be converted to paths, the colour has to be in CMYK not RGB. Do you know what this means?!

HELP IS AT HAND

Next time you are tempted to get started on a design yourself, why not give us a call and let us know what you need? We can offer advice on the best way to produce a quality product to suit your budget, once you hand the project over to us you might be very pleasantly surprised! The results will speak for themselves.