Graphic Design for Print Mediums

Cohesive Branding

Our design team is experienced in creation of materials for a full scope of Branding including:

• Logo Development
• Business Cards
• Letterhead
• Envelopes
• Tri-fold Brochures
• Fliers
• Menus
• Posters
• Logo Embroidery

Each item can be designed independently, in conjunction with existing branding, or as part of a new design re-branding campaign. We have working relationships with a number of print shops locally and would be happy to refer those who have served us and our customers well in the past.

While we are not a marketing company, we intimately understand the need for cohesive branding- what a composer might call “variations on a theme.”  Anyone can take a single logo and resize it to fit on anything printable (though even then amateurs often distort or degrade the logo, sometimes beyond recognition!)  Achieving the effect of seeing the “same thing” on every piece of marketing material is a subtle art.  One must the time, in each instance, to carefully craft the design to bring the logo and the material together in order to work effectively at conveying the same message and feeling.  We would venture to say that the average person would probably never notice these subtle differences.  However, in the profession of design- these are the differences we live and die by.

Large Format

We are also have experience with large-format design including Billboards and Tradeshow Booths. Again, these can be designed to match current branding or created from a blank canvas.

While one must always be aware of how a design is meant to be viewed, particularly at what distance, large format design presents an extra challenge.  The shear quality and resolution of imagery used must be excellent.  The Front Range Gun Club billboard to the left is 8×16 feet.    There is nothing more disappointing than a billboard at the “mockup” level that cannot scale to print requirements.  Imagine a fuzzy billboard- not very effective or flattering, eh?

Furthermore text size in the design is crucial.  To achieve the optimal size on the first try, the designer must not only take into account the physical size of the billboard, but the distance from which it is most commonly viewed, and common light conditions.  Again, for effectiveness we must avoid designing a billboard with text too small to read, or too much text to read in the time it takes a driver pass it- all the while making it attractive, exciting, and memorable.

This same concept become even more important when applied to Trade Show Booths.  The standard Trade Show booth is approximately 10 x 8 feet.  In this case the clarity of imagery is even more important, because the Booth will be viewed at a much closer range than a billboard.  Imagery for such a design is 11,000 x 8875 pixels (compared to the 1024 x 768 of an average computer monitor).

Print Advertising

Designing for newspaper and magazine advertisements naturally draw on the same concepts as designing for anything else, but as always, a designer must be keenly aware of how they will be viewed.  At this point the consumers of newspapers and magazines have built visual filters to advertisments.  This is not to say that advertising in such publications is futile or a dead medium, rather that if you are going to do it you need to stand out.  An ad must be eye-catching, brief, yet informative in order to be effective.  Often a newspaper selling you a flight of advertising space will offer “free design” from their in-house designers.  Take a moment to think about this- yes, you stand to save considerable money by not paying an outside designer.  Everyone else thought that same thing.  How different are the ads on any given page of that newspaper going to be if they are all designed by the same in-house design team?