First of all know what your focus is going to be. Are you shooting for a holiday theme or a general graphic that is pleasing to the eye? What is your demographic? These two questions will lead you in the right direction so that you can make the most of your campaign.

Next, you need to know what your medium is going to be. Do you want a full tri-fold brochure, a flyer, or will a postcard do it? This will help you to keep the number of graphics to an optimal level without overloading your printing piece.

Lastly, be honest with yourself. Do you need to hire someone or at least look to an online printer for templates and tips? Getting in over your head will most likely lead to a waste of your hard earned dollars.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

If you’re feeling sentimental, show your appreciation to your customers by making a Thanksgiving slideshow for your website. Include photos you’ve collected throughout the year of clients, events, projects and products. Wondershare has a video that explains how to create a 3-D flash slideshow. Be sure to mention the new slideshow in your e-newsletter and include a link!

Do you have any leftover pumpkins from your Halloween marketing campaign? You can still use those, since gourds, in general, symbolize autumn. If not, though, Tutorial9 shows you how to create a Thanksgiving pumpkin with Photoshop. Use it to decorate your company’s website!

If you’re looking for something nostalgic, check out this free Thanksgiving turkey vector from BenBlogged.com. It reminds me of those construction-paper turkeys we made in grade school in which we outlined our hands for the turkey’s body. This adorable turkey would make a great accent to your website.

For a different take on turkey, Associated Content has a tutorial about how to create a turkey in Fireworks. This one is wearing a pilgrim hat!

Speaking of pilgrims, for other Thanksgiving images – such as cornucopias, pilgrims and autumn leaves – check out 1NetCentral’s collection, MorgueFile’s as well as iStockphoto’s.

For more ways your business can take advantage of the holiday, check out these Thanksgiving marketing ideas, which include creating recipe cards, cooking bookmarks and holiday cards.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The widespread availability of free and paid stock images online introduces this same problem into the graphic design world.  If you look around at other people’s postcards, newsletters and websites, you tend to see very safe, banal choices of imagery that don’t add much to the promotion.

When selecting a photograph or illustration, it’s important to think like an art director and get creative about choosing the most unique, effective stock imagery for the project. A great photograph or illustration can anchor an entire marketing campaign or promotion. Sometimes the artwork can even be a source of inspiration for the piece’s copy and design or format.

As a guide toward finding more interesting and effective image selections, consider the three questions below:

What do I search for?
Many stock image sites operate with a search engine. To get the most out of your search, you must go beyond the first few obvious search phrases that pop into your head. For instance, if you are looking for an image for a financial consultant’s postcard, avoid searching phrases such as “money,” “profit” and “investing.” Instead, think about the biggest benefits or goals of the consultant’s service. If he or she aims to make customers feel safe and secure in their wealth management, then you may want to try searching for “happy family,” “house” and “home,” which are images that illustrate the benefits or results of the consultant’s services.

How do I find a unique image?
If you’ve found your concept first and are looking for an image that evokes the concept, stay away from the obvious choices. To show “partnership” images with handshakes or two people with arms interlocked are two examples of boring ideas that have been done before. Think about unique instances where two things work together, such as a nature shot showing a symbiotic relationship like that of a plover bird cleaning a crocodile’s teeth. Or you can take a more symbolic graphic design approach to showing “partnership” by finding an image of an interlocking chain or puzzle pieces that you can use as design elements, repeated throughout the promotion, to represent the idea.

What if the image isn’t perfect?
Sometimes you download an image that really resonates with the theme or concept of your promotion, but when you place it on the promotion, it looks flat or like it’s missing something. That’s where photo software comes in. With many of the free and paid stock image sites out there, you have permission to manipulate the image however you want. Switching it from color to black and white or sepia tone is one trick for instantly changing the way your image looks. Don’t settle for an image as-is, when you can retouch, recontextualize and revamp an image using Photoshop and similar software.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Despite the success of the movie “Zombietown” – and really, you need to see it – vampires are flitting about everywhere. There are the “True Blood” and “Vampire Diaries” TV shows and, like I mentioned before, the anticipation for “New Moon,” the sequel to “Twilight.” Those series have legions of fans, which is why graphic designers should sharpen their skills and market directly to them. You can add vampires and their associated imagery (fangs, ankhs, bats, blood) to flyers, posters, greeting cards and other promotional materials. Or you can promote Halloween events at your business with banners adorned with vampires.

Here are some resources for tutorials involving vampires.

RNEL.NET has six vampire tutorials using Adobe Photoshop, including how to give people fangs.

CJ Tutorials explains how to “convert a human into a living vampire.” Shouldn’t that be “unliving?”

The DoDear Club site has a unique approach to the genre – it explains how to make a cute, animated monkey vampire. I’m sure you can find a use for that.

PSD Guides, which always has great tips and tricks for graphic designers, explains how to create a whole creepy vampire scene, complete with blood and glowy eye. This one offers a number of tricks you can incorporate into future projects.

PhotoshopGirl compiles a handful of tutorials, including how to create the “Twilight” look – as in, how to make a normal, healthy-looking person look pale with piercing eyes – and how to make it appear as though blood is dripping from one’s mouth.

Gimp Video Tutorials offers a video for, of course, a gimp tutorial that includes how to lighten skin.

No vampire is complete without its alter ego, so Flash Game Tutorial shows you how to create a cartoon vampire bat.

But OK, for those of you playing for the other team, Dphotojournal has a tutorial about how to manipulate a person into a zombie using Photoshop. And Vectortuts has more than 50 vector zombies. Something for everyone – dead or undead.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The entries have already started coming in, and voting has begun, in PsPrint’s $10,000 Holiday Card Contest! We’ll accept your original greeting cards through Oct. 30, but the earlier you enter, the better chance you have of winning, since visitors to the gallery are the voters!

If you’re a graphic designer who starts planning for the holidays in the summer, then ’tis the season for PsPrint’s $10,000 Holiday Card Contest! Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa or Festivus – for the rest of us! – PsPrint’s $10,000 Holiday Card Contest is open to graphic designers, students, PsPrint fans and customers.

Designers: This is your chance to whip up a winning holiday design rather than settle for the ho-hum boxes at the store. And did we mention the chance for a share of $10,000 in prizes and printing services?

PsPrint is posting all contestants’ greeting card designs on our Web site, where customers are voting for their favorites. And you can get in on the competition, too, as we encourage you to advocate for your own design – urge your friends to vote for you! Facebook your entry! Tweet it! In other words, find as many ways possible to link back to your entry.

Prizes will be awarded in two categories: Best Design and Most Humorous. That’s right; you can submit as many as 15 design entries in two categories, just in case your mind is brimming with ideas.

You’d better start thinking fast of your holiday card design, because beginning today contestants have been submitting their images for holiday greeting cards. Your design will then be showcased on PsPrint’s blog site along with those of other contestants, and online voting has commenced. Contestants may submit holiday card entries through Oct. 30. Finalist voting will begin a few days later, on Nov. 2, and will continue through Nov. 16. Winners will be announced on Nov. 18.

Each grand prize winner will receive a $2,000 gift card from Apple, HP or Amazon, plus free printing of 1,000 greeting cards. Runner-up winners will receive $200 gift cards and free printing of 250 copies of their cards.

Any questions? Then check out the rules for PsPrint’s $10,000 Holiday Card Contest.

Good luck!

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

During Speigner’s initial trip to Guatemala, McGirr learned that he was a graphic designer, and she explained that she wanted to open a design studio in Santiago Atitlan, a Guatemalan village. “As soon as I agreed, I realized, ‘I’m not qualified to do this,’ Speigner said. “So I figured I’d bring back colleagues.” Thus, Design4Kids was born – a year later, Speigner returned to Guatemala with a handful of creative colleagues to conduct a weeklong series of workshops. “We did the first one [in November 2008], and it went very well, and then another one in June and now one coming up in December.”

A typical Design4Kids workshop lasts a week and takes place while the students are on break from school. “We work with an actual client, always a nonprofit, that has a need for visual communications,” Speigner said. The client establishes its need to the Design4Kids volunteers, who are then introduced to the Fotokids students – usually a group of about 10 – to prepare them for the client interview. Once the students have met with the client, they brainstorm and get into actual production, including round-robin critiquing and preparing a creative brief. Finally, the students go before the client with their presentation. “It’s kind of real world that way,” Speigner said. “We’re finding that’s huge for the kids, because they’re doing the whole thing, and we’re just coaching.”

McGirr initially proposed the design studio in Santiago Atitlan in order to provide a chance at employment for the youth – “These kids have opportunities in the city, but not in rural areas,” Speigner said. However, there are nonprofit as well as small, for-profit businesses in the area. But what’s come about, Speigner has noticed, is the students develop a sense of value in themselves.

Speigner, pictured below, described a student in the last workshop who was a talented artist, but once the volunteers found out she was also taking business classes, they encouraged her to take on the role of project manager, “and she really blossomed,” he said. The student learned about setting up spreadsheets, talking to department heads and managing the project. “She just took off with that,” Speigner  said. “It was like she was 10 times bigger in her demeanor. So Design4Kids is really about more than teaching design.

“There are kids all over the world who have creative talents that are rarely ever nurtured,” he said. “I saw the chance to give back into the world something I have had the good fortune to have nurtured in me. So it’s not necessarily that they become professionals in the creative arts but that they feel they have value. Maybe they’re talented with drawing, but they’re more interested in law or journalism or whatever else. When you nurture kids in anything. they’re more inclined to learn more.”

The value of Design4Kids isn’t something only the students gain, however – “Through my volunteer experience, it was really clear to me how valuable it is for adults to give back,” said Speigner, who works full time as a graphic designer, does photography on the side and volunteers his spare time to directing Design4Kids. He explained to me that after the second workshop earlier this year, he asked the volunteers to rate how valuable the experience was. “On a scale of 1 through 10, with 10 being the highest” Speigner said, “I received responses of 10, 20 and 50.”

The next session of Design4Kids workshops is scheduled for Dec. 5-13, and Speigner said he is still looking for a couple more volunteers, particularly designers and others who are experts in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign and WordPress. Speigner has two basic requirements: have a professional level of experience in the creative profession, and have a desire to help the kids.

“This is a volunteer vacation that ends up being win-win,” said Speigner.

For information about how to volunteer, go to the Design4Kids Web site. Even if you can’t make the trip to Guatemala, be sure to check out Design4Kids’ wish list, which includes design magazines, Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and design books in Spanish.

Photos © Eric Lolkema.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.