Businesses handing out free calendars to their customers is a long-standing tradition. Loyal clients come to expect the calendar year after year, and new ones are just excited to get something for free. A calendar makes for good marketing because it is displayed year-round, usually in an eye-catching, high-traffic manner – in a kitchen, on a desk or near a telephone.

Creating a calendar is pretty simple – templates are readily available. So all you really need to do is select your images for each month. Be sure your contact information is visible on every page, including your website and phone number! You can even add value to the calendar by including stickers and coupons.

Random fact: According to Wikipedia, the sale of physical calendars is restricted in some countries and given as a monopoly to universities and national academies – just another reason to take advantage of your freedom to create your own!

©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.

Coloring skin and body in Photoshop and how to mimic the natural play of light upon the body.

How to create a professional Twitter background – a quick-and-easy tutorial for customizing your Twitter page.

Remember how fun watercolors used to be?  You can recreate a watercolor effect with Photoshop!

Pop art a la Lichtenstein – really cool stuff for the poppy designer!

Very, very cool Photoshop tutorial on how to transform a woman’s photograph into an eerie doll face and more.

How to design a website using the 960 Grid System, an oft-employed web design technique that looks great. This tutorial includes a free 960 GS download so you can quickly deploy an original 960 design.

A tutorial that covers how to make a DVD cover with Photoshop.  The techniques used here could also be applied to movie posters.

Dioramas are cool, especially when you combine several images and blur/focus PS techniques to highlight your subject.

Want to master the Photoshop warp tool?  This tutorial shows you the way…

Paint splashed over the face of a photographic subject – nice. What’s really neat is that this liquid Photoshop technique can be used in many, many design applications.

Yet another awesome website design tutorial.  This has a clean Web 2.0 feel that many designers like to emulate.

A very unique and creative – yet clean and easy-to-follow – website design.  The techniques employed here are invaluable.

Learn how to use the Photoshop mask tool to create this model effect from a photo.

When the outer glow blending option doesn’t quite cut it – use these tips to achieve an outstanding glow emanating from your subjects.

Super cool fallen angel tutorial that shows you how to blend a woman and a bird on a textured background.

What are your favorite Photoshop techniques?

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

And although breaking norms almost always gets attention, it that doesn’t necessarily mean that people will want to make a purchase.

To boot, the term “creepy” is subjective, so it’s hard to say how one person will respond versus another. Still, there are ads that most people would deem creepy, and these are the ads I’m referring to. A Google search for creepy ads reveals dozens of websites listing (many of the same) creepy ads — but they’re vintage creepy ads and some are only creepy in modern context.

Vintage ads espousing the virtues of cigarette smoking seem creepy now that the dangers of the activity are known, but when they were originally released society did not understand these dangers and therefore the ads would not have been creepy (the same goes for ads touting Lysol for … ahem … women’s health care).

I do not think that MOST advertisements are intentionally creepy, because marketers do not want creepiness associated with their products. The infamous “demon girl white bread/jelly/cellophane” advertisement could have been intentionally creepy to earn elongated looks, but I doubt that this connotation would have served the brand well overall.

Some advertisements can benefit from inherent creepiness — horror film posters, for example, or advertisements that vilify the competition. It’s expected. But the unexpected creepy ad … does it work?

It’s also worth mentioning that we might find certain ads to be creepy because we’re told that they’re creepy. If you were told that an ad was goofy, funny or amazing before you looked at it, would that influence how you felt about it?

Your homework: visit some of the following links to see some ads that have been deemed creepy. Ask yourself whether you think they’re creepy because you’re told they’re creepy, or if they truly give you the creeps. Or, maybe you don’t find them creepy at all. Let me know. You be the judge: Do creepy ads work?

Creepy ads link #1

Creepy ads link #2

Creepy ads link #3

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Social networking.

If you haven’t engaged in social networking for your portfolio, you’re in for a treat (assuming you’re good at what you do. You are good, right?). There are many, many ways to socially network your skills online.

Why spread your portfolio into the vastness of the web when you can update it on a central server? Exposure, traffic, sales; in that order.

Do you get a quarter million visitors a month like behance.net does? It might be worth your while to post your portfolio there. Here are a few other graphic design portfolio websites your work should be listed on:

Designer’s Toolbox
Carbon Made
BeHance
Deviant Art
CPU Luv
Coroflot
Flickr
MySpace
Facebook
Elance
Guru

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

But what about the simple, time-intensive tasks graphic designers tediously undertake? Things such as identifying a font, changing a CSS style, or choosing a complimentary color can take hours away from more “important” tasks such as creating your designs and choosing imagery. The creative can be stifled by the banal.

Some of my favorite productivity software for graphic designers include:

FileZilla — An FTP application that lets you instantly edit server-side files. This comes in handy when you need to make a simple CSS change or swap a banner image.

7-ZIP — Lets you compile, compress, and unpack a myriad of file types that the built-in Windows application can’t. If you work with large file transfers, Z-ZIP and FileZilla are necessities.

IdentifFont — Identify a font by name, style or by answering a series of quick questions.

Open Source CMS systems — Content Management Systems, once put in place, save time and money. When you need to make a portfolio update, you simply fill out a form and upload your file. If you want to change content, add products or do anything else in a flash, there’s probably a CMS that facilitates the action. Learn to design and find a good developer (if you don’t code) for systems such as Wordpress, Joomla! and Drupal. Content is still king, and Open Source CMS is here to stay.

Color scheme generators/color wheels — Here’s a great list of 25 color scheme generators.

Whatsitscolor.com — Upload an image or submit a link to an image and Whatsistscolor generates a color scheme based on the colors in the image. This is valuable if you like the look of a website, brochure or postcard and want to emulate its color scheme. Color Hunter does the same, perhaps slightly cleaner.

Don’t forget that Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, Quark and other software have add-ons, plug-ins, actions and a whole host of other time-saving devices available for free download. Try this list of Photoshop plug-ins for starters.

Of course, software suites such as Microsoft Office and OpenOffice deserve a mention, as well as the many commercial project management applications. For free and simple project tracking, check out FreeMind.

Image CC License Flickr.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.