Design

Make sure the menu represents the mood of the restaurant. Include attractive photos or other images to get your patrons salivating. Really take a look at these graphics and ask yourself, “Would I want to dine there? Does that look appetizing?”

Check out this article about upsell strategies for your menu.

Marketing

For takeout menus, always include coupons – that inclusion can ensure your menu a spot on the refrigerator as opposed to the junk-mail pile.

Spell check

As a copy editor at heart, it absolutely kills me when I visit a restaurant and notice typo after typo after typo. OK, sometimes if it’s a mom ’n’ pop establishment, it can be charming, but mostly, a poorly edited menu makes me cringe. If the restaurant proprietors aren’t detailed about a piece of print material that bears their name, then what else are they lax about? The food?

Printing

There are different types of menus that call for different types of printing. You obviously can choose a lighter paper weight for takeout menus than you would for the in-house one. There are even different folds and bindings to consider.

If you’re wondering about lamination, consider visitors to your establishment like me, who are always likely to spill their beverage all over your menu.

Don’t forget to check into green printing for your menu. Seek out recycled paper and soy-based inks. Be sure to mention on the menu about your attention to being ecologically friendly – perhaps the back where you include a bio of the restaurant. It’s good for the planet, and it’s also good for your reputation!

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

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.

If you are looking for invitations that will make a lasting impression on your guests, but not your wallet, try some of these cost-saving tips for invitation design and printing.

1. Keep it classic
To make your invitation pop without spending a ton of money on fancy foil stamping or embossing, stick to a black-and-white palette or use black, white and one other accent color. A generous use of white space around the text and images will keep the invite looking elegant and refined. Converting illustrations, graphic design elements and photographs into black and white will add to the sophisticated look and feel.

2. Pare down production
These first two ideas can lower production costs, but involve some do-it-yourself post-production work. First, you can choose to leave the inside of your invitations blank and handwrite the party details inside. If you leave the inside blank, then select a design that will look good with a handwritten interior. A craft-like or natural design will work better with handwriting than a modern, sleek design. Also, do not select a handwritten font for the outside of the invite, it will just clash with the real handwriting inside. Another idea is to have the invitations scored and shipped to you flat, then you can fold them yourself and save some extra cash. Additionally, selecting the smallest trim-size and least expensive paper stock can add up to substantial savings.

3. Focus on the font
You may want to go low budget on printing, paper or trim size, but you can still create an amazing invitation by investing in the perfect font. Purchasing a font is a low, one-time cost and not a cost-per-piece item and sometimes you can even find the perfect font as a free download. If you are hosting a baby shower, one idea would be to find an eye-catching, 1950s retro font and pair it with a classic image of a stork or even an umbrella (a little bit of a silly pun). If you are hosting a children’s party, try a futuristic font, an animal or nature-inspired font or something really playful that relates to the party’s theme.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

While you might say it’s too soon for Valentine’s Day, its not too soon to start planning a holiday greeting card project. In fact, now is the perfect time to design and print holiday cards!

Think about it: You’ll need to come up with a mailing list, a theme, a message, a design and perhaps stage a photograph of your home, business or family to send out. Then you have to allow time for production and mail delivery to be sure the card arrives ahead of the holidays.

So start thinking about the winter holidays now and consider these three greeting card add-ons, which will let family, friends and clients know how much you care.

1. Foil stamping
The winter holidays are the perfect occasion to add foil stamping to your design repertoire. A foil stamp is a special printing process that adds a layer of metallic-looking foil to a chosen area of your greeting card. Apply foil stamping to snowflakes, candles, stars, menorahs, tinsel, ornaments, gift packages and any other holiday design elements you can think of to make them really shine.

2. Create a sticker
A holiday greeting card is also a great vehicle for sending out special stickers. Create a die-cut sticker in the shape of a star or a Christmas tree. Another great use of stickers is to include a bunch in each card, and design them with a “To:” and “From:” field so that recipients can use them when they distribute holiday presents. Or you can create a festive sticker for ringing in the New Year, “Happy 2010!” that people can wear to a party or stick on the calendar or refrigerator.

3. Include a bookmark
Why not give everyone on your holiday mailing list a free gift! You can if you include a winter or holiday-themed bookmark in your greeting card mailing. A bookmark is flat and can slip into your mailing with little added cost. The winter holidays are a great time to give a bookmark as a gift with vacation from work and colder weather, there’s more time to for folks to curl up with a book.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Use the four ideas below to create successful business invitations that also market and promote your company or service.

1. Introduce yourself
To get the conversation started, try formally introducing yourself to potential guests and clients. Include a business card in each mailing, offering your name, title, website and any social networking links relative to your company or the event. This way, guests will know who the invite is coming from and can seek more information about you and your company. As long as you can respond to each message, include your telephone and/or e-mail address, allowing guests to contact you with questions.

2. Market the event as “exclusive”
Events are always more appealing when they are billed as “exclusive” or “for ticket holders only.” Printing up tickets or event passes, and inserting them into each invitation, can generate a feeling of exclusivity around your event. Remind guests to bring their tickets to the event. Print all the relevant event information on the ticket, including the date, time, event summary and URL, so that even if guests throw away the invite, they’ll still hold on to the ticket as a reminder with all of the necessary details.

3. Collect information and register guests
There are two ways to use a business event invitation to collect more information about guests. One is to set up a Web page with a digital registration form and direct people to the URL from the invitation. Another way is to include a response card in each invitation with a return, postage-paid envelope (or include a postage-paid postcard reply). Having guests fill out and return a response card or registration card, helps with head count and updates to your customer database. By including a few marketing questions, you can also learn more about the people on your mailing list.

4. Double your attendance levels
The tell-a-friend tactic works hand-in-hand with business event marketing. If you are mailing to a list of 500 potential attendees, chances are those folks have at least one other interested friend or colleague who’s not on your list. Try including a “Tell-A-Friend” postage-paid postcard in each invitation. All the guests need to do is drop that card in the mail to a friend, and you’ll get two participants instead of one.

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Thanks to everyone who entered and voted in the first round of PsPrint’s $10,000 Holiday Card Design Contest! We received so many original, beautiful and hilarious entries, and your votes decided which cards have moved on to round 2.

Now we ask that you take a moment to check out the 15 finalists in each category – Best Design and Most Humorous – and vote for your favorites.

If you’re among the finalists, this is your chance to really hustle for some votes. We at PsPrint have been impressed with our customers’ ingenuity. Here are some ways contestants have been promoting their designs:

• Contestants have been using Twitter to tweet the link to their entries. Occasionally, we’ve been retweeting the links, too, when we come across them.
• Entrants are also taking to their blogs to post their cards and include a link to their entries.
• Contestants have posted their cards on PsPrint’s Facebook page to urge our fans to vote for them.
• One contestant even posted her design on Craigslist.

Voting on the finalists continues through Nov. 16, and 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, while runners-up will snag $200 gift cards and free printing of 250 copies of their cards.

Good luck!

©2009 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.