The Oscars are a great opportunity to shine the spotlight on your business or just gather friends together. If you have access to a projector, you can hang a sheet on a wall in your shop or home or even set up a viewing party outside. Invite friends, family and clients, and then encourage networking during the red carpet interviews leading up to the show.

Don’t forget: The Academy Awards are on Sunday, March 7. Here are four printing ideas to do in advance that will make your Oscar party memorable.

Invitations. A printed invitation is memorable – the recipient can hold onto it and remember your event, whether he or she actually attends. You can easily whip out a customized invitation, or you can play up the movie theme by printing tickets. PsPrint has a free event ticket template to get you started.

Advertising. Invitations aren’t the only way to call attention to your Oscar party. Print up posters with all the details and mount them at your store as well as bulletin boards of your friendly neighbors.

Ballot. Even if you don’t host a party, you can still organize a fun competition among co-workers, customers and friends. Print out ballots with the nominees listed on the official Oscar site (.pdf). For a personal touch and to add some marketing flair, design and print your own ballot form. Include your company’s information and consider adding some sort of coupon. (Hint: Choose a recycled matte paper stock, which is easier to write on.) Encourage participants to fill out the ballots early so they can turn them in to you prior to March 7 or at the start of your party. Then award a prize to whoever gets the most categories correct. Prizes could include a miniature trophy, a product or service from your company, or movie passes.

Consolation prizes. Make everyone a winner by awarding all participants and party attendants a take-home gift. One idea is to make a CD of the Oscar-nominated songs. You can usually legally purchase them quite cheaply through iTunes. Then burn a bunch of discs and package them in a customized CD sleeve that includes a playlist, some sort of Academy Award-inspired design and your company information.

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Don’t look at the screen like that! You don’t have to tell your clients that you love them … but words of kindness don’t have to be so mushy. Create a homemade Valentine’s Day card that bears your logo and design with some client friendly words. A simple note card could be mailed or handed out just like a Christmas card. Here are some ideas for text:

• You love your business, and we love doing business with you!

• Your business would be nothing without you as its heart.

• Or perhaps, you could use a great quote. For example: “Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.” – Anonymous

In addition to a printed Valentine’s Day card, you can also use a less expensive homemade Valentine’s Day card and embellish them with your own ink stamp or other craft material. Also, even though the color red is the main one of the season, using your branding color palette is completely appropriate for sending out customer appreciations during the holiday. It further reinforces your brand efforts and will probably make your card stand out among the rest!

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

To create a calendar that effectively markets your business, gets the phone ringing and generates sales, be sure the end product meets these three criteria: it’s convenient to use, inspirational and includes marketing messages. For more information about these three criteria for calendar success, read on.

1. Convenience
Making your own calendar and distributing it to clients is a bit of a risk. What if customers don’t find the calendar useful and toss it in the recycling bin? To be sure the calendar is a welcome convenience to clients, so think about what they might use the calendar for. Be sure to include all the national and major religious holidays on the calendar. If you can, try printing a 16- or 18-month calendar, which will give your printed piece a long shelf life. Some of the best calendars out there come with a set of stickers pre-printed with useful symbols for birthdays and appointments that users can stick onto the dates. It’s also great to come up with a list of business tips and include them throughout the calendar. If there’s anything you can think of that will make clients’ lives easier – go for it!

2. Inspiration
A calendar is something folks look at every day. Sometimes it’s the first thing they view before starting off the day. A good calendar provides a sense of orderliness and should also provide a bit of inspiration. Successful calendars have a clean, easy-to-see design and layout and also feature beautiful photographs.
Start by brainstorming a few possible calendar themes so that there is continuity from one month’s image to the next. Then, consider hiring a freelance photographer to come up with original images for the calendar. Or search for unique stock photography. The following search terms will yield some amazing shots: nature, landscape, aerial, ocean, beaches, forest, mountains and city. In addition to inspiring images, think about including great quotes from famous authors and thinkers on each page. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is a great resource for quotes.

3. Marketing and branding
So now you’re clients have a free, useful and beautiful calendar. Here’s how to make the calendar work for you. On every page be sure there’s a footer, or a block of text that includes your company, logo, website and phone number. Additionally think of creative ways to intersperse information about your business, products and services throughout the calendar. You can mark dates when you will be holding future events, sales or releasing new products. Just be sure that there’s a clear way for customers to take advantage of the sales, such as a promotion code. Coupons are another great marketing tool that you can incorporate into a calendar printing. If you issue the calendar in the winter, and include a coupon for the month of May, that will give customers a good reason to hang on to the calendar.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Along with creating regular letterhead, try creating a free stationery template header and footer for your clients’ e-mail as well as their print materials. Using the same design for the letterhead, make a duplicate file and bring the resolution down to 72dpi. You may have to play around a little bit with the width of the header and footer to come up with design that spans the e-mail in an attractive way.

Your client can place the picture into their e-mail by using the insert picture option. Keep in mind that web-based e-mails such as Hotmail and Yahoo might not have the option to insert pictures in this way; or you can create the e-mail in your own e-mail client and then forward it to your client. That way, they can see how the recipient will be able to view their e-mail, and use that e-mail as a template to create all of their additional e-mails from.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Make sure that you include a correct, legible return address
The return address should always be in the top left-hand corner of your postcard. It should be in a font that is legible, and the font color should be in enough contrast from the background that it can easily be seen. This goes for the mailing address as well. Using mailing labels could also be an easy way to make sure that this is done without a problem.

Leave room for the postal services’ barcode and markings
No text or graphics greater than 7 percent grayscale should be included within 5/8-inch of the margin at the very bottom of your card. The post office scans every piece of mail that comes through and their machines automatically place important information on the bottom of your card. If this area isn’t clear, those markings can’t be read, and your card will be sent back. See the illustration provided by ModernPostcard.com as to how to set up your card.

Leave room for postage
Your client may use a stamp, or they may have a bulk stamp number or a nonprofit permit. Regardless of how they intend to use their postage, it’s important that there be a designated place for their postage. When the post office processes your postcard, they are going to stamp the postage with their own marking that shows the postdate of the card. All of this information and area needs to be clear for them to properly distribute your postcard.

Be careful about rounded corners
There are a lot of conflicting messages about whether or not you can mail out postcards with rounded corners. But from USPS themselves it is OK to mail out materials that are “Rectangular with four square corners and parallel opposite sides. Letter-size, card-type mailpieces made of cardstock may have finished corners that do not exceed a radius of 0.125 inch (1/8-inch).” Basically, if your rounded corners do not exceed 1/8-inch radius, then you’re perfectly fine.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The beauty of a custom blank card is you can showcase a favorite photo you took or a collage of images Photoshopped together. I have a number of friends who fancy themselves as photographers, yet they just post their photos on Flickr, never printing and framing them. Any number of their shots of Half Dome at Yosemite would make a fine greeting card, or their beloved golden retriever, or that whimsical design they created in Illustrator.

Once you have your image, it’s easy to create your card with PsPrint’s free templates, which provide dimensions, layout, bleed, safety zone and folding guidelines. These templates allow you to build a PsPrint-ready file using programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Pagemaker and QuarkXpress.

After you’ve built your card, it’s time to choose your paper stock: 14-point glossy or 13-point matte, the latter being 100 percent recycled paper. The glossy makes photos and details really pop out, while the matte provides a more classic look. You can also choose to have a UV coating on your cards or accent them with foil stamping.

A custom blank greeting card is perfect for those last-minute events in which you don’t have the time to go out and buy a card. You can have them stocked away for whenever necessary, and the recipient will likely hold onto yours longer than an impersonal, store-bought card. Hmmm … sounds like that’d make a good marketing tool for your business, too.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.