Free giveaways make customers feel valued and help keep your company or brand top-of-mind. When you give away a little something, you may actually get that customer to sign up for your e-mail list or visit your website or store.

Bookmarks are a great free gift for marketing your business or organization. Bookmarks are quick and easy to produce and something that customers will bring home and use. Every time they open their novel, day planner or cookbook – they’ll see your company, logo and any messages you want to convey.

Here are three unique bookmark printing ideas. Which one will appeal to your customer base?

Really big bookmarks
Most people are hit with thousands of marketing and advertising messages every day, so it helps to stand out from the pack. Break the traditional bookmark mold of 2-inch by 6-inch and go for a 3-inch by 9-inch size. It’s not quite a postcard or a flyer, and the large bookmark can include some interesting or inspiring full-bleed photography and text. Go even larger, to a 4-inch by 15-inch size, and you can create a “Coffee Table Bookmark,” perfect for keeping tabs on large art and design books that many folks have in their homes.

Fancy bookmarks
Sometimes there’s nothing more appealing than making a cup of tea and curling up in bed with a wonderful book. The only thing that could make the experience more luxurious is a luxe bookmark with a silky tassel, beautiful imagery or design and maybe an inspirational quote in shimmering foil-stamped script (Sounds pretty cool, huh?). Don’t let your logo or company name overpower the elegance of the design. In a smaller font on the edges of the bookmark, simply print “Courtesy of Company Name.”

Useful bookmarks
Yes. You can fit “content” onto a bookmark, even if it’s a standard 2-inch by 6-inch size. Printing a few tips, URLs, charts or other information on the front and back of the bookmark can make the free gift even more valuable in customer’s eyes. If you own a home or kitchen store, how about including measurement, yield and conversion charts on the bookmarks? Or if most of your customers are local residents, a guide to all the necessary community and emergency telephone numbers. Even jokes or trivia question would be a great addition to any bookmark. Just remember to also include your company, logo and contact information. too!

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

The "Kick Me" sign concept draws on the same impacing power as the flyer printing and distribution strategies listed here. BONUS: You can get your own "Kick Me" sign here.

Flyer printing is perfect for marketing to the masses, yet it still allows you to control your targeting. Everyone who has studied marketing will tell you that you have to get attention first, and so you have to have a compelling image, a powerful headline and on and on.

Spare me the Marketing 101 lesson, right?

The best way to guarantee your flyers will get noticed is to focus on placement, and the more shocking the better. People remember the unexpected; it catches them off-guard and forces their brains to recognize, analyze and remember. Isn’t this exactly what your flyers should be doing for you?

So let’s establish that flyer placement is just as important as flyer printing in the first place. Let’s also acknowledge that shocking your audience with creative placement will be far more effective than, say, tacking your flyer to a community bulletin board (where everyone is competing for attention). Additionally consider that sometimes context and placement work together to make a flyer shocking. For example, a flyer inside a grocery store is not shocking. A PETA flyer inside a grocery store, on the other hand, has the potential to be rather shocking indeed.

Thus, here are my five favorite shocking places to post flyers:

1. Restroom stalls – Shock your target audience by giving them something to read while they’re taking care of business.

2. Ceilings – Anywhere your customers are forced to look up is a great place to catch them off-guard. Good examples include the ceilings in dentist and chiropractor examination rooms, and you can also pull this off in hair salons and in tandem with a wall-based flyer that says “Look up!”

3. Inside books – Work out an arrangement with a bookstore or library to stuff targeted books with flyers. Imagine your customers’ surprise when they flip open to your “page”!

4. Coat racks – Coat racks are perfect for a “what’s this?” moment between you and your customers.

5. On people – Remember the “kick me” signs of our youth? We’ve been compelled to read anything taped to another’s back ever since.

Image use via Riding A Buttertub

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

If you’ve never designed a catalog before, this can be a lot to take in at once. There’s so many elements that go into a catalog, including photography, product descriptions, pricing, layout strategies and order forms. It’s not the same as setting up a simple page layout. You’re going to want to have a strategy and a template in mind, way before you start designing.

In this economy, with such tight budgets, designers may be asked to do additional work such as editing photos, paginating and maybe even writing headlines and other copy to break up the page layouts! For some guidance on how to get started in catalog design, and get a sense of how the pros do it, here’s a round-up of articles and resources from design firms, trade magazines and printing experts. These materials will cover basic catalog design principles and tips for creating catalogs templates that work!

All About ROI (formerly Catalog Success)
This trade publication focuses exclusively on catalog and e-commerce sales and marketing. Try searching on the site’s “Creative” tab, or check out these two tip-laden articles:

• 5 Creative Catalog Techniques That Save Paper
• Catalog Doctor: Break Out of the Catalog Mold

AllGraphicDesign.com
If you’ve got a graphic design question, this site can point you in the right direction. For cutting-edge catalog inspiration, check out their roundup of catalog design samples. And for catalog tips and techniques, here are three helpful articles that AllGraphicDeisgn.com links to:

• Catalog Tips and Tricks
• 10 Tips on Catalog Design
• The Catalog Production Process

Direct Magazine
A leading trade publication for direct marekters, Direct Magazine includes sister publications Multichannel Merchant and Chief Marketer under its content umbrella. Here are four helpful catalog articles found throughout Direct’s sites that include tips on design and making the multichannel connection work between a print catalog and website.

• Mind Your Creative – Tips on Catalog Design
• A Powerful Back Cover Can Help Cover Your Catalog’s Back
• Breaking Creative Rules
• Multichannel Mix

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Photo cards are a great way to share with family and friends.

Are photo cards addictive? I’m just wondering because I see them everywhere anymore. Every Christmas our mailbox is full of photo cards of family and friends. Every time one of her four children takes a new school photo or joins a sport, my cousin sends us a photo card commemorating the event.

Not that I’m complaining. I love photo cards. They’re so much better than off-the-rack greeting cards, especially since I can tack them on the fridge and build my own wall of family and friend portraits with little effort whatsoever.

My grandma loves receiving them, too, and it’s a cheap way to send out new family photos that can be used in frames and on fridges alike. My mother has a curio cabinet that she sticks received photo cards in; my sister-in-law frames them in a large display on her kitchen wall. My son tacks them to his bulletin board.

Ten years ago, photo cards were virtually non-existent. But today it seems as though we receive a photo card every other week. I’m considering sending one of my own every year – Grandma would probably like to get one of the kids – but I’m a little concerned. With the proliferation of photo cards (they’re obviously extremely popular), I don’t want to get hooked into something I can’t get out of.

I mean, I already have hobbies – like aimlessly surfing through television stations when nothing is on – so I’m a little afraid that if I start sending photo cards I won’t be able to stop. I could get hooked, unable to do anything else until I get my photo. It’s already has a hold on nearly everyone in my family!

So, are photo cards addictive? Either that, or… they’re simply fun.

Image use Creative Commons license via Flickr.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Sweep out the old!

1. Clean up your desktop.

Does your desktop look like someone planted icons all over it? Are all the abbreviated mumbo-jumbo titles running together? If so, it’s time to organize. Get rid of that Illustrator file you were playing around with that never became more than a few lines, file similar documents into one folder, and click on the images that are unfamiliar to you. You might discover a new piece of inspiration or remind yourself of an unfinished task.

2. Change the battery on your smoke alarm.

It’s recommended to change this battery twice a year when you also change your clocks. Sunday is Daylight Savings, which means we spring forward! Also check the battery on your carbon monoxide detector.

3. Back up your files.

I cannot stress this enough: As a graphic designer, a freelancer or some other work-at-home person, you are responsible for backing up your work. All it takes is one fried hard drive to erase hundreds of hours of painstaking work. And how will you explain that to your clients?

4. Check your inventory.

Do you have outdated supplies? I’m talking toner for a printer you no longer have or envelopes with your old address. Chuck those into recycling or the trash. Meanwhile, make sure you’re stocked up on all other office supplies. Here’s a supply checklist to get you started.

5. Recycle old magazines and newspapers.

Don’t let your office turn into a fire hazard – get rid of the clutter by clearing out old periodicals. No, don’t even bother to flip through them to find that one article you always thought you’d get to. If you haven’t read it by now, you never will.

6. Clean the coffeepot.

Seriously, it’s gross.

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.

Rock star posters serve as excellent inspiration for unique baby announcement designs.

Let’s start with rock poster baby announcements by Rattle-N-Roll. Based on the premise that some of us are just born cool, you can design similar baby announcements that practically guarantee you’ll have the most popular kid in daycare.

Commemorate your special deliver with baby announcements inspired by magazine covers.

If your baby is destined for stardom, you could design a magazine cover birth announcement to commemorate her birth. Or make it a booklet, with interior pages that offer background on parents, grandparents, siblings and plenty of photos from your baby’s first few days. It will be a keepsake you’ll have forever … as long as the paparazzi don’t steal it!

Design a baby announcement like a B-movie poster.

If you harbor a penchant for B-movies and have a great sense of humor, take a cue from Brandon Buerkle. The artist created this birth announcement when his baby was born, and you can use it as inspiration for your own creative birth announcements.

Make your baby a star with movie poster birth announcements.

Five Star Baby designs custom baby announcements based off of popular movie posters, and you can use these as inspiration for your own theme-based baby announcement design.

Now it’s your turn. Use the inspirational sources listed here, add in a dash of creativity, and you can design some really cool birth announcements. When you do, send me a link!

©2010 PsPrint Blog. All Rights Reserved.