PsPrint Blog » Useful websites

How to register your business name with your state

Valerie — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:00:39 +0000

OK, you’ve graduated from design school or decided to step out on your own and become a legitimate freelance designer. You’ve come up with a catchy name for you company and are excited about the new opportunities you’ll encounter and clients that you’ll attract. But before making up those business cards and sending out those promotional items, you want to register your business name.

A major part of being legitimate is registering your business name with the state. This is important for filing your taxes, going into contractual agreements and starting bank accounts. Think about your business in the long term. You might one day acquire employees, which means creating a payroll. You could one day rent or own an office space. Whatever you do with your business, your business name is going to be involved somehow. Making sure that it is officially listed as a registered business with your Secretary of State’s office is a necessary step toward being a legitimate business owner.

The first step is to go to your Secretary of State’s office. A quick Google search will direct you to their website. I live in Ohio, so I would do a Google search for “Ohio Secretary of State”. After finding the website, you want to look for the section of the site that focuses on businesses. A business filing or name registration tab is normally on the home page. During the process, you’ll be able to do a search for your business name to see if anyone else is using the name you’ve chosen. This is why it’s important to do this step before purchasing those business cards!

After verifying that no other business has your name, you want to fill out a registration form. Remember, just because the name you’ve chosen doesn’t come up (or does come up) doesn’t mean that it’s available (or not available). There are regulations on having a business name, but if someone’s chosen the same name in a different industry, it may still be available for you. The same goes for a business name showing as available. Someone might be in the process of registering the same name in the same industry, so filling out the form and applying is the only way to know if the name you’ve chosen can be registered by you.

The form is normally one that you’ll have to print off and mail back to your Secretary of State. It involves signatures and a filing fee. The fee for Ohio is $125, but you should check your specific state to see how much they charge. If your application is approved, you will receive a certificate showing your official registration with your state. Your Secretary of State’s office will also notify you if there is a problem with your application, or if your business name is not available.

5 blogs that pay designers to post

Valerie — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 12:00:22 +0000

As a freelance graphic designer with experience, you’re considered an expert — especially to those just starting out in the design world or those with no design education. If you’ve ever had to explain to someone why they should choose one color instead of another or why you’ve made the text in your project right justified instead of left, you may be a great blogger. Companies recognize the talent and expertise that graphic designers like you can bring to the table, and they’re willing to pay you good money to share it with the world.

Blogging is easy because your subject matter comes from your own education and experience. As a graphic artist your everyday business life is the inspiration for your writing. If you constantly design flyers and rack cards, you can blog about rack card printing tips or places that offer deals on printing flyers. If you grew your client base through networking, you can blog about events that you’ve attended to build your network base or topics on how to strike up conversations and promote your services upon just meeting a potential client.

Here are five great websites that pay designers for blog posts. Most of them pay per post after an approval of your post by their staff. It’s a great way to make some extra money and promote your business at the same time!

• Design Reviver.com
• SmashingMagazine.com
• ProBlogdesign.com
• CrazyLeafdesign.com
• Gomediazine.com

Online Resources For Catalog Design

Britt — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:05:33 +0000

Catalog and brochure mailings, featuring images and product descriptions of all your offerings, can do wonders for increasing sales and web traffic. Even though e-commerce sites and online shopping abound, there’s just something about flipping through a print catalog, and there are tons of catalog-based businesses out there to prove it.

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

Weird and wacky baby announcements

Brian — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:23:21 +0000

Proud parents, do you want to share the news of your baby’s birth in a fun and unique way? Are you tired of all those cutesy-wutesy baby announcements? I have just the thing for you – a collection of weird and wacky baby announcements you can use as inspiration for your own designs!

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!

10 great website button tutorials

Valerie — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:00:38 +0000

Navigation is an extremely important, maybe even the most important aspect of any website. Most of us have been trained to look for a button to push when we want to move forward into a website. That button should be easily recognizable as well as good looking. If you were on a website to create a custom invitation, and you couldn’t find the portion of the site that allows you to add your own text, upload a design or price your order, more than likely you would give up in frustration and move on to another more user-friendly site.

A great way to make that oh-so-important navigation easy on the eyes as well as the mouse is by creating clear eye-catching buttons. Here are 10 great tutorials on creating website buttons.

veerle.duoh.com – Creating Flexible Buttons Using Photoshop Shapes and Styles

devwebpro.com – Industrial Style Navigation Buttons

toxiclab.org – Button Tutorial

photoshopstar.com – Professional Glossy Download Button

designnewz.com – Shut Down Icon

designtutorials.info – Volume Control Widget

tutorialized.com – Creative Menu Bar

tutorialized.com – Action Button Design in Photoshop

tutorialized.com – Pearl Download Icon

tutorialized.com – Create a pixel perfect social media icon

Postcard Templates and Resources

Britt — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 23:56:12 +0000

Postcard marketing is a staple of small business and freelance success. Postcards are less costly to print and mail than regular direct-mail packages. They are also sans-envelope, and recipients don’t have to decide whether or not to open your marketing mail – they can just read it!

Here is a quick roundup of online resources to help with your next postcard marketing campaign. If you are looking for postcard design templates, postcard layout ideas or marketing and printing advice, check out the links below:

Postcard templates and layouts
Maybe you know what you want to say, but just don’ t know how to say it on a postcard? Then visit www.postcard-template.com for a few basic templates that will get you started. For postcard layout ideas that are guaranteed to make an impression, check out this article. There’s also stocklayouts.com, which has more than 100 fully designed postcard layouts organized by industry. You’d only need to drop-in a logo and business information for any of the $69 designs.

When you are ready to print your cards, check out these postcard printing templates, which include guidelines for live areas and bleeds. There’s also an accompanying article explaining how to use the technical postcard printing templates.

Postcard design and marketing articles
Postcardsmart.com is a great resource for all things direct mail, especially postcards. There are articles on response, custom printing, design inspiration and more.

I also published an article on successful postcard design in Print Professional magazine and another article on postcard marketing on the PsPrint blog. Valerie also wrote two more great postcard articles on our blog. The first post is about whether to use digital or offset printing for postcards, and the other post details mailing regulations that may affect your postcard design.