Sticker printing is something that can really enhance both your online and offline marketing efforts. However, many business owners often skip over this type of advertising because they feel that it’s too expensive. That might have been the case a long time ago, but it’s definitely not the case today! Indeed, you can get effective stickers made at a price that’s truly affordable even on the most “bootstrap” of budgets. The key here is that you have to go online.

Online? Yes, definitely online. The reason why people go online is because everything is usually less expensive. This is because there is less overhead involved with maintaining an online presence for inventory purposes, so the cost savings can be passed on directly to the consumers. Think about it — wouldn’t you love shopping at a store that gave you a discount simply because you chose them for your business? Of course you would. (more…)

Building an online presence isn’t easy, but it’s really the key to getting just about every business goal that you have off the ground. The last thing that you want to do is allow technical expertise — or in most people’s cases, the lack thereof — to keep you from really getting your online presence fully fleshed out. Far too often people allow their dreams of running massive authority sites online wither and fall to the wayside because they feel that they don’t have the skills necessary to make the idea come to life.

A savvy businessperson realizes quickly that they can’t do everything in a business. There are naturally going to be things that they are good at, and there are also going to be things that they aren’t very good at period. The key here is to just step back and really make sure that you have other things that you really excel at completed, and then delegate and/or outsource the things that you’re not good at.

Web development is the perfect example of this, because you need to make sure that you have your online presence no matter what, right? Definitely — that’s why it definitely pays to outsource this to someone that can take care of it for you.

Now, you should keep in mind that just because you outsource the web development side of your business, that doesn’t mean that you’re never going to do any web development. Sometimes all you need is a live working example of how to do things in order to create your own theme and spin on an idea. Most outsourcing firms will get the job done in a very efficient manner, leaving behind more than just a few clues on how you can re-create their results. For people that want a professional design that they can go back and modify this is the perfect way to achieve those results. (more…)

As a brand, what is the benefit of creating a browser theme? People want to connect and they connect with what gives them comfort. We all spend a ton of time, if not the majority of our time on the internet as it is the fastest way in the world to send and receive information. Most of us use one of three browsers; IE, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome. Whether we are checking our email, updating our Facebook status, or facilitating business online, we want a browser that is not only visually stimulating, but also one that is based on something we are interested in.

A browser theme connects technology and information for the user and creates a strong connection between this target market and your brand. It increases engagement, drives traffic to your brand, and gives value; building a relationship with your consumers. As a brand, you need to understand what brings value to the user. For example, sports teams have passionate fans that look for many ways to display their loyalty to their “sports brand”. As a result, many sports teams have created branded browser themes to connect and stay engaged with their fans. (more…)

Your logo is a visual representation of what your company stands for. It’s important to develop a logo that both accurately communicates the features of your business and can be easily translated for publishing online and in print. While it’s often a good idea to hire a designer to create a logo for your business, there are many tools available to help you create your own logo if your budget can’t be stretched to cover design services.

Types of Logos

NYU’s Visual Communications department teaches its students that logos can be of three basic types:

• Typography – Just your business name
• Type and a mark – Your business name plus an image
• Just a mark – A conceptual image only, like the Nike Swoosh

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While this may seem like the most obvious thing in the world and shouldn’t require that much explanation, suboptimal file types and compression qualities actually plague the internet everywhere. You can have a great site with excellent design that is utterly destroyed by inefficient or poor file types and quality.

Ultimately, it comes down to a balance of file size and load time. You don’t want any graphics to look horrible, but you also don’t want your audience to wait five minutes for the page to load. However, different file types accommodate different images better than others while also affecting their file size. Most of it comes down to the tiny details of the file properties and how they are compressed and represented digitally.

File Types: Lossless and Lossy

Digital images are very similar to digital music in that there are two different types of files: Lossless and lossy. Lossless images are only slightly compressed; they do not suffer in loss in image quality or information (they are the .wav and .flac files of audio files). Lossy images, on the other hand, undergo heavy compression, resulting in a loss of quality and information but also a smaller file size (they are the .mp3s of audio files).

The most common lossless images files are GIF, PNG, and TIFF (TIFF being the largest in file size typically) while the most common lossy files is the JPEG. Sure, there are other image file types, but they are rarely ever used on the web, and if you don’t know about them, you shouldn’t try using them. As a rule of thumb (though there are exceptions to this rule), lossy image files are typically smaller in file size and therefore load more quickly. Of course, highest quality lossy files can end up being larger in size than a lossless file of equal resolution and color palette (more on color palette in a second). (more…)

If you are going to establish your own business, creating a memorable logo is a really important part of it’s success. A uniquely designed symbol of the company name represents your business or your website. It can be always recognized and, in fact, this emblem has a purpose to promote and advertise your product, service or company.

Now, recognizing the importance of a good logo, we are going to talk about creating a good one. How to start and in what way to think? There are several pieces of advice that might help you:

1. A unique and memorable logo is a must because it has to appear again in your potential customers’ minds after seeing it maybe just once. It has to represent some general values like confidence, power, success, action or even happiness. The top companies in the world are represented by absolutely outstanding logos with distinguish shape, mark and colour.

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Here we are, celebrating Easter again with many distinguish features. Maybe the most popular among them are Easter eggs, which are beautifully decorated. The origin of Easter egg is not determined precisely, but there are several assumptions:

• Persians used to paint eggs as a part of their New Year celebrations which was on the Spring Equinox. This tradition of painting these eggs is said to have continued and now these eggs are known as Easter eggs.
• The egg is considered to be a symbol of new life. The tradition of Easter eggs probably started at the end of the deprivations of Lent.
• In the medieval times these eggs were forbidden during Lent. After the strict fasting days, the consumption of eggs was resumed and this was the time of Easter. This is the time eggs became an integral part of Easter meals. (more…)

Business cards still can help you break the ice when you’re talking to other people about your business, but you might be surprised to find that your business card actually says a lot about you before any real words have been spoken. Even if you end up giving a full presentation before you even pass out business cards, there will still be messages that your business cards send to anyone who picks up your card. You will need to make sure that your business cards definitely don’t say the wrong things — that could end up costing you a lot of money, as it were. You definitely want to ensure that if you’re really going to take the time and money to print quality business cards, you ensure that they are truly sending the message that you intend. (more…)