Color Presentation Folder Designs - Setup and Preparation Tips

1. Decide on your folders’ printing details

At Digital Room, you can choose to have your 9″ x 12″ folders printed with a glossy or a matte finish, printed just on the outside or also on the inside, and with a card slot on the left pocket, right pocket or neither. Select these options right on the Pocket Folders product page so you can get an instant price quote for your specifications, as well as for the quantity of prints you want to order.

2. Create a paper mock-up of your folders’ layout design

This will help you focus on fully conceptualizing your folder design before you dive straight into the finer details. When unfolded and laid flat, your pocket folder’s canvas dimensions will look like this:

When you choose to have your pocket folders printed only on the outside, that includes the outer side of the pockets inside. If you’re planning to place designs on these areas that must show right side up, you’ll need to reverse your design file to edit the pocket areas properly.

3. Prepare your blank design canvas with the appropriate settings

• Appropriate file resolution and design file dimensions: We recommend that your image and design files have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi for the best printing quality. Image files for the Web or similar usually have a resolution of 75 dpi; when printed, these images tend to be blurry or pixellated. The size dimensions of your design file should correspond to the right resolution as well as to your folder’s final printed size, so 300 dpi (resolution) x 9″ x 12″ (print size) = 2700 x 3300 pixels (your folder’s combined front and back designs’ correct image dimensions).
• CMYK color space: Your presentation folder design’s colors will look different when you switch from RGB mode to CMYK. For you to make sure the color change doesn’t detract from your design’s impact, we highly recommend that you make the necessary adjustments yourself.
• Bleeds and trim lines: The pocket folder layout example we have above is what you’ll get when you download one of our free file setup templates right at the Folders product page. They come with markers for safe zones, bleeds and trim lines so you know the boundary where your important design elements should stay in, as well as how far you should extend elements you want to go past the edge of your folder design.

4. Make sure your photos have the best quality possible

Aside from having the correct resolution, any photos in your folder design should be checked for brightness, contrast, and color balance, subtly corrected from any unwanted elements like background clutter or red-eye, and sharpened if the photos are fuzzy. You’d also want to make sure your photos are significant to the overall design’s impact and can establish a strong personal connection with your color presentation folders’ recipients.

5. Proof your design personally

Though our pre-press team can and will help you when they spot errors in your design, it’s you who knows what you want out of your design best. Please make sure every detail checks out in your design files before you submit them for proofing. Aside from borrowing fresh eyes to give your design a last once-over, printing a sample on your home or office printer can also help give you a better perspective of your final prints’ colors, layout, and design.

We hope this post gave you a better idea on how to prepare your custom printed presentation folders‘ designs. If you have any questions, reactions, or additional input on the topic, go ahead and leave a comment on this post or connect to our 24-hour live operator service at Digital Room.com today!

To give you more ideas for greeting cards that make both you and your recipients feel good about working together, here are 16 business greeting card samples for your design inspiration. If you know some examples that are worth adding to this post, feel free to share it with everyone in the comments!

Professional Greeting Cards For Better Business Relations

If you ever need to produce personalized business greeting cards or other materials for your promotional printing campaigns, check out the latest and greatest offers we have at Digital Room.com!

Music Event Tickets: Custom Printing Usage and Possibilities

Themed Tickets

Cover all your bases by extending your event promotional campaign to your tickets! Even if you’ve used all the other recommended promotional printing materials, you never know if you’ve missed someone who won’t hear of the event except through a friend who’s already bought a ticket. Make sure your ticket design reflects the nature of the event and fits in with the rest of your promotional campaign.

Media Passes

Mass media is your best friend when it comes to promoting your music event. If you can interest their representatives in special media passes, you’ve guaranteed your event wide exposure and extensive media promotion. Some privileges media reps will greatly appreciate (and which you can add in their tickets’ copy) are front seat reservations, photo and video privileges, backstage passes for interviews, and free food and drinks.

Staff/Volunteer Passes

Events require a lot of preparation, and doing the dirty work behind the scenes can be a thankless job. You can still make sure your event team will show up to work and do it happily, though, if you produce special tickets that entitle them to unique backstage privileges. This idea can also save your staff a lot of confusion if the team is so big, they can’t distinguish a fellow teammate from a gatecrasher except from what’s on their ticket pass!

Unique numbering on these tickets also guarantees that the person is a part of the staff like he says he is, and not just someone who borrowed an ID pass from a friend.

Backstage Passes

If you’re holding a contest promo for your music event or simply want to favor organizations you’ve collaborated with in the past, a backstage pass is one surefire way to catch people’s attention. If your music event has several artists scheduled to perform, you can customize these backstage passes further so you can control which artists these tickets’ recipients have access to.

Multi-day Passes

If your music event has a multi-day schedule, you can sell multi-day tickets at premium prices for both your team’s and any avid fans’ convenience. Additionally, you can hand out free multi-day passes to a limited number of your team’s friends or acquaintances; through this you can not only ensure that your team is looked after, but the lucky recipients can also enthusiastically spread word to their acquaintances about each of your music event days’ offerings and developments.

Sponsor Advertising/Coupons

Do your sponsor and your print job a favor; use your music event tickets’ back sides for sponsor advertising! This idea will be doubly beneficial for your team and your sponsor’s if they want to launch a coupon promo during the event. By making your event tickets act as proofs of purchase and special coupons at the same time, you guarantee that attendees won’t lose their tickets for the world.

Raffles and Door Prizes

No matter how entertaining your music event is, guests will still find reasons to leave before seeing all the performance numbers. Convince them to stay a little longer or even throughout the event with raffles and door prizes! Order your event tickets with perforations and sequential numbering so you can use the stubs to select and announce winners. Also make sure, if you’re selling more than one kind of event ticket, that they can be clearly differentiated from one another through varying colors or copy.

Lastly, make sure you print event tickets, as well as the rest of your promotional printing campaign, with a printer that offers high-quality printing, great prices, reliable turnarounds, and genuine customer service. To find out how that can significantly reduce your event management worries, experience it for yourself at Digital Room.com today!

Custom Product Label Printing for Groceries and Convenience Stores

1. New Product Launches

Increase customers’ interest in your new products by clearly marking them as new releases. Include any improvements you’ve made in this new product compared to its previous incarnations, if applicable. This method can work well with promos you launch with this new product. For instance, if you’re launching a contest for this new product and require inclusion of the labels as proofs of purchase in the entries, your staff will also be able to easily distinguish the new product’s labels among your others’.

2. Repackaging Products For Sale

The word “sale” can increase conversion in customers further since it calls to their desire to save money while gaining more value. Convince customers that they’re getting a great deal by including how exactly the sale works; for example, you can highlight that you’ve increased the volume or quantity of the packaged product you’re selling while maintaining or even lowering its original price.

3. Labeling Products for Your Own Store

Whether you want to produce customized labels for products you’ve manufactured yourself, or simply want to mark products in your shelves as coming from your retail store, professional custom label printing can help you achieve that goal. You can use these labels to include contact information of your store or use them as proofs of purchase when your customers line up at the counter.

4. Marking Products as Consumer Samples or For Free Distribution

You may need to mark some of your products as free samples for potential customers to try out, or you may need to mark them for free distribution when you’re donating them for a community cause. Clearly marking them as such in your custom product labels will not only help your staff when taking inventory or customers when they’re adding items to their shopping carts, but also prevent these products from being resold unlawfully.

5. Event/Personal Product Labels

If you find the need to use some of your products as trade show or convention samples, labeling them as such can greatly help remind people of their experiences with you at the event when they take these products home. Personal product labels for when you hold special events for your store’s benefit also help your business stay in people’s top of mind awareness more vividly.

Create and proof label designs for these different purposes with your goals in mind, and these custom labels may well be able to contribute to your food retail store’s success. If you need to have custom adhesive labels printed with quality, affordability, and great customer service in one great package, try out the expert promotional printing services of Digital Room.com today!

Labels

The most obvious option is labeling your items. Labeling special clearance or sale tagged merchandise is a great way for your display to be eye catching and pop out to the patrons that frequent your store. Print your labels with bright colors, or on bright paper to really make those tags stick out from your other racks of merchandise.

Guide Stickers

Apple uses stickers in their stores to help clients understand where things are located. This is a simple technique any business can adapt. Got a sporting goods store? Use stickers of equipment, or banners depicting team sports gatherings that are symbolic of the item being sold. This will not only tell people where they are going, but also provide powerful visual reinforcement that puts your audience in the activity itself.

Menu Stickers

Many small businesses are crafted out of the food and beverage business. Make a list of your top selling items and place wall graphics to remind your customers of what is selling. For example, placing a sticker for a particular smoothie next to a pastry suggestion sells both items. You don’t have to have your full menu printed out; perhaps individual stickers on a roll will do the trick. The goal is to suggestion sell, not to kill the customer’s ability to make a decision.

Nametag Stickers

If you have a small gym similar to Curves, own a café where customers spend lots of time, or just a place people come to look around and have fun, nametag stickers are a clever way to encourage customer interaction, and identify your employees. This is pretty uncommon, and probably highly dependent on the mood your business wants to evoke, but encouraging interaction amongst your customers gives you a leg up. By providing a hang out spot for people, you encourage inevitable repeat business.

Floor Stickers

Ikea uses vinyl floor stickers to lead their customers through various displays in store. By providing simple stickers in the shape of footprints or on wooden flooring, Ikea has created an effective sales technique through suggestion selling. Things to include on your floor stickers might be: related products, suggestive display ideas, and small factoids about the products you carry. Customer’s love little tidbits of intriguing information like historical origins or famous people that have used the products they want to buy.

Window Stickers

H&R Block has an effective window sticker marketing campaign. By providing helpful tax saving tips on the outsides of their offices, H&R is able to bring in more foot traffic, especially during tax time. Window stickers that suggest aspects of your business to your client can be an effective way to get a passerby in your retail space. Once you have them there, only good customer service and a quality product can keep them there.

Stickers on Beverage Cups

A clear backed label wrapped around a plastic cup goes a long way in terms of brand awareness and brand management. If you have an iced beverage or smoothie, clear plastic cups will not only show off the delicious creations you produce, but also suggestion sell people when they see your customers enjoying your products.

Never underestimate the suggestion selling power of a sticker marketing campaign. Remember that you have a lot of options with the type of sticker that you print. Vinyl graphics are more durable, better for foot traffic, rolled stickers are good for windows and walls. Most stickers are no good for outdoors. If you need help figuring out which custom sticker you want to go with, give The Digital Room a call and our design professionals can help assess your job to figure out how you can get the best quality printing for the lowest price. Call today at 1-866-266-5047!

Night Club Flyer Design

• Include a mood invoking picture – If you are featuring a DJ, your picture could be a silhouette of someone spinning turntables, or a shot of a pumped up crowd cheering for the show.

• Mention those Involved – Since many night clubs rely on outside promoters to arrange their shows, make sure to include who is responsible for planning and preparing the event. Also list who is performing and the times of each set.

• Use colors – People respond well to colors, and night clubs have been using colorful lighting to create the right atmosphere for years. The psychology of colors will come through in your design if you have a clear picture of the mood you wish to evoke.

Nightclub Flyer Distribution

• Have a street team – If you can’t afford to pay for a team of distributors, you can offer discounts for those that help your promotion. Many night clubs in Los Angeles, for example, might include a street team to hand out night club flyers. This allows free entry into a club for a small amount of work.

• Never leave your Flyers – If you drop off your flyers or leave them on a counter somewhere, that is most likely where they will stay. Never rely on your audience to take it upon themselves to view your ads, bring it to them

• Distribute flyers with coat and bag check tickets – Have your staff give a flyer out when patrons pick up their items from coat and baggage checks. This is the perfect opportunity, as most people will be grabbing their items toward the end of an exciting evening. Reminding them to come back for more would be a great decision.

Flyer Printing

• The importance of the show – to cut costs, develop a ranking system to decide important shows in your upcoming calendar. As a promoter, you should know which bands or DJ’s you expect will draw in the largest crowd. The more important the show is, adjust your quantity accordingly. You can get a 14 pt cardstock full color night club flyer cheaply if you order larger numbers. If your show is smaller, opt for black and white or single color flyers at cheaper costs.

• Paper Quality – Your night club flyer is one of the first points of contact, aside from word of mouth, that your clients will see. Let them know your club is a place of quality and respect by distributing flyers that look appealing. Using thick cardstock is a great way to ensure your flyers won’t end up crumpled in the back of someone’s car after a show.

The Digital Room has experience in offset printing for night club flyers. With offset printing, promoters can save money by ordering large quantities, while still enjoying the benefits of excellent paper and full color printing. Design and support professionals are standing by to assist you in the preparation and proofing of your designs. Visit The Digital Room’s website, or call us today at 1-866-266-5047!

Brochure Folding

• Half Fold – Standard brochure fold

• Trifold – this is similar to the style of folding you might use when sending a letter.

• Z-Fold – Your brochure will open up like a Z, providing plenty of space for your designs and images

• Accordion fold – Similar to a Z fold. This makes your brochure open up like an accordion, giving you ample space to work with

How to decide

• Half Folds will be good to endorse a single program, you can have lengthy paragraphs and staff photos spread throughout the inside folds with your logo on the front and back covers.

• Trifolds are great if you anticipate leaving your brochure in a rack or on a counter. This way, customers can pick up your brochure and open it for information on specific programs or exercise equipment you may have in your gym.

• Z-Folds give you lots of space but in slim sections. This is great if you have a series of bullet points discussing the many aspects of your gym. For example, bullet points or a small table detailing your scheduled fitness classes would be great paired with an image on top of the text.

• Accordion folds allow you the opportunity to be more image conscious. With so much space to play with, use images of gym members in action, or small snapshot staff photos to highlight the best parts of your gym.

Where to Print

The Digital Room is equipped to meet your gym brochure printing needs. Our design professionals are standing by to upload and proof your brochure designs before you are ready to print them. We can even offer you assistance in the design preparation phases of your printing job. If you are considering building a brochure for your gym, take a moment to brose our brochure design templates, or call us at 866-266-5047!

Image courtesy of Flickr

Print out Important Dates

Having your own custom color calendar is a great way to incorporate a “save the date” marketing campaign. If you are a seasonal business, you will need your clients to remember you certain times of the year. By planning out your offers ahead of time, you can easily remind your potential clients of when your services might be most valuable to them.

Distribute at the Start of the Year

Get to the customer before your competition does by distributing your color calendars before the start of the year. You can begin with the list of clients you may have already built up, but if you are ready to take your marketing to the next level, The Digital Room can assist you in acquiring a larger list and can even assist in distribution. This small service is inexpensive compared to the benefits you can receive.

Use Seasonal Calendar Images

If your seasonal business involves lawn care, during the summer months you should place images that will help your customers paint a picture in their mind of what you can do for them. Pull from your own example photos or surf the internet for royalty free images that fit the mood your business is attempting to evoke.

Send Your Calendar effectively

Where are your clients most likely to require your services? If you service mostly businesses, distribute your material accordingly. This way you can be sure that the reminders of time go to the proper place. This small step can lead you to a much higher conversion rate since your potential customer would be reminded of your services constantly.

Offer Sponsorship on Your Calendar

By offering sponsorship on calendars, localized businesses can recoup some of their costs and create mutual benefits by offering cross promotion. It starts by asking local businesses in your area if they are interested in exposure. The Digital Room makes getting printing quotes simple, so figure out your expenses and work to get sponsorship to cover the costs. Lending a small space on your calendar could be beneficial, especially if the service you help advertise is related to your own.

Make Your Calendar Useful

Paying a little bit extra for a wall or poster calendar might be more useful when your clients fill in their own personal dates. If you give someone a calendar to refer back to, you build yourself a system for repeat advertising with just a small space to mark certain personal dates.  Custom Calendar printing is a fantastic way for seasonal businesses to create reminders all year round.

When you are ready to print your custom color calendar design, trust in the Digital Room. The Digital Room offers poster calendars up to 27”x39”, Card calendars up to 11”x17”, and wall calendars up to 12”x12”. The Digital Room can even accommodate custom and bulk orders with significant discounts on offset printing. For assistance proofing and printing your custom color calendar, visit the Digital Room today or call us at 1-866-266-5047!

Keep the Theme of the Catalog in Mind

Is there a picture that will single handedly capture the theme? Often times, designers will focus on a central theme. For example if you are designing for a speech or keynote, you should probably show a defining picture from the subject’s life. Think about what colors might represent the event or product you are designing the catalog for. Schools usually have colors associated with them, so it should be easy to come up with a color theme from those. Most companies have colors already in their logos you can draw from for inspiration. These colors are like flags that hint at what’s in store for the audience.

Conceptualize your design

If you don’t draw it out on paper, you may not know where to place the elements of your layout. Acquainting yourself with the space on paper is the fastest way to get the design part down. Be very clear with where you will place the title, the company name and any images that will make up the background. If your cover will span the entire catalog, make sure you measure that out on paper.

Look for Inspiration

Just like Stephen King will tell writers their best teacher is someone else’s work, so it goes for Graphic designers. There is an awesome archive of catalog covers for design inspiration on the net, and with some searching you can find them on Flickr as well. Follow top design blogs and take notes! If you surround yourself in great designs, you will produce brilliance.

Get professional printing and binding

It’s next to impossible to get DIY binding and printing to look as good as a printing house can make. Most printing houses will even take care of book binding, saving you time and headaches. Always get your design proof, even if they only give you a PDF. Proofing insures you know what you are buying into. Remember that books don’t come in one standard size, so will your printing house allow you the opportunity to print custom sizes? These important details are the finishing touches on your book cover design.

If you want solutions for your catalog printing needs, The Digital Room has you covered with simple file uploads, support staff (including live chat) and affordable prices. When you are ready to bring your catalog to life, call us at 1-888-888-4211, or simply visit the Digital Room site!

Avoid a Cluttered Business Card

If it isn’t contact info, it probably doesn’t belong.  Some people will attempt to place selling points about themselves, but this can quickly lead to an over influx of information on your business card.  If you must list a strong point or tag line, keep it to one line.  Use the separator bar “|” or [shift+\] to separate each independent thought.

Use Readable Fonts on Your Business Card

The tendency of designers to get too fancy with their font is one stylish business card pitfall.  Lots of things can destroy the readability of the card, if the font is too small, or if you bold something the letters may be too blocky.  Remember that the more effects you apply to your text, the busier your layout gets.

Don’t Over Simplify Your Business Card Design

Beginners have a tendency to place things front and center, believing this to be a clean design technique, when in fact it’s just outdated.  Not all of your text needs to be shifted into unusual positions, but don’t be afraid to explore the space you are dealing with.  Try out your text in a corner, or cascading vertically.  Through experimentation, you can come up with a good business card design by accident!

Don’t Do it Yourself

Printing from the DIY business card paper is almost always a bad idea.  The perforation lines alone should be enough to deter most people.  If the card doesn’t look cleanly cut, and there are ink smudges all over it from your home printer, you are sending the message that you are sloppy to your potential employer.  The one time you should spend money on yourself is your business card.  Get it done right!

Avoid Unusual Sizes and Shapes

Though you may have seen a cool rounded or die cut business card on the net, if you don’t conceptualize the design you might end up paying for an accent that doesn’t add value to the card.  A die cut card says that you are just a little bit different from everyone else, and the design you place on that card adds or subtracts from that.  There’s nothing worse than an overly clever cut card that can’t fit in someone’s wallet or is shaped in such a way that prevents easy pocketing.

The Business Card is not a Resume

Think about the goals of your business card.  Would you bring a resume with you to a dinner party?  If you are trying to establish contact and make conversation, the business cards you carry should expand on that.  If you are a jack of all trades and possess many skills, try carrying different cards for different situations.  Paying a little bit extra to get the right business card for the right occasion is worth it once you are placed in the job you want.

Pick the Right Paper for the Business Card

A 14 point gloss coated cardstock isn’t going to accept pen very well.  Think about this before you are in a situation where your potential employer is attempting to take notes on you only to find that he or she cannot write on your card.  Also be sure the paper isn’t terrible quality, the last thing you need is for your potential employer to punch his or her pen through a flimsy paper business card.

Contact and Other Information

If you have your own website, you should have an email address from that domain.  If you are in an office, or have a cell phone dedicated to business, list those numbers.  You want the call, so make the contact information point to a place where you will be able to answer it.

A good business card can lead you to exciting opportunities in the field you apply for, but a bad business card can shut the door as quickly as it was opened.  These 8 simple tips will help you avoid the pitfalls of the over stylized business card.