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Mass mailing postcards can be an effective means of advertising for small, local businesses communicating a sale or some special event. Many small business owners like direct mail, but find the cost to be prohibitive after considering graphic artist design, printing, addressing and postage.

There is a way to take one of the larger costs out of the equation. Search the web for one of the “do it yourself graphic design” websites. There is a growing number of these sites that provide you with all the tools necessary to easily design professional post cards at 30-50% savings. The sites are generally owned by printing companies that have a wide selection of pre sized backgrounds that fit any occasion, event or business type. You can add your logo, your images or use images available on the site. Using the sites is straight forward and intuitive for most people with any web experience.

You do the design you want, one sided or two, select the finish you want and order on line. The finished order is shipped to you in 3-5 business days.

Following are the suggested steps to take to save your business some real money on mass mailing postcards.

1. Determine ahead of time the sale or event you are considering and how you will communicate the message
2. Decide on the logo’s or images you want to include
3. Determine the size of postcard you want to mail, smaller postcards have a special postcard rate that saves you 10-15 cents per piece.
4. If mailing, read the USPS design guidelines for postcards and incorporate that into your design (especially for the side of the postcard that will display the address, return address and postage).
5. Search for a do it yourself graphics site.
6. Register, sign-on and practice and look at the help for a few minutes then complete a first draft of your design (front and back if you are doing two sided)
7. Use the preview function to get a good feel of how the final product will look
8. Make any changes, preview again, then pay through the shopping cart using a credit or debit card
9. During the time the cards are being printed, assemble your mailing list, and make the mailing labels
10. Go to the USPS and purchase enough stamps or if you have batch posting capability, use that with the postcard rate.
11. When you receive the postcards, apply the mailing labels, stamp them and send them.

It is an easy process that most anyone can accomplish. A receptionist can do the mailing list and labels in their down time. You or someone with a creative bent that works for you can do the design.

Here’s an example of the savings. A graphics artist will generally charge you an hourly rate for their time and a markup on the printing cost of the postcards. 1,000 postcards could easily cost $200 to $300 before postage. With do it yourself design capability, you could get 1,000 ready to mail postcards for as little as $65. It may be worth looking into.

Doing your own graphics design on postcards can make mass mailing affordable for your business. The savings apply not only to postcards, but business cards, bookmarks, door hangers, stickers, letterhead, envelopes, magnetic business cards and more at Sky Graphics. This is a must for small business on a tight advertising budget. You end up with a highly professional product quickly.

To save 30% to 50% on your large format printing including outdoor banners, indoor banners, foamcore indoor signs, coroplast indoor and outdoor signs, posters and magnetic signs come to VIPBanners.com. One Half hour of design is free and on most products, shipping within the contiguous 48 United States is free.

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Image : http://www.flickr.com

Every single windows-based computer already comes equipped with Notepad, which can be used to create websites from scratch if you’re already adept at manual HTML coding, but since this guide is aimed at beginners, a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor like nVu be more appropriate. NVu (pronounced as N-view) is an ideal starting point as it can be used as a point and click, object-oriented web development software but also offers powerful technical features for advanced users.

Free Graphic Design Softwares

A webpage with no visual design would look bland and will not attract many visitors, so you need an image editing program to create images yourself, or to improve and optimize the ones you already have. MS Paint is serviceable and comes with every windows-based machine, but if you want a more capable program, PAINT.NET would serve as a perfect free alternative to commercial programs like Adobe Photoshop and Paintshop Pro.

Paint.net: http://www.getpaint.net

Free Hosting

These days, free hosting is abundant and easily attainable. Most of them even have shortened URLs to make your site easier to remember. You can use the shortened URLs if you can’t or don’t want to spend money on your own domain name.

While almost all free hosting services are supported by advertisement, they always offer to remove the banners or the ads for a nominal fee so you have the option of an ad-free site when you eventually decide to spend more money.

Free hosting sites:

Freewebs: http://www.freewebs.com

Free Content Management System

If you don’t want to create new html pages everytime you update parts of your site, you may need to install a CMS (Content Management System) in your website. Luckily, there are numerous blogging services floating around the net. They even have an option of hosting your site in their servers and provide you with your own subdomain, which gets rid of your need for a separate Web Hosting and Subdomain service. They also come with layout creation wizards with ready-made layout templates that will replace your need for a third party Website Design software.

So as a last ditch effort, if you’re pressed for time or do not want to go through all the trouble of creating a website yourself and just want to have one, you can use one of the numerous free CMS providers like Blogspot and Xanga.

Blogspot: http://www.blogspot.com

The examples of free softwares and services mentioned should be enough to help you start your own website without requiring you to spend a single dollar. Using them, you can focus on expressing yourself through the internet without getting bogged down with finances. You can prove that Web Development can serve as a fulfilling and enjoyable hobby that comes free of charge.

Graduating in 2003 in Business and Information Technology Jonathan Popoola has since become an expert in web design cheltenham and web design gloucestershire. Visit my site for more information on webdesign and also information on graphic design in cheltenham

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Graphic Idea Notebook: A Treasury of Solutions to Visual Problems Review

I’ve been singing the virtues of Jan White’s Graphic Idea Notebook since 1980. I recommended this to all my workshop and seminar attendees, until it became out of print. Since then Jan has written many other books — but never updated this one. Then, just last week this new edition arrived in the Design Bookshelf mail box and we all rejoiced.

What the publisher says really doesn’t do the book justice. Here is page after page of doodles, sketches and ideas all penned by Jan himself. It’s pure visual brainstorming that’s been organized into a form that is both inspiring and entertaining. It’s a joy just to thumb through the pages. Many of the ideas are classics… others are quirkish twists on visual and word plays.

Jan says:
Some of the captions identify or describe the images themselves, some are possible interpretations of an abstract concept or metaphor. All are just stabs at meaning. None claims to be the right one or the only one, because there’s no such thing. Interpret them — or twist them — to fit your story. Their only purpose is to trigger a thought and spark an idea, which is the purpose of this book as a whole.”

First there are ideas in cliches. Then ideas in mime — gestures, body language or expressions. From there through time, then facts and figures and ending with my favorite; type and typography. He even provides you with an extensive list of printing terms in six languages.

There’s no index. Who needs an index? Besides, since when could you index ideas? Yet the book is ultimately ‘flippable’ — any page you land on has a good idea. His notations are delightfully informal yet engaging.

If you need ideas. If you need creative sparks. This is the place to look. The best part is how much you’ll enjoy looking. And don’t be surprised if you find many more creative ideas than you thought you needed.

Graphic Idea Notebook: A Treasury of Solutions to Visual Problems Overview

This updated edition of the much-heralded classic of page design offers surefire ideas and inspiration to anyone stuck with the task of designing cutting-edge printed material. This book is a collection of more than 2,000 visual “idea generators”-illustrations and line art-that visualize the various abstract problems that page editors encounter.

Available at Amazon Check Price Now!

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: May 26, 2010 03:00:06

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