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What This Year’s Super Bowl Fail Can Teach Us About Graphic Design

February 5, 2015SheilaBranding, Graphic Designbusiness, design, fail, football, marketing, opportunity, research, risk, super bowl

Like most intelligent, amazing people out there, I was rooting for the Seahawks this year (did I just lose half of you? Good ;). Hey, I’m from Seattle, so I have to root for them. Anyway, I’m sure you all are well aware of that last, horrific, play fail. The Seahawks were four points down, but it was their ball. They were like, 3 millimeters from the line with two whole minutes to go. I,…

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How to Effectively Use Social Media to Get Results

January 10, 2015SheilaBusiness Tips, Marketing2 Commentsbusiness, clients, customers, followers, LinkedIn, marketing, social media, twitter

Everyone is going digital. There’s nothing earth-shattering about that. This makes being somewhat social media savvy is necessary to attracting new business from these potential clients. I know, I know, it was only a few months ago I was griping about the evils of jumping on the social media bandwagon. While I still think social media is not necessary for everyone, it still has its place in a healthy business’ overall marketing strategy. Through the…

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How to Incorporate Good Design into Your Small Business

December 20, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Graphic Designbrochures, business goals, design, logo, marketing, website design, websites

Now that we’ve spent some time talking about why good design matters, let’s talk about how you can implement elements of good design in your business. The first step in thinking about good design is to remember that the big picture feeling is what you’re working towards. Before you begin developing or updating your design, make sure you’re taking the time to identify the core elements of your message.   First things first An easy…

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Why Good Design Matters

November 25, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Graphic Design3 Commentsclients, customers, design, graphic design, logo, value, website

Have you ever gone to a website or picked up a business card from a new company only to find yourself dissatisfied or uninterested? Me too. Which got me thinking… there’s a lot of talk about what you need to do to create a killer website, or a great logo. But why does good design even matter? Why do you need it? I’ll tell you why.   There’s an intangible value to good graphic design. It’s more than getting…

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“Can’t I Just Set Up My Own WordPress Site?”

October 28, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Graphic Design29 Commentsbusiness goals, professional, websites, wordpress

I get this sort of question a lot. Sometimes, I’ll run into a potential client who understands they might need help with their logo, or brochure…but for some reason, they’d like to be a little more hands-on when it comes to their website. Especially once I mention that I use WordPress for all the websites that I do. “Oh, WordPress? I can do that.” There’s no point arguing, so after I chuckle to myself, I…

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8 Reasons Why Design Contests Are Bad for Clients

September 29, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Graphic Design, Marketing9 Commentscheap design, crowdsourcing, design, design contests, graphic design, logo, spec work

Last week we talked about the dangers of design contests for designers, which are usually pretty obvious. But for the clients that actually get work done from them, the dangers can be a little more elusive. If you are the owner of a start-up, or simply don’t know where to turn to find a decent design, I’m sure the allure of design contests sound pretty sweet. Heck, they sure market them enough to push anyone’s…

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5 Reasons Why Design Contests Are Bad for Designers

September 22, 2014SheilaFreelancing, Marketing, Random34 CommentsAIGA, contests, crowdsourcing, design, designers, logo, spec work

Whether you’re a designer or a client, I’m sure you’ve heard of these things called design contests. Also called crowdsourcing or spec work, websites like 99designs, CrowdSpring, among dozens of others, dot our graphic design landscape. And they’re here to stay, unfortunately. And I’m sure, either as a designer or a client, that they’ve had a certain pull or power over you. Or at the very least, you’ve been curious about them. If you’re a…

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Who Owns the Rights to Your Design Work?

August 27, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Freelancing, Random69 Commentsclient, copyright, files, freelancing, graphic design, InDesign, ownership, rights

So you’ve just gotten a killer brochure designed. You can’t wait to print it and start using it. But you’re also thinking long term…what if, in a few months, some of the information needs to be changed? So you decide to ask the designer for the native or source files (i.e. the program that the file was originally built in, and is editable). And they happily say…no. Wait, what??

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How to Get Traffic to your New Website

August 14, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Marketing2 Commentsblog, content, Google, marketing, networking, SEO, social media, traffic, website

I just did a simple website for a startup massage business. Now, this guy is a great guy, but let’s just say that his tech skills were something to be desired. Which is pretty common among my clients, so he’s in good company 😉 He loved the website, but the first question out of his mouth was, “So how do I show up on Google?” I saw that coming a mile away.

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How to Give Your Graphic Designer Feedback in 11 Easy Steps

July 21, 2014SheilaBusiness Tips, Graphic Design19 Commentsaudience, business, business goals, client, design, feedback, goals, graphic design, logo

A couple weeks ago, we were talking about how your designer is not an order taker. I made a pretty convincing case as to why, as the client, you should refrain from telling your graphic designer how to do their job. But of course we’re now all wondering, when and how should you offer feedback? If at all? Rest assured, I think it’s perfectly fine and healthy for a client to provide constructive feedback in…

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