So what makes a good business card?

You have just come back from an important business meeting and you take another glance at the business card handed to you. Clean, sophisticated, simple. Thick card and strikingly-placed logo with a great colour combination. You can’t stop staring at it. You think back to your last self-made online business cards and wonder why the final impression of your critical business meeting didn’t leave the strong lasting impact you wanted. Why don’t they call?

It is time you got a professional "business-winning" business card for your company! You can search the Internet and find many cheap business card solutions, but it is not advisable to use such services for your company card. If these designs are available on the Internet, you will not be the only bargain hunter who has downloaded and used the same design for a company’s business cards.

Your best solution is to hire a professional to create your card. Remember, professional graphic designers have been in this business for many years and know how to design and print a great business card that complements your company perfectly. A professional in this area will be the best person to discuss your options for card type, colour and maybe extra processes such as silver or gold foiling to make your card really stand out.

Of course there are business-card-maker programmess which can be helpful when you need to print a limited number of business cards immediately. However, the initial cost of using the software and being able to print multiple copies on one A4 sheet using other programmes can sometimes outweigh the cost of printing professionally a larger amount that will have much better results and quality.

So what makes a good business card?
Take a sample of great business cards that have caught your attention and lay them out in front of you. Can you see what makes them work?
They will have simple designs and good use of minimal colour combinations; not just the colour combination of the text and logo, but also the colour that is used in the background of the card. Remember that the specific design used on these cards you are looking at will not be appropriate for your business, but the design concept is what is important. You will also notice that leading companies NEVER clutter up the card with too much text or information.
A lot of people are inclined to fill their business card with all the information it can hold. REMEMBER, a business card is a business card and not sales literature.
All that additional information should be saved for your promotional material; let the business card speak for itself. This will ensure that the information needed is available immediately.
You do not want the potential client you have just met to have to scroll through your business card just to find your contact details. The necessary information should always be easy to find.

Multi-fold cards are a big NO. Your potential client will almost certainly throw it away without a glance. A business card's purpose is not to promote your products or services. Your business card is there to reflect your true image and provide contact information; this why it is highly recommended to have it designed by a professional.

Let's face it, if you need to spend a little extra on a business card that makes an important prospective client pick up the phone and place an order, do it - you will almost certainly get your money back!

If you are looking for business cards, we offer a complete package from design to print, so we can be there for every step of the process here at Imprenta Pronto

Keep creative,

James

IP + MySpace = WOW!

IP are live and active on MySpace, don't forget to check out our new Myspace look HERE!

Keep Creative,

James

Urban Art!

Love it or hate it, graffiti has become a part of urban culture and is now an accepted form of art. Just take a look at your nearest modern art gallery! There is no denying the creativity of some of the greatest graffiti artists around. Here are our top 5 pieces of art.

by Bansky.
Anything that references modern culture and makes you smile is a thumbs up from us!


by TheMac.
Part of the Turk Street mural. Simply beautiful, need we say more?


by Bansky.
Yes Bansky again! There is so much of his work we could put on this blog. This example is a personal favourite and is executed fantastically; this critically-acclaimed artist in so many genres has done it again!


by Moose (Paul Curtis).
With artists and society becoming increasingly environmentally aware, a new movement called the 'new clean art' movement, sometimes also called 'reverse' or 'inverse' graffiti, has started.
This is the latest way of expressing creativity, co-opted for use in the guerrilla marketing campaigns of late. The graffiti is produced by cleaning the dirt from the walls, leaving the authorities a little stumped when it comes to how to act upon the inverse graffiti. How do you fine someone for cleaning? Quoting the followers of the movement:

It’s a bit like fining your mother-in-law for finding dust on your mantelpiece.

Nonetheless it is apt that our carbon footprints should be marked so clearly, in the dirt!


by Unknown.
We found this on the Internet; if anyone knows who created it please let us know!
Not only is this piece obviously an extremely cool optical illusion but it is in our list for its fantastic execution, creatively painted as if it were just a "spur of the moment" thing, using such aesthetically pleasing lines which almost reference the old political newspaper comics.

That’s all for today,

Keep Creative,

James

I hate corrupt fonts!

Here at IP our studio is all kitted out with Macs. I do love Macs and, let's be honest, who doesn't?! But sadly, even the mighty Mac is victim to poor computer performance every now and again. Finally, after trawling the internet to resolve several extremely annoying computer issues, I came across an article that put the blame on fonts!
I must admit I do find it hard not to turn down a good free font, but can this really be the problem? Well I have to say after following a set of instructions, not only did my computer resolve nearly all its issues, but also the performance was so much better!
I would thoroughly recommend following these instructions to make your Mac purr like it used to!

1. Consolidate All Your Fonts Into One Folder:
Move all fonts out of the /Users/[username]/Library/Fonts folder.
Move all fonts out of the /Library/Fonts folder.
Move most fonts out of /System/Library/Fonts except:
Geneva
LastResort
Monaco
Keyboard
LucidaGrande
AquaKanaBold.otf
AquaKanaRegular.otf
(Keep Helvetica and Helvetica Neue if you do not have PostScript or OpenType versions of these. Make sure that these two fonts are in your startup (permanent) activation set if you do remove them. See more on these two below.)

If you are using classic, take everything out of /System Folder/Fonts except Charcoal, Chicago, Geneva, and Monaco.

Remember that if you are using your older Type 1 Postscript fonts you still need the screen (bitmap) font suitcase and the outline (postscript) font. (In Mac OS X, font suitcases look and behave like other font files: You can't open them by double-clicking the file as you can in Mac OS 9. Use Font Doctor or Smasher to edit these font suitcases if required.)

It is also advised that you remove everything from program specific folders in the /Library/Application Support and ~/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support folders. This includes font folders for Microsoft products, Adobe, and Macromedia.
Adobe puts fonts here:
~user/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts
The exception is the Adobe/Fonts/Reqrd folder. Don't delete this file, or you'll break your adobe apps.

NOTE: iCal and a few other programs require Helvetica and/or Helvetica Neue. You don't necessarily have to use the version installed by default in OSX (dFont) - you can replace these with other TrueType or PostScript versions that you use for publishing.
If you use the dFont version of either of these fonts, you may find the type in your older jobs is reflowing. If you had a PostScript or TrueType version of these fonts installed before going to OS X, you should choose to install that version instead of the dFont. Programs that require these fonts will work correctly no matter what version of these fonts is installed.

2. Delete the Myriad Font Caches:
If you see garbled font display or your applications are crashing or freezing then a likely cause is a corrupt font cache.
Under OS 9 the system would read and write to font files directly. If a crash happened at the wrong moment it was (remotely) possible for the font file to become corrupt, which could lead to all sorts of crashes. In OS X, instead of opening the original font, everything is copied into a
cache. This protects the original from damage, but unfortunately, the cache files seem to become corrupt much more often under OSX than the fonts themselves became corrupt under OS9. (from link #2)

Adobe uses it's own font caching technology (of course) to delete all the Adobe font caches do a find for "AdobeFnt" and delete everything that it finds with a .lst extension (e.g AdobeFnt.lst, AdobeFnt08.lst etc). Warning - do not delete the AdobeFnt.DB files.

You can use an app to delete all your font caches (see links below) or do it manually.
There's a number of files and folders to delete - in all cases, delete the object listed:
/Users/[username]/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ATS.plist
/System/Library/Caches/fontTablesAnnex
/Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS (this is a FOLDER, not a file)
/Library/Preferences/Microsoft/ (Office Font Cache)
Adobe Font Caches: any file that starts with AdobeFnt and ends with a .lst extension
/System/Library/Caches/All.files.whose.names.include.ATS or font. The com.apple.ATS.System.fcache and com.apple.ATSServer.FODB_System files are the most important ones to delete. But it doesn't hurt to delete of all of them.

Whichever method you choose, restart your Mac after deleting the cache files. That’s the best way to make sure OS X immediately and correctly creates new files. If a corrupt font is actually causing your problem, eliminating the cache files won’t help – but cleaning out your font caches is often effective and certainly easy.

3. Clean Up Your Font Library.
Run FontDoctor or Font Agent over all the collected fonts to remove corrupt, orphaned, duplicate and unnecessary screen fonts.
Normally you do not want dFont duplicates of any PostScript or OpenType fonts - especially the Helvetica, Times, Symbol and Zapf dFonts.
Once you've cleaned up all your fonts (Font Doctor does a nice job of putting them all in lovely alphabetised order) then you can use your font mangement utility to activate and deactivate as required. Don't have too many fonts activating at startup - let them auto-activate when possible and make sure the auto-activated fonts are set to deactivate on restart.

4. Burn a Master CD
We recommend burning a CD (or DVD if your font library is huge) to keep as a known good copy of all your fonts. Copy this CD to each workstation's hard drive and use Suitcase, Font Agent Pro or Font Explorer X to open and close them. If your font library changes regularly, burn the collection to a CD-RW. Try to enforce a strict font management policy - only one or two people in the studio should be able to add fonts to the company library.

5. Garbled Fonts in Safari, Mail
A common cause of this problem can be activating multiple versions of Helvetica. Mac OS X comes with a Helvetica.dfont already installed in the system. Activating another version of Helvetica can trigger this problem.
(Also, if you have the font Helvetica Fractions in your font collection, this can potentially trigger this problem as well. See above.)


FYI: Font Load Order (Hierarchy) under OS X
Mac OS X will use the fonts in the highest location first - later duplicates will not be loaded.
1. Application Font Folders
(eg /Applications/Microsoft Office 2004/Office/Fonts/ and /Applications/Adobe Indesign CS/Fonts)
2. Application Support Folders (in /Library or /Users/[username]/Library)
3. /Users/[username]/Library/Fonts
4. /Library/Fonts
5. /Network/Library/Fonts
6. /System/Library/Fonts
7. /System Folder/Fonts (if Classic is used)

Many thanks to Adam Dennis for this great Mac help.

Additional Resources:
1 A great PDF put together by J.S. McCarthy Printers, in Maine. You can find it as issue #3 on this page:
http://www.jsmccarthy.com/technical_tips.asp

2. An excellent PDF on font management with OS X:
http://www.ideastraining.com/DownloadAndTips/DownloadsAndTips.html

3. Extensis Font Management Best Practices Guide
http://www.adobe.com/products/indesign/pdfs/fonts_osx.pdf

Font Management Utilities:
FontFinangler (US$10) -- Font Cache Cleaner.
http://homepage.mac.com/mdouma46/fontfinagler/

FontDoctor (US$70) -- Coretech techos won't leave home without this wonderful software.
http://www.morrisonsoftdesign.com/with_fl/index.html

Smasher (US$50) -- a mix of Font Doctor and FontFinangler, also lets you edit font suitcases.
http://www.insidersoftware.com/SM.php

RGB aint CMYK

It's been another busy week at IP, but we have now finally got the time to add another exciting installment to our blog!
It occurred to me the other day, how confusing colour can be! Then I came across a fantastic article that explains RGB and CMYK extremely well. So if you were ever confused about what the printer is talking about when he is huffing and puffing that you have got your artwork in RGB, not CMYK, or you don't actually quite understand what the different processes are all about, then read on!

Colour is colour, right? Wrong! Depending on your application and use, there are two main colour referencing formats you will come across: RGB and CMYK. These two colour formats are for completely different uses, but the result of the two formats is the same to our eyes.

How do you know when each is being used? How does this influence your colour printing projects? These issues and others are the point of this discussion as we delve into the finer points of colour printing.

RGB: the primary colours of light
RGB is an acronym for Red, Green and Blue: the primary colours of light. When your computer monitor or television screen reproduces images, the three primary colours are mixed together in varying shades and strengths. The important distinction here is that light, rather than ink, is used to reproduce an image. Just because a picture looks one way on a monitor or television screen does not mean that it will be reproduced accurately on paper.

CMYK: the primary colours of ink
CMYK is an acronym for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black: the primary colours of ink. When your printer reproduces images, the four primary colours of ink are mixed together in varying shades and strengths.

You are probably noticing the pattern about now, in that RGB and CMYK do the same thing but in different ways. What you have to understand is that RGB references light and CMYK is ink.

What all of this means.
You cannot print in RGB and you cannot view pictures on a monitor in CMYK. So, to answer our first question of how to know when you are using which colour format, monitors display in RGB and printers display in CMYK.

A conversion process has to take place to go from viewing pictures on a monitor to view the same pictures in print. What's more, the conversion is not always perfect or accurate. In response to the question about how this impacts colour printing: there may be differences between what you see on the monitor and what you get back from the print shop. You can compensate for this by calibrating your monitor and through printing proofs to make sure your work is translating properly.

RGB and CMYK are fundamentally different. RGB is how monitors display light. CMYK is how printers reproduce images in ink. You can make sure your colour printing turns out as expected by using a calibrated monitor and by printing proofs to check for any colour variations.

Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kaye_Marks

Keep creative,

James