CES – A good start for a good year?

Well, now that January is wrapping up, I’ve been thinking a little more about CES. You see, CES is a show I pay attention to for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I use it as part of one of my New Year’s resolutions. My resolution doesn’t have anything to do with attending the show (which I’ve never done) or having Optima print graphics that will be used at the show (although that is wonderful every year when it happens). I’ll tell you what it is in a bit. In the meantime, it’s a show that interests me on many levels: its size, its subject matter, its exhibitors, and most importantly…its statistics.

What do you mean Lighting affects Design?

The light that your designs are viewed by will directly affect the color that the audience perceives, thereby affecting the design itself. There now, that was easy.

Wait…you want more?  You can’t just take my word for it?  Alright, let’s dive into this.

How lighting affects a printed graphic is one of the most frustrating issues that Exhibit Graphic Designers can run into.  How many times have we talked to a customer who is unhappy with a color match, and yet when we look at the same color match, it looks just fine to us?

Are you lookin’ for trouble?

…BECAUSE WE ARE! During my time here at Optima (a long 7 years in the biz) the word “evolution” comes to mind. When I started here many many moons ago, Tech Support wasn’t HALF as in-depth and detailed as we are now. We were just the pre-flighters, and pre-flighting was what we did.

Over the years, I’ve seen some odd things when it comes to customer artwork. Have you ever seen blue turn to green for no reason?

Nowadays, we get so in depth with your artwork, we can almost always find something that might make us say “huh?” The important thing is

EDPA Pulse Survey

The EDPA Pulse survey is still open. Our apologies to our email subscribers who received a malfunctioning link to the survey. Below you will find Dave’s same message with working links to the survey.

Happy New Year!

In an effort to help generate and share current trends within the industry, the EDPA created the Pulse survey in 2011.

The last survey’s results were shared with us during the annual meeting in December and my take away was, wow, I am glad I am getting to see this information and I wish more people would take the survey to increase the value of the results.

Taking Control In The New Year

Happy New Year! First off, I hope everyone had a great holiday season and the New Year looks as promising as ever. I was fortunate enough to take about 10 days off and eagerly came back to work with the realization that I am not ready to retire, I enjoy the camaraderie of the office, and even if I win Powerball, I will keep working. Well, that last one might be debatable if I win the 257 Million big one.

Moving Your Marketing

I recently did a series titled “6 things to think about when…” The final post of the series was about Mobile Marketing. I hit on some of the high points but wanted to share a few more things from my research and notes on the subject of Mobile Marketing.

Mobile Marketing 1 – Marketing on or with a mobile device. Ex: Smart phone using short message service (SMS) or text messaging. 2 – Marketing in a moving fashion. Ex: Road show or moving billboards.

More on EDPA

During this past week, I have been reflecting on the three day EDPA conference and something a customer said to me really jumped out as very insightful.  His comment was, “I have not attended Access in several years and I had forgotten how everyone lays down their swords and opens up about best business practices and provides each other with advise.” What a powerful statement and in my opinion a great reason to attend this or any EDPA chapter event.  There are a number of strong EDPA chapters – Las Vegas, Southeast, Northern Cal… If you are looking for insight and a forum to get business advice from within the industry, EDPA events and the Annual Access meeting really should be on your list of must do’s for next year.

Trade Show Marketing and Social Media

Guest Post by William Derosa

The ever growing influence of social media marketing has opened up whole new worlds of available initiatives that can be integrated into your trade show marketing, both to increase attendance and engagement, as well as the bottom line. Proper utilization of these platforms and an organized strategy can dramatically increase the overall success of your trade show efforts.

Here are some practical tips to implement immediately for your next show, broken down by social platform:

EDPA 2011 Review

This past week, Optima attended the EDPA Annual Access meeting 11.30 – 12.2.11 in Las Vegas, NV www.edpa.com.  Yeah, Las Vegas… and of course everyone really wanted to go to Las Vegas one more time this year.  Snide Vegas comments aside, Access was held at the JW Marriott located off the strip and I have to say, it was a really nice hotel and great conference location.

Here are a few high level comments.

What does it take to be a Graphic Designer?

During various conversations one day with a client of mine about a particularly interesting project, we stumbled across this subject. In fact, I believe the exact question was “So Tim, with all the art you see come through Optima, what do you think it takes to call yourself a designer?”