Stuff

Beginning with e-mail marketing we will explain the advantages of this medium and how it can be used as part of overall marketing solution. Beyond simply driving short-term results, you’ll see potential opportunities to differentiate your firm, so you can expand your market share, while continuing to build brand awareness.

This document is the beginning of a series, not meant to be a comprehensive reference, but instead it acts as a starting point so you can see and gain a deeper understanding of a small selection of the options that may be well-suited to promote your company.

Visit: Design Can Be Your Next Asset: E-mail Marketing Techniques

It has become a bit a tradition to create the animated InteleTravel holiday greeting card. Over the last three years, this project has evolved from a simple animated GIF inserted into an e-mail. While we have put together a formal news item on the project, we thought it might be nice to let you simply see it for yourself at http://intelecard.liquidcomma.com

Design/Animation: Karen Stoehr
E-mail Design and Art Direction: Andrea Messer
Development and "Project Management": Justin Suissa
Client: InteleTravel / James Ferrara

One of the more exciting developments on Adobe Labs is the announcement that Adobe Flash CS5 will allow you to create native applications for the iPhone. Unfortunately, this still doesn't change the fact that your everyday web sites that use Flash will not be able to play Flash based content on the iPhone's web browser. Apple has stated in the past that they don't feel Flash is stable enough to allow on the iPhone. This means that while a major gateway has been opened in allowing a designer friendly tool to take advantage of creating iPhone applications, the iPhone will still remain one of the few smartphones where plans are not underway to bring Flash to the phone's web browser via Adobe's Open Screen Project.

The significance of the ability to create iPhone applications in Flash cannot be understated. Adobe's Flash Lite 3 platform, which was designed to bring Flash onto mobile devices has not made a significant entry into the American marketplace. While the user base and the number of phone supported are expanding rapidly, there aren't enough devices that support the technology to make it feasible to implement for most projects.

With the upcoming ability to design and develop iPhone applications Flash will find its way onto iPhones and in turn the iPhone will now have a user friendly environment to create applications in that already has a large install base. However, Apple's iPhone Development Program requirements are relatively strict, so it will be interesting to see what happens when a much larger designer/developer base is able to create applications to sell in the App Store.

Within months the ramifications of all of these factors will begin to take shape and it will be a pivotal time for both the iPhone and Flash platform.

Link: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/appsfor_iphone/

The excitement of entering into your first design, marketing, or advertising competition is memorable. So it may seem strange to talk about an approach to something that seems to be based off of your gut rather than tactics. However, entering into competitions can become increasingly complex and so even asking yourself some basic questions ahead of time will put you in better position to make the right decisions about how to proceed.

Entering design competitions is not just for established studios. Design competitions can be a great way for students to get their work exposure and build up their resume with something more than an internship. Especially in this economic climate, finding a job can seem especially challenging, but design competitions are just another way to set yourself apart.

1. Does the competition fit the kind of work you do and audience you want to reach?
Every design competition has its own special niche. Some are geared towards a region, while others might be focused on a particular industry area, like fashion. The key is determining the relevance of each competition out there to you. If you focus on retail print work you may want to enter a different competition than if your work is comprised mostly of interactive design for B2B firms. Look beyond the description of a contest and instead focus on past winning entries. You'll see consistent patterns emerge. The exception to this is in the interactive space where changes in technology do play a significant factor in what wins from year-to-year.

2. Am I ready to enter this competition?
This is a hard question to answer, especially when it requires you to be detached from your own work to come up with an objective answer. Again looking at past winners can give you a good baseline, but another technique is to start with smaller and more regional competitions and go from there. If you are still on the fence, you can just enter a single project that you feel is best suited to that particular competition. Even if the award is a long shot you'll know you've entered only the best candidate.

3. How much is this going to cost me?
Many designers don't realize the significant money it takes to enter contests. The more prestigious contests use an entry fee as a way to filter the amount of entries they receive. However, there are plenty of contests that are free to enter and who make their money off upselling the winners with everything from statues to the cost to print your winning entry in the awards issue of their publication. While this raises questions about the legitimacy of some contests, it is a great way to get started entering contests.

4. How to be judicious when choosing what to enter?
It is simplistic to think that the best work you have makes for the best entry. Whether you are entering for inclusion in a publication or a design competition there is always a degree of strategy involved. One suggestion is if the contest has categories for different entries, try to find the weakest category where you also have a project well-suited to enter into it. Oftentimes you'll find it is easier to get recognized in a less trendy vertical like information technology than music.

5. Upgrade contests gradually.
If you have a good experience and continue to win a particular contest year after year, that is also a good indicator that it is probably the right time to see what the next level of contest are that you can enter.

6. Be client-centric with your content entries.
One of the best questions to ask yourself before entering any contest, will this help my client? As a service, design contests shouldn't just be vanity exercises. They should provide you with another tool to better market yourself to both existing and prospective clients.

7. We all tend to order the same item off the menu.
Even though every contest is different, it always seems to be more than a coincidence that entries from our studio that win one competition win in another one. Whatever intangible quality that draws the judges to a particular entry may very well hold true across the board. So once a particular project is recognized it can become easier to win other competitions with the same entry.

8. Make the contest work for you.
Learn as much as possible about each competition. Each one offers their own unique benefits that you can use to further your work and your business. Do as much as possible to take advantage of winning a contest as you can, otherwise no one will know what you have achieved. From updating your news to posting on a blog or even paying to have your entry printed in the winning publications — gain as much exposure as you can. The only caveat is try to avoid going overboard with self-promotion as it can come across as vain and self-indulgent. Winning contests provides a great opportunity to call your clients whom you have created the winning entry for. There is no good reason not to do this, as their reactions at worst will be indifference and at best they'll be ecstatic for both you and them.

9. Your best work may not be the best bet.
One of the hardest things to do is to put yourself in the shoes of the judges. While you may have just finished a massive online project that was significant in every respect and extremely effective for and was even well received by your client doesn't automatically make for a good entry. One question I will ask upfront, is there anything that makes this project stand out from a hypothetical project produced for a competitor's firm, with a similar scope of work, and in the same medium. If the answer is no, you've probably done a great job for your client, but your biggest project might be unremarkable when it comes to contest entries.

10. Learn about as many competitions as possible.
It is far easier today to host a competition than it was a decade ago. While this means there are a good deal of superfluous competitions out there it also means there is one that is a good fit for your work. Design competitions sometimes seem to be as plentiful as social networking web sites. There are leaders and there are ones of little value, but that leaves a great space in-between for you to pursue. So if you're a generalist as a designer, you'll find a vast array of options, but even if your work is highly specialized with some research you'll find the right contest for you.

While we're always happy to win awards for our work, our recognition as a Davey Awards Gold Award winner for our self-promo book (along with three additional Silver Awards), makes this accomplishment all the more exciting. We are looking forward to having the book showcased on the International Academy of the Visual Arts web site in the near future. This also made me realize that it might be interesting to explain our approach to selecting the competitions we participate in and how we choose the individual projects that we enter.

A few years ago this was done as guesswork. We submitted our favorite pieces and simply hoped for the best. Now we have gotten to the point where the beginnings of a strategy has developed for our awards entries. In one of my next blog posts, I'll explain the steps we use to evaluate these contests and submissions and hopefully this will provide some guidance for designers who are just starting out to see just one way you can develop a thoughtful approach to entering design competitions.

As your company considers a new web site, the task can be made significantly easier by knowing the right questions to ask. This PDF enables you to be confident in the knowledge that you're asking meaningful questions aimed at procuring the most effective and appropriate web site for your business.

http://www.liquidcomma.com/images/stuff/APPROACH_TO_WEBSITE.pdf

This PDF was created to present options to help clients find the best approach based for any project that would have been traditionally printed in the past. Its objective is to provide a better understanding of the cost structure and trade-offs of today's printing and digital communication outlets.

http://www.liquidcomma.com/images/stuff/Design_Workflow_Options_2009.pdf

Thank you to everyone who stopped by our exhibit today. If we got a chance to meet in person, then I look forward to continuing conversation.

If you only had a chance to take our cards and books, please feel free to e-mail me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), so we can talk about opportunities to work with you to address your specific business objectives. Ever since we got rid of our Slush Puppie machine, we're open to suggestions for new amenities, since there is an open invitation to meet with us in person at our studio.

Justin Suissa

Founder, Principal and the guy who signs the checks (for all the great vendors we met today — we also have a stamp in case of temporary arthritis)

The InteleTravel Agent Kit is under development at Liquid Comma. The kit is going to be send to every new InteleTravel agent to help them get started. From a mylar envelope with red silkscreen printing to a pocket manual the kit is designed to motivate agents and see how much stuff can fit into a Uline envelope without breaking it.