What is visual marketing?
My organization needs help with visual marketing. Where should I go from here?
I'm starting a new business. What can Imagine do for me?
Is Imagine really any different than other firms and agencies? Is a large advertising agency the best way to go?
Does Imagine sell printing?
Does Imagine host websites?
Does Imagine accept credit cards?
Can you match the color of my logo exactly?
What file formats should I be familiar with?
What’s the difference between a bitmap file and a vector file?
What is Flash?
Should my website be created with Flash or HTML?
Will my website look the same on every computer?
Can my website be listed at the top of Google?
We’re a visual species. It is perhaps our primary human sense. At a very early age, we use pattern recognition to differentiate and learn the nature of everything around us. The words you’re reading right now are a prime example of your ability to recognize patterns.
Visual expression in our society also defines, qualifies, and impacts every level of business, regardless of product, service, or message. Visual marketing comprises the various processes and techniques used to promote, sell, and distribute a product, service, or message to a target audience. Visual marketing permeates almost all consumer and marketing activities.
The visual marketing of your organization helps build a brand identity in the mind of your audience. Some elements of visual marketing include: corporate identity, printed collateral, sales and promotion tools, the Web, and advertising.
Brand category leaders are invariably the organizations who employ the best visual marketing. They present simple, memorable, appropriate, and consistent visual images across their communication channels. Their visual cues differentiate them from their competition and allow them to stand out when communicating with their audience. They focus on powerful visuals that speak to their target market. Visual messaging, along with positive customer experiences, drive brand awareness, loyalty and repeat sales.
To get the ball rolling, give us a call at 574-233-9903, or send us an e-mail at . Generally speaking, the process goes like this:
1. We’ll set up a free consultation, where we’ll get to know each other and the visual marketing challenges of your organization. Within the free consultation, we’ll kick around a few ideas, and maybe even lend a few suggestions you may have never considered.
2. If we seem to be a good match, and you feel that Imagine may be a good fit for you, we’ll take the information we gather from the meeting, and put together a proposal for your review and consideration.
3. Depending on your unique marketing challenge, the proposal will contain such information as: details of the process imagine will take to help provide a solution for your needs, a timetable for the process, and costs in materials and services.
4. From there, if you’re satisfied with the proposal, we’ll have you sign a project agreement, and we'll start working on your visual marketing job.
5. We'll establish necessary progress dates to make sure we're on track with the job, and make sure that all parties are kept abreast of developments.
6. At the end of the job, we’ll deliver the product, evaluate the process with you, and make sure your objectives have been achieved.
In a nutshell, we can help you effectively communicate to your target audience, and help your business grow. How do we do this?
1. We’ll help you align your visual communications with the appropriate message you want your target audience to hear.
2. We’ll make sure your organization’s visual communications represent your professionalism, quality, and integrity.
3. We’ll differentiate you from your competitors with unique and attention-grabbing marketing solutions that are appropriate to your goals.
4. We’ll help you build lasting relationships with your clients and customers—increasing the lifetime value of your customers.
5. We’ll help your target market realize the benefits you offer, and help them take the appropriate action to initiate a positive relationship with your organization.
The process will help you grow your customer base, increase your sales, increase your profits, decrease your expenses, and help you develop a brand that will reduce the time and costs to maintain these objectives in the future.
When it comes to dealing with your organization’s visual marketing challenges, what your service provider brings to the table ultimately comes down to the individual members who are working on your job. After all, although a provider may have certain corporate views, resources and objectives, it’s the individuals who are actually working on your account that determine the quality, professionalism, and uniqueness of the solutions they offer. So, no matter which firm you choose to help you with your organization’s goals, find out who’s really manning your job. What’s their experience and skill level? Do they have the proper credentials, and are their creative solutions strong and unique? Do they have the real-world experience to know which tools to employ, or what strategies may be most appropriate for your unique needs?
Obviously, the firm you choose needs to have the resources to handle your organization’s problems and goals. Is it better to choose an organization that handles every service in-house? Or is it better to choose an organization whose resources are extended through strategic partnerships and industry relationships? There are pros and cons to both, and you need to choose which situation is most advantageous for your organization’s needs. For instance, a large agency with many resources may be advantageous because it keeps your dealings within one company. At the same time, because you are dealing with only one organization, you are more limited in your choice of providers, and may be at a disadvantage with an agency that doesn’t provide equal talent and abilities across the breadth of their services. On the other hand, an organization that uses strategic partnerships to offer allied services may be an organization that provides services where they have true expertise in-house, yet chose to manage other services through businesses that have more expertise.
In the end, no organization does everything. Every communication firm needs to reach to outside help for some services. So is Imagine any different than other providers? Of course we are. We’re an organization made up of individuals, with different levels of experience, skills, and creativity. Each designer and marketer at Imagine possess over 25 years of experience in visual communications. We provide a full menu of services for your visual marketing needs, and while most of our services are provided in-house, we also offer allied services through experts that specialize in that service. So are we better than a large agency? We think so. But you shouldn’t take our word for it. After all, it’s all about relationships, and the ability to bring out the best for your organization. The only way to really find out is to give us a call.
Although Imagine deals intimately in the print world, we do not operate commercial printing facilities in-house. We understand that printed pieces may be an end product of your visual marketing goals and objectives. Because of this, Imagine works closely with a number of printers, and we offer print facilitation services as a separate service for our customers. Our print facilitation services handle all communication and coordination with the printer, to make sure your job is handled smoothly from beginning to end.
Imagine will coordinate the finding and setting-up of your website with a host provider. This allows us to focus on your visual marketing needs, while leaving physical hosting requirements of your website to organizations who specialize in this area.
We understand that one solution is not appropriate for all clients. Some clients may be comfortable having their site hosted with a local provider, while other clients need the level of security and around-the-clock service that a large national provider can give. Imagine has researched the best host providers available, which allows us to fit you with the most appropriate provider nationally or locally.
The reality is, most local providers outsource their hosting services to specialists. Also, with some host providers, there can be a lack of priority in regard to the design of a client’s site. Some providers may compromise the quality and appropriateness of your site design, because their business objective is to mainly operate as a web hosting facility. For these organizations, the continuous monthly fees they obtain for a website sitting on their servers is most important in the long run.
At Imagine, we want to make sure that the functionality and design of your site is appropriate to your organization’s unique goals and objectives. We don’t believe in using templates to create our clients sites. We understand that every business is different, and that your business most rise above the crowd to be effectively heard. Although we handle the research, finding, and coordination of an appropriate host provider for our clients, our expertise is in the design and functionality of your site.
Although the majority of our business results in transactions by check, for your convenience, Imagine is setup to securely accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, PayPal, or bank transfers.
Color matching of graphics between media is a technological challenge. The reason for this is that different devices use different color models to represent color.
For example, television, computer monitors, digital cameras, and scanners represent color by mixing various amounts of red, green, and blue light. This is called the RGB color model (red, green, blue).
Printed pieces like brochures, catalogs, billboards, and packaging represent color by mixing various amounts of color ink on paper. So, for example, a logo, or graphic with solid areas of color might be represented by one or more specific ink colors (perhaps using the PMS color model), or a photograph might be printed with a mixture of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks (CMYK color model) to represent thousands of colors.
There are two main challenges when it comes to color matching. The first arises when there is a need to “see” a color as being the same between two different color models. For instance, you might want a specific blue to look the same on your website (RGB) as on your business card (CMYK, or perhaps PMS). Unfortunately, exact color matching is not possible for many reasons that cannot be precisely controlled in the real world, the main reason being the physical difference between the way light and ink represent color.
The second challenge arises when you’re within a single color model, but are wanting to match color between two or more viewing devices. Let‘s say you have a new website, and you want the blue color (and all other colors, for that matter) in your logo to look the same on every monitor. You might think it an easier challenge to match the blue between two monitors that are both using the RGB model to show color. The problem is that there’s no way to exactly match the settings and output of two different viewing devices, even of the same make and model. And even if you could, you need to account for such things as the physical differences between individuals to see color. The “blue” that I perceive can never be exactly the same “blue” that you see.
So is all lost? Is color matching an unobtainable goal? If you’re expecting to see “exact” color matching between media and devices, the answer, unfortunately, is that you’ll never obtain it. The best advice when thinking about color consistency across media and viewing devices is to understand that we have the tools and systems to represent color as “seeming to be the same”. We’re in the “ballpark” with color matching, and a great deal of perceived consistency can be achieved with a little effort, but some variation is inevitable.
There are dozens of file types, but thankfully the formats most applicable to visual marketing are not so diverse. Sometimes Imagine will need to be provided with materials from our clients in order to begin a job. For instance, the development of a website or brochure might require source photographs or copywriting from the client. While Imagine might receive such materials physically as hardcopy, quite often the client wishes to provide material that exists in a digital format. When this is the case, there can be confusion as to what the optimal file format might be for a given piece of text or imagery.
Generally speaking, for the provision of digital materials, the answers are as follows:
For digital photographs: Highest resolution available in either a TIFF or JPEG
For digital images that are more “graphic” (i.e. logos): Vector format such as an Illustrator file or EPS
Text:Text can be sent through email, or as a TXT or DOC (Microsoft Word) file format
These recommendations are made to insure the highest quality of reproduction. The suggested formats are the most prevalent for the source types, and are generally the most suitable. If your organization cannot provide these file formats, or you have any questions, please give Imagine a call at 574-233-9903. Imagine is able to handle and convert a wide variety of file formats.
A digital image is put together in one of two ways. One way to represent a digital image is with a bunch of tiny picture elements called pixels. Your computer monitor’s screen is made up of thousands of tiny pixels. If you’ve ever zoomed in real close to an image on your computer screen, you’ve probably noticed the rectangular shapes that makes up the image. Those are pixels, and digital images that are composed of pixels—such as images from a digital camera or scanner—are called “bitmaps”.
Bitmaps are called so, because the pixels are “mapped” to a grid where each pixel represents a “bit” of information in the file. Bitmaps are resolution specific. This means that in a given bitmap image, at a given size, there are only so many pixels. The amount of pixels determines the image’s resolution.
If you try to enlarge a digital photograph that has a set number of pixels, it will usually result in a fuzzy and grainy image because the number of pixels need to increase if the dimensions of the image increase. The problem with this is that the increase in pixels comes from software interpolation of existing pixels, rather than pixel information garnered from the original scene or imagery of the photograph. If the bitmap images you have don’t have enough pixels, they won’t print as well. That’s why it’s important to scan photographs at a higher resolution at the correct size (i.e. 300 dpi), if they are to be used in print. It’s also why images for the Web, that are usually at a lower resolution of 72 dpi, are not appropriate for the higher resolution requirements of commercial printing.
Finally, bitmaps are usually the best file format for images that contain many colors or gradations, such as photographs.
The other way to put together a digital image is with vectors. Vectors are a sequence of commands or mathematical statements that build lines and shapes. Instead of containing a bit in the file for each bit in the image as with a bitmap, a vector graphic describes a series of points to be connected. One result of this method of composition is that a vector image is usually a much smaller file. A vector file also is not resolution specific. It can be changed to any size and still look sharp. A vector image will display equally sharp on a billboard as it will on a business card. The vector format is best for graphics of solid color and limited color gradations. That’s why it’s usually the preferred file format for logos.
Flash is a piece of animation software that is mainly used in the application of website design. Flash is often used for providing a sense of interactivity by allowing for buttons, animation, sound, video and other elements that play to the senses of your visitors. Flash can be a good tool to use to immerse your visitors and get them involved and excited about your site.
The problem comes when Web developers employ Flash without regard to the end objectives of your organization’s site. When used, Flash should be employed tastefully and moderately, and used only if it supports your organization’s visual marketing goals. While Flash can be a wonderful tool, it has a reputation for being abused and getting in the way of a website’s message. It also does not play well with search engines, because search engines have a hard time seeing any information that resides within Flash. If overused, Flash can affect your ability to get listed and ranked well in search engines such as Google, Yahoo! And MSN.
So, the key is to understand Flash’s strengths and weaknesses, and to use the software only when it is appropriate to do so for your organization’s site.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is more prevalent than Flash technology. There are far more programs around to create HTML web pages, and they can even be created with simple word processors. The main benefit of an HTML website is that it can be reliably viewed by any Web browser. An HTML site is also the technology of choice for compatibility with search engines.
Flash technology offers the designer a greatly expanded range of visual possibilities. Imagery, text manipulation, interactivity, and motion are all more fluidly integrated into a Flash design than in conventional HTML authoring. With its vector and streaming technologies, it also has a more reliable preservation of less common fonts and unconventional layouts.
The major drawback of Flash technology is its inability to be easily seen by search engines. This means that the more you use Flash within your website, the harder it is to be listed within search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. And even though some surveys claim the Flash player exists on some 98% of computers, it’s a fact that Flash is not as easy to view as standard HTML.
So what’s the answer to which technology is best for your site? As with most decisions, it’s a matter of weighing the pros and cons of each. For many though, it comes down to employing the benefits of both technologies to make the best impression on the user.
There are many variables that can cause a website displayed on one computer screen to look differently on another computer screen. Differences such as color, monitor resolution, fonts, platforms, and browsers can cause havoc on the accuracy of your website between computers. While all of these factors cause some degree of variability, perhaps the one that plays the biggest role is color.
If you’ve ever been in a store that had numerous televisions on all displaying the same program, you probably noticed that some TVs displayed images much nicer than others. You may have also noticed that no two sets displayed images that looked exactly alike. Even with the same model, and the same program on display, the images would still not be exactly the same. Why would that be?
This analogy is appropriate because the technology used in televisions (cathode ray tubes, liquid crystal displays, etc.), is the same technology used for your computer monitor. Colors on a television monitor, and your computer monitor, display colors in an RGB (red, green, blue) additive color mode. This means that your monitor takes red, green, and blue light, and mixes them together in different amounts to create the colors you see on your screen. So why don’t we see the same colors between computer monitors? There are many reasons, including:
Mechanical and age differences in monitors
Image technology and make of a monitor (i.e., CRT versus LCD)
Specific settings we have for our monitors (brightness, contrast, color balance, gamma, number of colors displayed, etc.)
The extent to which a monitor is color calibrated
Platform differences (i.e., Mac versus Windows)
The lighting in the room where your monitor resides
Each individual’s physical ability to see color
When you think about it, with all these differences, it’s amazing that we perceive any color accuracy at all. But such is the nature of the beast, and one person’s “red” is not exactly the same as another persons “red”. With advances in color calibration tools, the differences can be narrowed, but they will never be fully eliminated. As long as you realize its limitations, and understand that the “impression” you wish to make is what matters most, you’ll be much happier in the long run.
Unfortunately, there are no guarantees when it comes to where your organization’s website is listed in a search engine such as Google or Yahoo!. Where you are listed in a search engine depends on many factors, including: how well your site has incorporated certain “keywords” (words and phrases searchers use with a search engine), the number and quality of links pointing to your site, and even paid advertising such as Google’s AdWords. Some sites, because of the way they are built, are more likely to be found by a search engine. This includes sites that have plenty of HTML text, sites that have valuable and updated information, and sites that use little or no Flash and other methods that are unfriendly to the search engines.
If a web developer tells you that they can guarantee you a top 10 listing for keywords you give them, they’re not being honest with you. Google itself says, “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a ‘special relationship’ with Google, or advertise a ‘priority submit’ to Google.”
Search engine optimization is both an art and a science. Because major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN, often change their algorithms (the secret formula they use to determine your search rankings), it can sometimes be a bit of a moving target. Nonetheless, you can boost your search engine rankings by following and implementing basic optimization rules the major search engines emphasize and suggest. In the end, the goal of all search engines is to provide their viewers with the most relevant information for their searches. Imagine can help you make your website as relevant as possible for the keywords that your organization would like to be found for.