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How Many Fonts… Are Too Many Fonts?
Fonts, we all love them, we all enjoy playing with them and we certainly have our favorites and non-favorites. In the design world fonts play an important role in conveying the feel of a marketing piece. The wrong font can ruin an ad in an instant and flatten a...
Business Challenges for Owners
I shared with you about why I got into business for myself in my last post as I think it’s beneficial for others to understand the why behind our actions. My entrepreneurial journey started November 2004 with a business partner and morphed into a small business...
How Long Will My Design Take?
One of the most commonly asked questions that graphic designers get is “How long will it take?” It’s a fair question but one that is challenging to answer with absolute certainty. Here’s why… ➡️ You are one of a number of clients so the designer has to...
Holiday Cards
Are you feeling festive in your business right now? We just put our little Ikea tree up and are sporting some mini Santa hats. Getting snow at the end of November certainly played a part in feeling the holiday spirit as we entered December. When it comes to our...
Planning for the Holidays
At the studio, we are designing digital holiday cards like crazy so I think that may be adding to the festive feelings. Every year we do a card promotion and our clients love partaking. Since most businesses send out emails instead of printed cards now a days...
Will You Love Your New Logo?
Logo design is an important part of your brand identity and something a company takes pride in having as a strong mark. A question we get asked often is “what if I don’t like what you do” which is really quite valid. How frustrating is it to pay for something you are...
Do You Have a Profit Plan?
This week I began the process of profit planning for 2023. It’s something I never knew to do when I started out 18 years ago, it wasn’t even something I knew to do until about 5 years ago. Thankfully I have learned a thing or two on my journey which has contributed to...
Get Through a Creative Block
Do you have creative blocks? Do you sit down to do something cool but nothing is coming and time is passing which starts to frustrate you making the block worse? I used to have these all the time with design work and it left me feeling so annoyed with myself. It got...
Contrast in Design & Why it’s Important
In design it’s important for things to stand out from one another so that they can be differentiated. If we don’t have enough contrast between elements things just blend together and get lost. Contrast is becoming more and more important with design especially...
Less is More!
Yesterday I shared about blogging so todays post may seem like a bit of a contradiction. In the past I have shared about the average attention span of a person visiting a website, today I want to expand on that when it comes to articles. In a recent study we’ve...
Why You Should Blog!
To blog or not to blog, that is the question! I’m not a blogging expert by any means but I have some thoughts to share on the subject when trying to decide if your website needs a blog component. The first is that blogging is a commitment so if you are going to do it...
Collaboration: How? Why we do it!
Have you ever collaborated with another company on a project? If not have you considered it or already thinking about who you could team up with? My team and I love to collaborate with complimentary businesses like social media experts, marketing companies,...
How running helped my in business
I’m back after a week away. It wasn’t initially intended to be that way but that’s life sometimes. On Sunday Oct. 9th I did something I have not done in 6 years and it’s worth sharing as it relates to how I operate in business. My thanksgiving weekend was all about a...
What is Bleed?
As it’s Halloween month, I thought talking about bleed would be kind of funny. Bleed has nothing to do with Halloween of course but it is important year-round in the printing world. What is bleed you may ask? Well, it’s the extra artwork that flows over the trim line...
Why you Need a New Website
It’s officially fall here and this is the time of year when everybody starts looking to prepare for the new year. We typically see an influx in website design requests in September and October for launch in January/February. Fall is the perfect time to look at your...
What is a Style Guide?
Do you have a style guide? Whether we are helping a client set up their brand guidelines at the very start or taking on a client who is already established, a style guide is a very useful thing to have. Why would you have a style guide and what does it have in it? All...
Collecting Feedback
Somehow Tuesday and Wednesday got away from me this week as a number of fall projects are starting to kick off. It’s the perfect time of year to do a brand refresh or build a new website and getting all your ducks in a row for the start of 2023 so time for my team and...
.com Vs .ca
For my Canadian business friends you may have been wondering about the .ca / .com thing when purchasing a domain name. We get this question quite a bit when helping clients create their first websites. Here is what I tell them: ➡️ Always get the .ca and...
Why Responsive Design is Important
When I first started creating websites there were no smart phones, no iPads or tablets. It was a simpler online world and often the biggest challenge was browser consistency or Mac vs PC. While those things are still on the check list they are much less of an issue...
Saving Money on Graphic Design
If you’re working with a graphic designer fairly consistently and want to find ways to reduce your design bills or stretch your budget further then today’s post is for you! There are all kinds of designers around from crowd source, freelancers, boutique studios...
Taking Responsibility for Mistakes
I messed something up, it affected a client and caused some upset. So what did I do next? OK, let me be upfront here that I do not like it when I let somebody down so when it happens I feel terrible. I immediately go into fix it mode and that used to mean total chaos...
Working Remotely or From The Office?
I get asked all the time why I don’t work from home and have my team do the same. We do after-all, have the ability to work wherever we like and certainly we could all work remotely. For me, that’s just not what I want. For others it’s perfect. Having our graphic and...
DPI vs PPI
Today I wanted to geek out a bit on image resolution as it’s something that seems to be a little misunderstood. You probably have heard the terms DPI (dots per inch) and PPI (pixels per inch) before when submitting images to a graphic, web or ad agency. Both terms...
Keep it Personal, Not Transactional
In November I will be celebrating 18 years as an entrepreneur and there is so much that I have learned, overcame and bettered myself in the process. Looking back it’s really cool to see what has made the journey a success and what lessons I was blessed with from...
Print Your Proofs
We are in a very digital world and certainly many companies have shifted to more online materials over printed ones. Print is not dead however, and because of this you should still print out some of your proofs. For myself, I still prefer reading a paperback book over...
Pantone Colours? What are those?
Have you ever wondered what Pantone colours are and why people ask for them? In a world full of colours, there is a need for consistency to help keep marketing materials in alignment. Corporate brands rely heavily on Pantones to ensure their colours are consistent...
It’s Important to get Testimonials & Google Reviews
When building websites is part of your day to day, there are lots of supporting things you get to learn such as leveraging Google. I’m willing to bet everybody reading this uses Google for searching and even if you prefer another search engine, likely you have (at...
Let us Help Find your Vision with a Moodboard!
One of the jobs of a creative agency is to get into the heads of their clients and see the vision their client has. I like to say we’re sort of mind readers but really it’s more about listening carefully for all the clues. Sometimes clients come to us and have no idea...
Lorem Ipsum, What is it?
Have you ever seen a mock-up of something with a weird language making up the text? What you’ve seen is called Lorem Ipsum and it’s placeholder text that’s been around since the 1500’s. Remarkably, it has remain unchanged for 5 centuries! Fun fact! Lorem Ipsum was...
Keeping Up on Website Maintenance
Last week I got a call from an old client who last had work done in 2017 on some print and web stuff. She needed some changes made to her website as her email was new, her business had changed and over half the website was no longer relevant. We just had one problem…...
Free Resources!
It’s a Monday and I thought a great way to start the week would be with sharing some valuable free resources. If you do any of your own social posts, blog, update your website or create slide decks these websites are a huge help. When you are in need of stock photos...
Hierarchy in Typorgraphy
Since I talked about white space yesterday, I thought it made perfect sense to follow with typography today. Since most if not all marketing materials have some amount of text, it’s important to understand how the hierarchy of fonts aids in delivering a message....
Whitespace, It’s Important Too!
Today I want to talk about white space and the importance it holds in design. I’d like to preface that white space doesn’t mean it’s white but rather negative or blank space. White space is simply the space between the text, images and graphics in a design (print...
Always Follow Up
In sales we are taught to follow up with our customers and I promise you this is key to your success. As a woman in business this is something I used to struggle with. Am I bothering them, how soon should I follow up, how often, am I being annoying etc. This was the...
What You Need to Create a Website!
If you are a new business and are thinking it’s time to get working on your website you may be wondering what do you need and where to start. Your first website can be overwhelming so I always recommend breaking things down to work on one thing at a time. This will...
Top 5 – The Make Up of a Website
I love websites, I really do. They are such an amazing tool to express your company brand and they have world-wide reach. Your old-timey newspaper couldn’t do that. To get maximum results from your website such as quality leads, sales and referrals there are 5...
How Long Does a Website Build Take?
When you had your first website created there was likely a lot of questions rolling around about what to expect. If you’d never been through the process it’s all new and possibly quite overwhelming. My team and I have helped many clients with their first, second third...
Benefits of Empathy
How do you deal with upset clients, or an employee who isn’t performing or an unforeseen event that causes things to turn upside down? When I got into business I did not think about any of that stuff, my focus was on doing great design work and making people happy. If...
What is a Brand
The word brand or branding comes up a lot when we talk about our businesses but what really is a brand? Put simply it’s the identity of the company. A brand needs a personality that comes with a look and feel along with an emotional connection. For those of you just...
Designers and Developers
Are you good at drawing and painting or better at technical stuff like fixing cars or writing code on a computer? Most people tend to be one or the other though many of us can do a bit of both with one side being stronger. I am a creative by nature but I was able to...
File Types to Send Your Designer
One of the things we get asked often is what types of files do we need to create your marketing materials or websites. It’s a pretty valid question and generally our clients are super eager to get us anything they can to start their project so I thought this would be...
How to Give us Helpful Feedback
Feedback is very important in all businesses and how you provide it can make a huge difference in the response. In the graphic & web design worlds feedback is what helps us get your materials right. Today I’d like to share our top 3 things we love when receiving...
Why Outsource?
Last week I touched on the benefits of outsourcing and now I want to share the top 5 reasons why companies do outsource in their operations. Companies large and small benefit from hiring outside but why would they do it? Really it boils down to filling gaps,...
Benefits of Outsourcing
I am a firm believer in outsourcing for all types and sizes of companies. Personally, if I had to hire a full-time bookkeeper, accountant or admin assistant there simply would not be enough for them to do and it would cost a fortune. Employees are massively important...
You Clients are Looking for your Website!
I love to learn about business and people and the way both operate. It helps me understand what people want and need and where I might be able to help. One thing I see frequently is businesses who rely on social media only for their online presence. While that’s...
Original Graphics
Your business visuals are important to help convey your message but sometimes we have to ask the question, is original or stock best? Truthfully, both have their place and depending on the business one may even be better than the other. As part of an annual survey...
Why Can’t I See Myself on Google?
My team and I love to design and build websites. It’s incredibly rewarding to design something new for a client that will help their business grow and prosper. We pride ourselves on creating sites that look fabulous, are easy to navigate and function properly. My...
Why Do My L’s and I’s Look Fat?
Happy Friday! I want to share something today that just came up again and is probably the most commonly asked question we get with print items. The funny thing about this question is that even with all the advances in computers and programs this is still a thing. Why...
Vector Vs. Raster
If you have ever worked with a graphic designer, print shop, sign shop or promotional marketing company you’ve likely been asked to send your logo as a vector file. It’s possible that question leaves you asking, what is a vector file anyway and why does it matter?...
RGB vs CMYK
One of the things I get asked in my career is what are RGB and CMYK colour models and is there a difference. It’s a good question and important to know the basics so you know what files to hand over to your various teams. The main thing to know when it comes to these...