When converting a design concept into a properly printed graphic, several potential pitfalls could cause your work to turn out differently than you might expect or hope. 

Let’s look at the origin of these issues, and some tips to avoid running into them altogether.

A Little Bit of Color Theory

First, let’s cover how creating colors works. There are two fundamental models of color – additive and subtractive. 

The additive color model concerns adding different wavelengths of light, starting from black. Think about pointing different colored lights at a wall to mix the colors – this is additive color since you’re adding light together to get the desired color.

Additive color works differently from what many people are used to since the three colors of light needed to get white light are red, green, and blue.

The subtractive color model centers around subtracting different wavelengths of light, starting from white light. Remember, white light contains the entire spectrum of colors – this is why a prism can refract it into a full rainbow. 

By subtracting different colors from white light, you can get a specific color. Think about shining a white light through a red piece of glass – by removing all the other colors, you end up with red light.

How Does This Effect Making a Printed Graphic?

All things that use light to create color operate on the additive color model. That means your computer monitor, your phone, a movie projector; anything that puts out light.

Meanwhile, anything that doesn’t put out light, or incorporates pigment, uses the subtractive color model. Examples include things like a printed graphic t-shirt, text on a page, or a pretty rock. 

Those who work in print and design have to work around this, which can be tricky. Most displays can show a little over 16 million colors, but most printers can only print a few thousand, and the ranges of colors for each don’t necessarily overlap.

So Why Does Your Design Look Weird?

There could be a lot of reasons your design looks off. The colors in your printer don’t match the colors of your screen. Two colors that may be meaningfully distinct in the RGB color space (on your screen) could be identical to one another in the CMYK color space (in print). 

Consider converting an image to black and white – often, two completely different colors will end up the same shade of grey. Colors overlapping, as above, can lead to a print design losing meaningful visual boundaries. 

How Do You Design A Printed Graphic That’s Error-Free? 

1. Change the Color Space in Your Design Program

You can limit the color space you work in for creating your designs and match it to your materials. For instance, if your printer uses cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (also called ‘key’) ink cartridges – you would change your design program to the CMYK color space.

2. Color Separations

If your target is screen printing (as on t-shirts), you’ll want to look into color separations. Color separations are the complex process of converting a multi-colored design into a sufficiently limited gamut to print efficiently.

A talented designer can take you through this process without losing the feeling of the original.

3. Rework Your Thematic Pallete for Contrast

As mentioned above, colors that have a sharp contrast on the screen may not have that contrast in CMYK. Print off a color card with primary and secondary thematic colors of your design to check their visual contrast.

4. Start Small, Go Big

When in doubt, start your design process with a more limited gamut. You can always adjust to having more colors to work with, but the reverse is often quite a painful process.

5. Black and White

Finally, you should always check how your design will look when converted to either pure black and white or grayscale. This tip goes double for logos, which may need to be embossed (depth doesn’t have a color).

Even traditional graphics should at least get a cursory glance with a grayscale filter. After all – you never know how the emphasis in your design might change when viewed in a different light.

Remember, Simple Does Not Mean Bad

If you find yourself drowning in the minutiae, trying to separate a finely detailed design for your printed graphic into distinctive enough blocks to be recognizable, even though you can only use three colors, remember that you can keep it simple. 

The human visual process loves engaging imagination; turning craters on the moon into faces, and clouds into fantastic creatures. So in this world of ever-increasing complexity, a pocket of minimalism and simplicity can draw the eye. 

Are you looking for help with your logo? Check out our blog for practical advice you can use and try out our logo maker today!

As a business, using promotional giveaways to convert new customers and boost your reputation is a no-brainer. They’re affordable, fun, and create instant interaction with customers.  

T-shirts are a favorite among consumers. However, creating a good design isn’t as easy as it seems. 

That last thing you want to do is produce a shirt that doesn’t get peoples’ attention. That’s why we’re discussing five tips for coming up with great t-shirt design ideas. 

1. Think About Your Target Audience 

Before you start thinking about designs, it’s important to consider your target audience. Your t-shirt will prove more effective if it appeals to people interested in your business. 

For example, if your target audience is young men, a promotional shirt that employs current men’s fashion trends will attract more eyes. Winners of your giveaway are also more likely to wear the shirt. 

If you’re not sure about your target audience, start by creating a customer profile.  This will help you better understand who to focus on. 

2. Consider Your Current Branding 

When it comes to branding and marketing strategies, consistency is critical. Using elements of your current branding in your shirt design is a great way to establish a solid reputation. 

Think about things like your business colors and logos when designing your shirt. Incorporating these will help increase brand recognition and make your shirt memorable. 

Keep in mind that you don’t have to force your brand down peoples’ throats. Subtlety can work to your benefit.  

3. Brainstorm With Your Team 

When you’re coming up with a design, it helps to get many brains involved. Trying to create something on your own may prove difficult and result in a lackluster design. 

Ask several people on your marketing team to submit a few ideas. Then, have a meeting and look at everyone’s concepts together. 

Gauging everyone’s reaction to each design is a great way to narrow down your options. After that, the team can start revising the idea until you’ve created the perfect shirt. 

4. Be Creative With Color

When it comes to clothing, color is the best way to get attention. However, you need to be sure you don’t go overboard. 

Think of the fabric of your t-shirt as the background color. What your printing on it should stand out well and compliment it at the same time.

Avoid creating a t-shirt that’s hard to read. If you want to make a huge impression, companies like Flashion Statement create shirts with LED printing. 

5. Originality is Your Best Friend 

If you want to stand out, you need to be unique. This may seem hard to do if you’ve never designed a t-shirt before. 

It doesn’t hurt to look at your competition and see what they’re doing. Just make sure you don’t mimic their designs.  

Check out old-school t-shirt designs and put a modern spin on a classic design element. Or, be abstract and come up with something people have to think about. 

Make Your T-shirt Design Ideas Turn Heads

A promotional giveaway is only effective if the item you’re featuring is attractive to your audience. Before you start printing your t-shirts, make sure your design pops. 

Use these tips for creating awesome t-shirt design ideas and make your giveaway a success. 

We hope you’ve found this article informative. Feel free to browse our site for additional information on graphic design.

Technology is great. It has led to advances in business that we couldn’t dream of in the past. The ease of outsourcing work is one of those things.

Outsourcing is becoming a much more common practice in business today. In fact, 37% of small businesses outsource some part of their business process.

So why do companies choose to outsource work? You’ll learn everything you need to know with this post. Keep reading to learn five reasons why outsourcing to Asia makes sense.

1. Save Money

It costs a lot of money if you want to hire someone in-house in your home country. You don’t only have the cost of their salary, either. You’re also stuck paying benefits and taxes for them.

When you outsource to Asia, you don’t have those extra costs. On top of that, the talent is cheaper. The cost of living overseas isn’t as high, so you can get talent at a more affordable rate.

2. Provide 24/7 Support

If you support customers in your business, it pays to provide support 24/7. You’ll be spending a lot of money if you want to do this yourself. Not only that, but you’re also forcing people to work hours that they may not want to work.

If you outsource your support overseas, you don’t have to worry about your team working through the night. Regular work hours overseas happen while you’re sleeping soundly at night.

3. Focus on Your Core Business

Running a business takes a lot of work. A lot of the time, you end up doing things that you shouldn’t be doing. It doesn’t always make sense to hire someone full-time to handle these tasks.

A virtual assistant in Asia is perfect for these situations. They will be able to handle all of those tasks, so you can focus on the critical things for your company.

4. Run a Remote Business

If you hire people full-time in an office, you’re stuck there. It’s hard to take vacations as the boss. Running an entirely remote workforce can allow you to break away from the office.

A remote workforce means you don’t need a physical location and can work wherever you like. Once you have your business set up, head to WorldRoamer to find your next destination.

5. Skilled Employees

If you want to hire the top talent at home, it will cost you a lot of money. Sure, you can save by bringing on someone newer and paying them less. But then you’ll be stuck training them.

When you outsource to Asia, you have instant access to the talent you need. You won’t need to spend time training someone from the ground up.

Why Do Companies Choose to Outsource Work: Final Thoughts

At this point you should be able to answer the question, “Why do companies choose to outsource work?” It doesn’t always make sense to hire someone full-time. Outsourcing is a great compromise that still allows you to get your work done at a great price.

Now that you’ve freed up your time by outsourcing, you can start working more on your business. Head back to our blog to learn a few tricks that can help improve your blog’s marketing and branding!

Branding is essential for any business since it’s considered a personality and identifies your product or service. Are you wondering how you can create a brand that stands out from the crowd but not sure how? 

In this article, you’ll learn all about creating a brand and saying goodbye to old and stale branding. Read on to discover 10 tips for creating an identity for your brand and making it pop. 

What Is a Brand Identity

Brand identity contains the visual parts of a brand such as the logo, color themes, and any design that separates one company from another. All of these have a goal in mind which is putting a certain image in customers’ minds. You want to have your brand be recognizable and remembered by customers. 

1. Know Your Target Audience 

When you’re creating a brand, a large mistake many make is not keeping their target audience in mind. 

An example of a target audience:

Age: 25-35

Gender: Female

Location: United States

Education: College Graduate

Income: $30,000-$40,000

When you’re designing your brand, keep your target audience’s demographics in mind such as their age, income, gender, and education level. If you want to dive deeper and really target your audience even more, find their pain points, goals, and motivations when creating your brand.

2. Sell Your Brand

If someone goes to your website, you have about 10-20 seconds to pique their interest. Focus on selling your brand and not your product to really attract and keep your audience’s interest. That’s when your leads turn into sales.

3. Be Consistent

Consumers want to buy from a company that’s familiar to them. When building a brand, you’ll want to make sure that your brand is consistent across all platforms and channels. Whether it’s social media or your website, you’ll want your brand to maintain recognizability. 

4. Research Your Competitors 

Take a look at your competitors and see what branding they’re using for their company and decide what they do well or fail with.

Some things to keep in mind and write down as your research are:

• Quality of products or services
• Competitor’s social mentions or customer reviews
• How they market their business offline and online
• How consistent they are with their identity across platforms

Once you have researched your competitors, make sure your brand stands out, is recognizable, and different from them. 

5. Brand Logo and Tagline

Creating a logo is vital for creating a brand that stands out from the crowd. Your logo will show up everywhere that your business does and will be seen as your identity, so make sure it’s recognizable and clean. 

You’ll want to invest the time and money to make sure your logo is recognizable and piques interest. You’ll want your brand style guide to include:

• Color palette
• Typography and fonts
• Iconography
• Image style
• Web elements
• Logo size

Are you unsure if your branding or logo needs an update? Read on here for 10 signs it’s time your brand gets a new look. 

6. Build Your Brand Message

Let customers know who you are and make them relate to you by having a brand message that’s about 1-2 sentences. This should answer the questions of who you are, what you offer, and why your target audience should be interested. 

7. Reflection of You

You should have your brand be a reflection of you. It’s important to keep your audience in mind as you’re building your brand, but it’s important to keep your type of business in mind as well.

For example, if you’re in graphic design you’ll want to have a clean website and not one that’s too busy or has stiff fonts. Keeping your business in mind is important for your consumers to be able to clearly define what you’re all about. 

8. Have a Brand Voice 

Your brand voice is how your audience responds to you and how you communicate. 

Some examples of a brand voice:

• Conversational
• Professional
• Friendly
• Informative

When choosing your brand voice you’ll want it to make sense for your business and your target audience. Make sure your brand voice is consistent so it’s recognizable across multiple platforms. 

9. Responding to Bad Reviews

Responding to bad reviews is essential to maintaining your brand identity and not letting them hurt your image. Try solving the problem quickly and efficiently to avoid hurting your identity. 

Don’t ever fight with a customer online, that could hurt your image and scare off potential customers. 

10. Reach with Emotion

Depending on your business, you could build your brand by reaching out to your audience with emotion. When you’re writing, you want it to convey a story to your audience they can relate with on an emotional level. 

Explore and find an emotional hook for your advertising, and take your time in doing so. When you put in the time for a strong hook this will pay off in the long run.

For example, a great example of an emotional hook is, say you’re selling exercise equipment, you can showcase success stories showing how happy people are now that the weight’s gone. Think about your products, services, and target audience as you’re coming up with your emotional hook.

Now You Know What Goes into Creating a Brand

Creating a brand can seem tricky but after reading this guide, you should feel comfortable with creating a brand or rebranding an existing brand. Remember to keep each step in mind and really dig deep to learn as much about your target audience as possible for a consistent and powerful branding identity.

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