design

A few weeks ago, MediaPost wrote an article on 10 Reasons Why Clients Don’t Pick the Right SEM Agencies.“ This post really got me thinking, and I wanted to make my own similar list of five common traps that marketers fall into that lead to choosing the wrong agency partner.

Picking the right partner for your business is critical to the success of your campaign.  The wrong partner will not understand your business, goals, or even your target market, which could result in campaign failure and thousands of dollars wasted away.

If you are a client looking for an agency partner, stay away from these common problems that can cause you to choose the wrong firm.

1. You don’t have a clearly defined scope of work. Many clients fail to do the requisite preliminary research before issuing an RFP, including taking a hard look in the mirror and being honest about your assets and liabilities and what type of outside firm is likely to complement these.

You probably know about the importance of a good CSS layout so you don’t need them for that, right!? You do what you’re good at and let them do what they’re good at.

If you’re not sure what you need, you can always send out an exploratory RFI (Request for Information) to get a feel for what’s out there and/or hire an experienced consultant to help you navigate the waters.

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After I graduated from college, the very next week I was sending out my resume. I was desperate for a job. Any job. Just give me a job!

In less than a month I got one. Was it my dream job? No. Did it pay the bills?  Yes, somewhat. My friends got jobs. Did they like their jobs? Somewhat, kind of. But it was okay because we were all on the ‘right track’…

During this time, there were lots of happy hours, parties, events, shopping days, gatherings, dinners. Did I want to go to all these events? A few I really did, but the majority I could have passed on. Did I spend money I didn’t want to spend or didn’t have to spend? Yes!

Before you know it that goal of being a startup engineer, or a web designer, or even the goal of saving enough money to take the new course is buried deep under new clothes, dinner receipts, and revised resumes.

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Elegant logo design is a pretty exhausting task what with having to think of all those ideas and going back and forward with the client. But after reading this article I hope that it will become a little easier for you to knock out some pretty sweet designs.

its also good when showing the client to present at least 5-10 different versions, even if it’s something simple like a change of color or some font styling.

I’ve had many clients often ask to see a design with a slight change just because it was hard for them to visualize it in their heads, I guess it’s the same for all clients and in the most part why they are hiring you.

So check out some of the examples below and hopefully you’ll feel better next time you have to come up with a few good logos 🙂

Try drawing tools

If the thought of learning to use the drawing tools in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator makes you sigh, try CorelDraw, no really I am serious, CorelDraw is also vector-based the same as Illustrator but it offers a very different approach to design and illustration.

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