The designs were created for Round Hill Music, a boutique music rights management company, by New York Design House ‘Established’. I love the colour, the attitude, it really works. The roll of tape rocks and the business cards are awesome. I love that the overprinted tape logo is different on each, it gives a sense of character doesn’t it? – Character, Personality and Individuality. While the layout and typeface looks professional.

That’s the magic of branding folks – The goal is to visually represent the company, like a portrait, capturing the character and personality and communicating this at every step. Congratulations ‘Established’, you nailed it.

Thank you to September Industry for showing us the designs in the first place. These images come courtesy of their fantastic site.

That’s not all. We also want to encourage local schools to make the most of their grounds by planting trees. This helps create woodland habitat, increases bio-diversity and, most importantly, provides an excellent learning resource — planting the trees, watching them grow, seeing how wildlife is encouraged and charting the changing seasons and weather.

50,000 Target Reached - Help us plant 100,000

We need your help… Our partners Tree Appeal will plant a tree for every 20 orders we receive. You can make a difference by choosing us for your leaflets, stationery, posters and other printing and telling your friends about our Trees for Schools campaign. Help us reach our target of planting 100,000 trees.

Last year David Bellamy visited nine schools across the
UK and Ireland planting over 3,000 trees from our
100,000 tree target. Click here to see photos from the tour.

Keep sending in your nominations for your local school and they could be next to get a visit from Professor Bellamy. Here are the top 12 schools with the most votes in alphabetical order. Well done to all the schools, keep on nominating!

• Bellfield Primary School, Hull.
• Burbage Junior School, Hinkley.
• Bury Church of England High School, Gtr Manchester.
• Crossley Fields, Mirfield.
• Earl Soham C P School, Suffolk.
• Holmefirth High School, Holmefirth.
• Holtsmere End Junior School, Hemel Hempstead.
• Morriston Comprehensive School, Swansea.
• The Grange School, Daventry.
• Summerseat Methodist Primary School, Gtr Manchester.
• The Sutherland School, Telford.
• West Park C Of E First and Middle School, Worthing.

In most cases, people expect a ‘real’ company to have printed literature. Sure, everyone can afford the time and money to get a set of cards sorted and say they’re in business. But if you want to look like you really mean business, you need a brochure of some sort. Maybe a price list, catalogue or prospectus.

Even online companies need printed literature. Not only does it add credibility but people like to read through brochures at home or in the office, while in a waiting room or on the train. Let your silent salesperson go to work on them during this time.

People respond better when they don’t feel they’re being sold to. Reading a brochure is a voluntary act, done in their own time. Research proves that people are more likely to buy when they feel they’ve ‘discovered’ something, rather than been ‘sold to’.

Even the biggest online retailers rely on offline printed brochures as part of their marketing mix. Now’s a great time to start that new brochure you’ve been putting off, or to update your existing one.

Our premium silk booklets with thick covers are Half Price during February. Prices start from just £203 for 250*.

Order online today  or call our Swansea studio on 01792 448 132 to chat about your options or to request a free sample.

PS. Remember the offer will disappear after the 29th Feb (Like the 29th of Feb itself in a way!).PPS. Booklets are a high value item and very rarely on offer. Don’t miss out.

*Based on artwork supplied and collection from our Swansea store.

Once you see these designs it makes you wonder why so many tents have looked the same for so long. I’ve spotted the odd wigwam with a funky pattern, and a few generic swirly ones, but in the main, most are just green, purple, and plain. How come?

Wellies used to be the same but in the last couple of years the boots have become an intrinsic part of festival fashion. Now it seems it’s the turn of the tents.

Jersey based FieldCandy selected a group of 20 or so artists and designers – photographers, graphic designers, illustrators, branding and advertising designers – to create designs that were then transferred to the ultra-light, waterproof flysheet that covers the two-person tent.

They have about 40 different designs to choose from and prices range from £395 to £750.

An eyecatching product, I’m sure we’ll be seeing a few of these around at Glastonbury next year. At these prices, I’d worry someone else might fancy it for themselves. Although you could argue it’d be easy to find, should your beloved new tent go walkabouts!

Price is not all that matters – what is important, at least to some people, is value. And value takes into account training, support, and the intrinsic joy of using the best tool that’s made. It’s pretty safe to say that no one buys Apple products because of their low price. {{Guy Kawasaki}}

Guy Kawasaki is the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web, and a founding partner at Garage Technology Ventures. Previously, he was the chief evangelist of Apple. Kawasaki is the author of ten books including Enchantment, Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

We’re looking to help raise £1000 for Swansea’s Special Care Baby Unit in Singleton Hospital. It’s an area close to our heart and although our little boy was on time and healthy, there are many little ones that need a bit of extra care and attention.

So… we spoke to lots of local retailers, restaurants and leisure facilities and put together a fundraising programme.

The fundraising programme is called ‘Peel2Save’ because all of the different discounts and offers are printed in one handy credit-card-sized voucher book, and when you want to redeem an offer, you simply peel the right voucher out of your book.

The Swansea voucher book contains 64 money-saving offers and discounts from over 20 local businesses, including great family restaurants like Pizza Express, Pizza Hut, Frankie & Benny’s, Peachy Keens, Beefeater Grill & More. Retailer Brantano has offered some great money off vouchers and if the kids are bored why not take advantage of the buy-one-get-one-free vouchers in Laserzone and Tenpin, or get a free extra scoop of ice-cream in Baskin Robbins. Whether shopping or at work, take advantage of buy-one-get-one-free offers in La Baguette Du Jour. For all the well deserving mums (…and dads?), there are discounts in local salons and spas. I’ve included a graphic below showing the vouchers on the back of the card so you can see all the offers available (Click to enlarge)

With hundreds of pounds worth of everyday savings on the Peel2Save card, they are something of a bargain, priced as they are at just £10, with £5 going straight to Singleton’s Special Care Baby Unit.

If you’d like to help support the unit (and save at the same time), simply click the button below to pay by paypal (or if you’re local, which you probably are, feel free to drop into our office and pay by cash – 14 J Shed, Kings Road, Swansea SA1 8PL).

Or click ‘Buy Now’ – It’s only a tenner and will really help us in our effort to raise £1000!

We’ll post it out to you straight away, free of charge.

Kind regards,
Daryl.

PS. If you know of anyone about to visit any of the places on the card, please forward this page to them. We know of a couple of people that have saved quite a bit on their children’s birthday parties!

PPS. Some local Schools, Charities and Clubs are using the cards to raise money for their organisation. If you are a not-for-profit organisation that would like to distribute the cards to raise funds for your project, please get in touch.

But be quick! Only a limited amount of cards are available.

That’s why we need to be careful who we listen to, because success this year will depend on a few things, but none more so than confidence, and a little bit of belief. And if we’re not careful, our positivity can be effected by listening to all the doom and gloom we’re exposed to on a daily basis. So try to ignore the bad stuff – it’s overhyped.

It’s a funny thing, confidence. Intangible yet incredibly valuable. Listen to any professional sports person talk about confidence and you get a sense of its importance. If Premier League managers could inject confidence into their teams (they’d be banned of course, but) they’d pay millions!
That’s because confidence breeds belief, and belief is the single most important factor in achieving anything. Yes, it’s a challenging time at the moment, but it’s also a time of great opportunity.

It’s a testing time, and some of the more average companies have paid the penalty. The clearing of the decks in many industry sectors presents fantastic clarity and opportunity, room to breathe, room to think and room to grow, but only if you’re good enough and up for the challenge.

Where did it all go?

The money’s not gone anywhere. Anyone know how much money was spent in the UK last month? Nor do I. But it’s an awful lot. It’s just not moving as freely.

We need to use our abilities to lubricate the business network. Yes, sure, it’s harder to win business, but good, so it should be! We should work harder! We should give more! And we should focus our efforts on offering our customers greater value for their spend. The rest will follow.

There’s no divine right to be successful in business, we need to earn it by working harder, faster and smarter.

Don’t listen to the news.

Seriously, if I hadn’t listened to the news, I’m not sure I would have even realised there was a downturn in the economy.

I completely understand, however, that many businesses out there are finding it tough, not just hypothetically… I mean physically, financially, job-reducing, tough! I empathise wholeheartedly.

I challenge, though, that those businesses wouldn’t have experienced the same results had their customers not heard ‘the news’ in the first place.

Okay, we can’t bury our heads in the sand, but I’d encourage we seek out the good stuff too!

Who knew that Rolls Royce posted record sales last month, selling 3,538 cars in 2011, up 31% compared to 2010, and setting a new sales record for the 107 year old car brand? Sales in the UK were up 30% on 2010.

Rival, Bentley, also saw a year that brought them back into profit after two years of losses.

The news reports the crashes with dogged determination, whereas the recoveries and record increases will often find themselves playing second fiddle to some celebrity gossip. It’s all a self fulfilling prophecy.

Have you heard of the American Hot Dog Seller Story? It’s worth a read if you haven’t come across it before.

Don’t just cut your prices.

If things are quiet, don’t just slash your prices, it’s a downward slope. Concentrate on adding value to your customers. Think about what you offer that is unique, and relay that message, as implicitly as possible to as many people as you can.

Up your marketing, slightly increase your prices to pay for it. I know what you’re thinking, ‘You would say that wouldn’t you?’

But I put it to you that there’s no point reducing your prices if no one knows where you are or what you do. You could have the cheapest prices in the world. With no customers, it won’t matter.

Reducing prices is easy, marketing isn’t. Concentrate on your unique qualities. It’s not always about price.

Remember our Rolls Royce and Bentley examples. They’re not cheap cars, and Apple certainly don’t sell so many i-Phones because they’re the cheapest.

What do you do that adds value? Okay, now let everybody else know.

Let’s make this a fantastic year, good luck!

Commenting on the work Lindsay said “I wanted to capture a sense of fantasy and mystery about the summer ball – a bit like the viewer had discovered something magical. That’s why I chose to make it appear as if we’re peering through the leaves and using rustic elements and fairy lights to capture the atmosphere”.

The company also won an award in 2008, for a booklet designed to advise on safe drinking during the festive period, commissioned by South Wales Police.

Winning this award 4 times in the last 5 years is fantastic recognition of the way we approach design and how important it is to the company vision – It really is one of our USPs. Of course, as a printing company we need to have competitive pricing but that just gets us in the game. Our quality of design, marketing expertise and customer service level is what really sets us apart from every other printer.

It’s a common story that, during tougher times, one of the first things that gets cut is marketing spend. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. What on earth makes people decide that it’s a good idea to stop the activity that’s bringing in the work in the first place! Maybe they feel their marketing activity is actually not responsible for their sales. If that’s the case, why the hell were they doing it in the first place? So things have gone a bit quiet and they decide to discourage more sales, to go a bit quiet themselves. Maybe they’re hoping to get their head down and ride out the storm. It won’t work! The storm will gobble you up  – you’ll disappear.

I’m proud to say we’ve just had our best ever 6 month period. It’s no coincidence that we’ve also spent the most on marketing during that period. If your boat’s being swept away by the tide, you paddle harder. You don’t throw them overboard.

But it’s not all bad, luckily I love what I do, and I thought I’d share a little tip with you that you might be able to use on your marketing… and that is to think about the reasons why someone wouldn’t buy your product or service. Then take steps to reassure them.

OK, let me explain by using the example in my dream. So I was talking to my friend who is a chartered surveyor. He had some high-end apartments he was looking to market via an open evening. He had sent flyers, cleverly disguised as invitations, out to the right kind of client. All good stuff so far but unfortunately the response had been poor.

So what could be the problem? Maybe the time wasn’t convenient. It might seem obvious, but many ‘launch event’ flyers leave off the opportunity to come at another time more suitable.

Talking of convenience, the evening time slot will often mean your potential customer might be looking after children. Make sure they know that family and children are welcome and even make light refreshments available.

How about parking? – Could access be an unnecessary dissuader when maybe there’s a nearby solution they might not know about, ‘park for free after 6pm at the local NCP for instance’.

What about selling pressure? Make sure your words are relaxed and informal – not too salesy. Make sure they’re aware that there will be no obligation or pressure to buy.

These are just a few examples, there could be many more. What could your potential customers be thinking about your product or service that might be enough to put them off? What could you say to help?

Want to know the single most important thing you can do? Send me a message with the subject ‘What can I say?’ and I’ll let you know. It really is very powerful.

What's on their mind? Could it be affecting the sale?