Attention!

When developing marketing or collateral, the first thing to consider is your audience. Online viewers seek you out and their attention is captured with a range of images, video and sound. The aim is to engage people for a period of time so that they are receptive to your message. In print, you need to grab attention of your audience from whatever else they are doing and have, on average, a 3 second window to portray your message.

When displaying your message on posters and billboards, or in pamphlets and magazines, you are hoping that your audience will notice your message as they pass by. They aren’t a captive audience and will only read the bare minimum. That means limiting the amount of information on printed material because chances are that the headline is all people will read or remember. One of the biggest advantages of print is with portable collateral that the audience can take with them and refer to again and again.

You can’t use too many design elements in print as your audience will be overwhelmed and your message will be lost. The trick to most well designed print collateral is to keep it simple.

Functionality

Although the options in printing might be endless, the key is to combine visual and tactile appeal with functionality. That means assessing how your audience will be best reached and some of the most ‘standard’ forms of printing are still popular for a good reason- they work!

Keep your budget in mind as well. You might want to print a coffee table book of your work that is leather bound and hand stitched, but there are many budget-friendly options available to you. At the end of the day, printed marketing collateral is about getting a ROI (return on investment). And printing really is an investment.

Another example is designing a business card that is cutting edge and really stands out, but if it is an unusual shape, too thick, too large to fit in someone’s wallet or business card rolodex then chances are that your amazing business card will end up relegated to a dark corner and never seen again.

Remember to think about where your printing is going, as well as who your audience is and how they will respond so that your printing fits into display fixtures, into the mail box or into a file where it is kept for future reference. Dobson’s prides itself on quality because there is little point in printing something that falls apart, fades, isn’t the correct colour or comes out not quite right.

Don’t waste your investment. Call Dobson’s today.