Seven New Year's Resolutions to Become Indispensable to Your Customers

By Jeremy L. Hunt

In today's challenging economic landscape, certainties are few and far between. However, one aspect of business growth that will never change is the importance of maintaining strong relationships with your customers and clients.
Even as technology evolves at lightning speed, there's no device or platform that can take the place of the human element. When you invest time and hard work into demonstrating your trustworthiness and providing value beyond compare, your clients will realize that you're not just another vendor but an integral element of their success.
Here are seven new year's resolutions you should make today to ensure that you'll be indispensable to your customers in 2012.
1. Be early.
Being on time is good and well. But being early - whether it's arriving at a meeting a few minutes before it's scheduled to begin or finishing a project ahead of the deadline - speaks volumes to your customers about where they stand in the order of your priorities.
2. Be prepared.
An impromptu phone conference with your client, an unanticipated sales opportunity, an unforeseen emergency or technical glitch...the rule of business is to expect the unexpected.
By staying well organized and on top of your game, you can approach any situation with a sense of self-assuredness that inspires confidence and builds trust.
3. Be agile.
The ability to adapt and evolve is a critical element to maintaining your competitive edge.
For example, let's say your client asks for your help with a project that falls outside your core capabilities. Do you turn them away, or do you draw upon your team's creativity and technical expertise to provide an innovative solution?
No matter your background or past experience, if you can readily adapt to new challenges and respond to new opportunities, you'll become the go-to resource for your customers whenever a need arises.
4. Be curious.
Being curious goes hand-in-hand with being agile.
You should be a perpetual student of your field. By staying on top of the news, trends and ideas that are shaping your industry, you'll always be ready with an answer or solution when a client needs your help.
Developing your own knowledge and skills translates directly to increasing your perceived value to your customers.
5. Be responsible.
How hard is it to simply admit that you're wrong? Based on the number of celebrities and politicians who issue vehement denial after denial only to get caught red-handed, apparently it's really tough.
But if you can willingly admit your mistakes and take ownership for making them right, you will gain respect as someone who is always dependable and accountable, even when the chips are down.
6. Be creative.
Some say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," but in reality, there's always room for improvement. Don't let your business get stuck in a rut.
Every now and then, allow yourself time to step out of the daily grind and examine the big picture with fresh eyes. Sometimes a break in routine is all that's needed to discover solutions that will help you and your team serve your customers better, faster and more efficiently.
7. Be humble.
Above all, be humble. All the talent and skills in the world don't mean jack if you're a jerk.
Be confident in your abilities but realistic in your promises. Work hard without stopping at every milepost along the way to blow your own horn. Deliver consistently and let your record speak for itself.
Remember: you're nothing without your customers. If you put their success first, your own success will be multiplied exponentially by their lasting loyalty.
Here's to your best year yet.
Certainly, in the world of business there are no guarantees, and sometimes you'll lose a customer for reasons that are beyond your control.
However, there's no better way to stack the deck in your favor than by honing the skills and traits that make you and your company an invaluable asset to your clients. Commit to these resolutions now, and no matter where you stand today, you'll be ringing in 2013 with happier customers and a brighter outlook.

Effective Marketing Starts With The Design

By Kaye Marks

Modern marketing techniques may be the trend these days, but traditional marketing is still as important and effective. Many businesses these days still use traditional materials when promoting their business.
This can range from business cards and flyers to brochures, banners, and posters. These materials are all useful especially when it comes to communicating important information to customers and prospects. However, the effectiveness of your materials will depend on how they are designed. It is important that you create the perfect design that will tell people your business image and message straight to the point. You can do plenty of ways to design your materials well. You can do custom printing for a stand out appeal or stick with a simple design to convey a simple and straightforward impression. However, you want your materials to be designed. Here are important design pointers you need to know:
1. Keep your material simple and easy to understand - People do not like reading long messages. They are busy individuals who do not have time to read lengthy materials. It would be best if you just deliver your message straight on. Create a simple copy that conveys your message effortlessly. You can always use bullet points if you want to break ideas into simple and legible parts. It will also be best if you use simple fonts that will make the words easily readable.
2. Match colors effectively - Be sure to use light colored font on a dark background. This will make the words more legible to read.
3. Follow the flow of the eyes rule - People commonly read from top to bottom and left to right. You have to make sure that the important details are put on the top left portion and the lesser important details are on the middle or bottom right. This will help you deliver the important details first to your customers and prospects.
4. Do not put too many texts and images - This will only crowd your material and make your message confusing. If you can use only one image, that would be better. Just make sure that the image you use is relevant to your business and the message you want to convey.
5. Give an irresistible offer - The best way to encourage people to respond to your ad at once is to provide and interesting offer. This can be a price cut, freebie, or reward, which can give them great benefits. It would be best if you can put a deadline on these offerings so you can generate immediate response.
6. Do not forget to put your complete contact details - This includes your phone number, mailing address, email, and website. This will help your customers contact you easily. Be sure to check the details before printing so there are no errors.
The perfect design and message will bring many benefits to your business. It is always best to ask the help of a trusted custom printer to make sure your materials look as incredible as possible. Remember that there are plenty of full service printing companies today. It is crucial that you find the best printer that will fit your need. A little research will help you find the perfect man that will give you the best marketing materials you can ever have.

What Makes Good Propaganda Portraits

By Ronan Le Breton

'A good piece of propaganda is often a striking piece of art.' Political propaganda has been extremely popular through the early ages, when people began voting and choosing their leaders. Even before the days of printing technologies, hand painted posters were quite popular. These were later replaced by small-scale prints. Today, advanced technologies has made it easier for politicians to create many such portraits in shorter time frames.

The element of propaganda portraits
While all such portraits basically promote a leader or a political idea, the underlying component in most of such artworks is emotion. So whether Chairman Mao showcases the diverse aspects of a real leader or soviet posters speak of liberal thinking, all appeal to emotions, more than simple rational thinking. Over time, this style was also used to dehumanize the enemy and create hatred towards them. Government and public health sectors have used these also to spread social messages against terrorism, smoking and other social evils.

Styles
Styles of such posters differ with different nations and times. All countries go through different political upheavals and ideals and posters depicting the ideas of those times hold good. The Russian revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries worked on dissemination of revolutionary ideas, Marxism teachings and stirring of political unrest. The 'Chairman Mao' inspired portraits of China also deserve special mention for their style. Using vibrant colours of red, these posters depict the vibrant and shining side of China. Most importantly, these showcase the various aspects of the leader that the political party wanted its public to perceive. Besides these styles, revolution in central and eastern Europe, World War and cold wars between various nations have led to the creation of distinct propaganda portrait styles.

Propaganda and pop art
Pop art or popular art, largely inspires itself from contemporary styles. Propaganda is thus a style of pop art that has grown over the years. With these portraits appealing to emotions, and being influenced by large wars and political beliefs, each style has a unique story to tell. Many artists love to continue this art, in order to keep alive the emotions and thoughts that the world must once have gone through.

Is propaganda art right for you
If you are deciding on a pop art form for yourself and are considering Propaganda pop art, then here are some aspects to help you decide. If you want your personalized portrait to tell the story of a bygone era then this is a good choice. If you are passionate about world history, then this piece would be add to your collection in a much more personalized manner. Another reason why you could opt for this is freshness of style and content. Also, if your family has closely been associated with one of the revolutions, the portrait may be a time capsule connecting you to the bygone era.

Today pop art has varied styles that are growing and evolving by the day. From the styles that come and go, Propaganda is one that has stayed and will remain for years to come. This is because, it is the only form of art which brings a piece of history to life and connects today's world to the political ideals, beliefs and thoughts of the past.

Ronan Le Breton is a pop art artist and also owner of Personal Art, a pop art gallery based in Bali. The studio provides approximately 21 versions of pop art portraits which can be personalized on to diverse mediums. 

Animation Programs for Beginners

By Erek Galloway

The world of animation, computer graphics, 3D animation, cartooning, 3D Rigging, Shading, 

etc., etc., is an area that requires a ton of skill, but most would agree that more importantly, 

takes a lot of heart. Your probably saying to yourself, I love animation, or I would love to know 

how to do cartooning or video game creation. You might know a little about it, but you think 

to yourself that you know nothing on the level of what you want or the know how to get started.

 Well, the fact that you are taking the time for yourself to look into doing something about it

means that you do have what it takes. That's the first step!! The drive, desire belief and 

the passion. You have to first realize that what you can currently do with your talent and skill, 

is more than most will ever be able to do. That's very important and you should always keep 

that with you. That being said, you have to cultivate that talent and develop that skill into 

something extraordinary. Whether you are wanting to get into the animation and computer 

graphics world for fun, a side hobby, a part- time endeavor or a full-time venture down the road,
 as with anything else, everything starts somewhere and that somewhere begins with you. 
If you are not already aware of this, 

there are endless areas of the animation and computer graphics field. You probably already 

have an idea of the area or areas that interest you, however if you don't or even if you do, 

its fun to play around in all the different areas to see if you would like to add additional 

skills to your knowledge base when creating. Some areas that might interest you just to 

name a few include:

Interactive 3D Rigging
Cartooning
Graphic Design
Video Game Creation
Realistic Physics & Particles
Complex Shading
Rendering
Composting

The list goes on and on and you might find yourself becoming interested in more than one of these very, very quickly. Take some time for yourself to explore these different areas to see which most fits your interest. Your talent speaks for yourself so let people see & experience it. You were given a gift so make sure that you give yourself a chance to cultivate it. With the right tools, know how and more importantly the want and desire, before you know it whether it's for fun, a side hobby or a full-time career you will be DOING exactly what you were supposed to be doing. It starts with you.

7 Principles of Personal Success

By Lorna Barrow

Ever so often, when I discuss the rules for success in business, someone in the audience will ask me "How can I be successful not only in business but also as a person?

This question always surprises me because to me, if you're in the business of delivering a service especially if it's in the information sector, then you and your business are one and the same. But not being one to miss an opportunity to add insight, I decided that if you and your business are so connected, personal success must equal business success.

So I asked myself what makes me successful as a person? How can I truly answer your question? Well, assuming that you're just like me, I am sharing with you my top 7 principles of success that I rely on to help me to be the person and then the business person that I am, hoping that they will help you too. Are you ready? Here goes:

1. Resolve to succeed. Yes! Simply decide to be successful. If you don't make this decision then you will find that you give up and give in before you even begin. This helps me to ignore the naysayers and opens my eyes to many, many ways to achieve my goals.

2. Set goals. This is really your gateway to success. There is something about writing down your goals, I mean real pen and paper writing down that seems to imprint them so completely on your psyche. And when you determine the steps that must be taken to achieve them and be willing to take those steps, as we say in the Caribbean "yuh gone clear!" or more sedately, success is assured.

3. Do what must be done when it must be done. In a word - focus! Focus and self-discipline go hand in hand and when I apply them both, I can resist the temptation to have a good time and miss the "lifeline" by which I told the client that I would submit the proposal. For me, doing what must be done when it must be done is seldom negotiable.

4. Take action - especially in the face of uncertainty. To me the fastest way to acquire a large piece of real estate on Failure Street is to know what must be done and being paralysed by fear into inaction. I know you need to be certain about the outcome; your perfectionist attitude steps in. But in the words of Michael Port, Author of Book Yourself Solid: Often the very people who are perfectionists, control freaks we might also call them, and who therefore think that the projects they complete will be perfect can't actually complete projects, much less get started, in many cases. I learn to take action even as I am scared of the challenge, and learn as I go forward.

5. Know the rules. I never cease to be annoyed, amazed and amused by the rate at which people enter a particular arena and try to survive without so much as glancing at the rules. There are rules for living, for parenting for using the bathroom, for relationship and there are rules for doing business. At some point, mostly near the beginning, I learn the rules inside out and because of this, I learnt that knowing the rules and applying them is more likely to get you what you want than breaking rules you don't even know.

6. Get in touch with your spirit. Notice I did not say join a religion or go to a church - although this could be a part of the process of finding your spirit. When you're in touch with your spirit the entire world looks so completely different. The drama falls away, there is no problem that does not have a solution and hope truly, truly springs eternal in your breast. Yeah, getting in touch with your spirit guarantees success.

7. Laugh. You heard me correctly, LAUGH. I laugh at life. I laugh when the document that I worked on for two days disappear down a computer dark hole and I laugh when people recite to me all the things I must change about me. I laugh at the antics of my grandchildren and I laugh when my darling dog Peaches takes 5 seconds to disdainfully reject the dinner I specially prepared with love for her. And above all, I laugh at me and remind myself that no one died and made me God.

So there you have them, the top seven principles I live by that make me successful and I believe that if you use them as well you can be successful.

Please understand that success is not a destination because I'm still growing and learning and unavoidably, I keep moving the goal posts and constantly redefining success. I also want to remind you that the measurement of success is individual to the individual but the world seems to agree that the most objective yardstick is money.

Now all I ask of you is to take my 7 principles and make them your foundation. Add to them, subtract from them but take some action NOW!

18 creative mirror designs

August 23rd, 2011 by Mirko in Featured, Inspiration

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Mirrors are usually not the item that will get the most attention in your house or appartment. This is probably because we normally consider the functional aspect when buying a mirror, not really its design. If you are looking for more surprising mirrors, the following ones should satisfy you.

1. The Razorblade mirror

2. Thumb-up mirror

3. Ladder mirror

4. Wiper mirror

5. Splash mirror

6. Multi-Faceted Mirror

7. Tetris mirror

8. Armchair mirror

9. Hanger mirror

10. Tennis racket mirror

11. Shower mirror

12. Polaroid mirror

13. Ironing board

14. Meter mirror

15. Plant mirror

16. Lamp mirror

17. Water mirror

18. Eclipse mirror

10 design books to consider for graphic design students

August 29th, 2011 by Mirko in Featured, Resources

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Learning graphic design is a lifelong process, so graphic design students don’t worry: you’ll have plenty of time becoming an expert in your field. This said, I know that when you are getting started you are really eager to learn more quicker, that’s why I’m suggesting a selection of design books that are in my opinion worth reading for graphic design students, but also for others.

1. Making and breaking the grid

Some graphic designers are crazy about using grids in their designs, others depise it because they feel it makes all layouts look the same (or at least they think so). Even if you are one of those grid-haters, you should know what is a grid and how to use it. You can learn just that in this book.

2. The Elements of Graphic Design

A good book for beginners, learn some basics of graphic design as well as parts of the history. In this book you’ll learn some key concepts of space, unity, page architecture, and typography. Get it on Amazon.

3. Designing Brand Identity

Branding is much more than just logo design, it even goes beyond graphic design. This book is a real guide to become better at understanding what branding is and creating powerful brands. Get it on Amazon.

4. Paul Rand: a designer’s art

Learn directly from one of the iconic graphic designers of the twentisest century: Paul Rand. Here he describes his work with the same precision, economy and passion that he displays in his graphic designs, seeking to help us to understand the nature of his relationships with his clients, his audience and his art. Get it from Amazon

5. Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles

Typography is one of the important basics of graphic design, and this book is one of the must-have if you plan to do a design career. It covers some typography history with works of masters of typography. Get it from Amazon.

6. Thinking with type

Another great book about typography. It is a more practical approach to using typography in your designs, with many examples and theories about typography. Get it on Amazon.

7. Stationery design now

An excellent book to get tons of inspiration. In it wou will see good examples of how stationery design should be done. Get it on Amazon

8. Package Design Workbook: The Art and Science of Successful Packaging

If you are interested by the multi-dimensional side of graphic design, then packaging is what you need to learn. Get started with this great book. Get it on Amazon

9. How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul

Perhaps one of the most important design books for graphic design students, it teaches you everything you need to know about making a design career, and you won’t learn that in school. Get it on Amazon.

10. The Art of Color

Probably the best book ever written about color. Learn about the physics of color, how to mix it, color effects, color impression, and so much more… Get it from Amazon

What design books should we add to this list?

There are so many good design books that even if we wanted to make an exhaustive list it would be impossible. However, we would be happy if you told us in the comments what major books we missed in this list and we’ll add them to the post.

Top 10 tips on getting that scholarship

Many of you will rely on some financial support to pay for your international education. For some, a scholarship could mean the difference between studying… and not studying. For others, it just helps with the cost of living, and also provides a bit extra to enjoy student life.

There are many scholarships available, and not all of them require you to prove you’re the most academically gifted person on earth. But they are incredibly competitive. So how do you make sure you get the scholarship or bursary you deserve?

Top tip #1: You usually can’t apply for a scholarship until you have been accepted into the courseThis may seem like it’s the wrong way around, but you do need to know you can pay your tuition fees and travel expenses without a scholarship. That way, if you do win a grant, you can pay back your local bank loan or have a bit of extra spending money.

Top tip #2: It’s not going to cover everythingRepeat after me… you can’t study for free. If you’re lucky enough to get a rare full scholarship, you’ll still have to find money for your travel, food, books, health insurance, phone calls and fun.

Top tip #3: Look beyond your universityYou can find a complete list of scholarships on many websites, including those awarded by private foundations (such as a Fulbright Scholarship), or government bodies in the host country (such as the British Council) or your own country (such as the Department of Education). Check carefully to see if you’re eligible – many have nationality, course or age restrictions.

Top tip #4: Every little bit helpsEven if it’s just a small grant towards the cost of your books, it’s worth taking the time to apply. It’s one less thing to worry about when you get there!

Top tip #5: Apply for as many as you canYes, it takes time. But it’s free money! So make a list of all the scholarships you are eligible for. Double-check you have all the right documents to prove your case, and get someone read over your supporting essay or letter. It’s always good to get another point of view.

Top tip #6: Be confident
If the application requires a letter or essay explaining why you deserve the scholarship, don’t be shy. List all your relevant achievements – not just academic results but also community work, career experience and awards.

Top tip #7: Avoid scholarship scams
There is no such thing as a ‘guaranteed scholarship’. You should never have to pay an application fee for a scholarship. Unfortunately, some dodgy scholarship companies will just take your money and disappear.

Top tip #8: Allow plenty of time
You need to think about your finances at least 18 months before you hope to start your course. But once you have been accepted onto the course, you may only have a short window of time where you can apply for a course-specific scholarship. So don’t miss your deadline; keep in touch with your StudyLink counsellor and with the University’s international office.

Top tip #9: Keep a record of all the documentsYou need proof of funds to get your visa sorted, and that includes the scholarship offer or agreement.

Top tip #10: Have a back up planDon’t despair if all those applications come to nothing. There are other ways to finance your education. Student loans, help from your friends and family, and company sponsorships are worth looking into as well.

Your StudyLink counsellor can help you with scholarship applications – just talk to us if you want help finding the best option for you.