Planning the Project


Company marketing materials are one of the first ways you will express what your company does and what type of product or service your company offers. Aside from the material you will develop here, it is always important that you, or any representative of your company, be able to describe your company and products or services in a few brief sentences. One of my friends used to refer to this as the "elevator speech": Can you convey to someone in the time it takes to ride an elevator a few floors what your company is all about? This information should be included in any marketing piece.

In this exercise you will develop a single-page product sheet, front and back, which can be distributed in print form or as a PDF. It will convey information about a product or service and your company, and marketing/sales information that will define both the product or service and the company.

Production Choices

One of the first things to decide is how this piece will be produced and how often. This is the type of marketing piece that might need to be produced frequently. Will it need to be revised on a regular basis? Perhaps you have a small budget and prefer to produce it as it is needed, in house. Do you have a reliable device that produces consistent color with the finishing options you need? Or, perhaps you will order a large quantity to be printed with your print service provider and draw down on this fulfillment item throughout the year.

Distribution Choices

Distribution impacts production. Whether an item is produced in house or digitally and whether it is duplexed or perhaps three-hole punched or folded depend on the recipient. Perhaps it will end up in a binder for your sales force, be folded for direct mail in an envelope, be PDFed and sent as an email attachment, or be downloaded from a website.

Color Choices

If this product will be produced in house by a short-run, digital, on-demand output device, be careful about specifying a spot color. If your company collateral is two-color, trying to match that color with an in-house device will involve compromise and a lowering of expectations. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for a four-color printing process to match a spot color. PANTONE colors are not made from process colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black).

If this is a reality of your environment, invest in a PANTONE Process library, which will give you four-color equivalents of your spot colors so you can mix the closest color possible. Bear in mind that a four-color toner output device translates and renders color differently from how your print service provider's RIPs, proofers, and printing presses do. Some digital output devices print their own libraries of PANTONE swatches that they can reliably reproduce, so check with your manufacturer or vendor.

Stock choices also affect the way color appears on the page. A coated stock enhances and darkens the color, whereas an uncoated stock gives a dull appearance. In fact, PANTONE offers both a coated library of chips (like your paint store) and an uncoated library of chips so you can predict its appearance based on your stock choices. It is always a good idea to select your PANTONE color from a PANTONE swatch library and never from the swatches you see on your monitor. Remember, your monitor is an RGB device and your output device is more than likely CMYK. Only in offset printing can you specify a PANTONE chip and get that identical ink.

This exercise is designed as two-color, just like the collateral exercise previously. This choice allows for the enhancement of content without the expense of printing four-color work. Remember that the more colors you use, the greater the expense. For materials you will print frequently, this is always important to consider.

To make the most of this two-color job, you will create variety by adding tints of the same color. So, what would ordinarily be a black-and-white product with a grayscale image gains depth and interest with the addition of a single color.

Finishing and Binding Choices

As in our previous exercise, if folding is going to occur, make sure your paper choice will fold easily and not crack. Bear in mind that parallel folds can occur through an image and the results might not be satisfactory. Keep this in mind when you are putting your elements together on your page in InDesign. Additionally, if you'll use three-hole punching for distribution via a binder, be sure you have facing pages turned on and have an extra margin on the inside to accommodate the punch.



Adobe InDesign CS2 @work. Projects You Can Use on the Job
Adobe InDesign CS2 @work: Projects You Can Use on the Job
ISBN: 067232802X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 148

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