Adding color to your brochure, flyer, booklet, or business cards will increase the attention your marketing piece can get. Used correctly, colors capture attention, evoke emotions, and highlight important information. Below are some rules for color printing with a few tips on color meanings thrown in between.

Rule 1: Do not mix red and blue colors together.  Both blue letters on a red background or red letters on a blue background or make the reader’s eye tire easily, and they more than likely will not finish skimming your advertisement.

Tip: The color red suggests emotions of aggression and strength, while the color blue means peace, comfort, and loyalty.

Rule 2: Use contrast to make the important information stand out.  For instance, if your background is white with black letters, use a black box with white letters for the call to action.  Avoid too much contrast, though, as this can make reading difficult.

Tip: Black can be an either dramatic, sophisticated, or mournful.  White signifies purity, cleanliness, and simplicity.

Rule 3: Many designers like to use colors that are of the same shade.  For instance, if you want to use a warm color such as an orange, try incorporating other colors from the same family, such as red, brown, or yellow.

Tip: Orange evicts emotions of warmth and excitement, yellow promotes brightness and happiness, and brown is natural and neutral.

Rule 4: Complementary colors are those that are opposite each other on the color wheel.  When using a four color scheme, begin by selecting two complementary colors.  For selecting the next two colors, use another set of complementary colors.  A three color scheme often uses colors that are chosen by creating a triangle on the color wheel.

Tip: Green represents money and nature.  The color purple portrays royalty and spirituality.  Gray can be a cold color but is also distinctive and businesslike.

For a free color wheel, go to the advanced color options in your design program. There are also free color wheels available on many design websites.

When it comes to color printing needs, working with a mega printer can be the smart way to go.  A mega printer is a printer that has at least $500 million in sales volume each year. Mega printers aren’t right for everyone though. Here are some pros and cons to working with a mega printer.

Pros

They have more resources for bigger print jobs. Bigger printers obviously have more workers, which means that each worker is probably assigned to do one thing. That means designers can be hired to only work on designing projects, not to also work the presses half of the time. Mega printers can afford to buy the biggest, nicest printers (which can translate into the fastest printers) and they can buy them in bulk which means that they can turn around printing jobs quickly.

They can be cheaper. One print buyer has been quoted saying that when he has a large project he always goes with a mega printer because he can get a bulk discount.

They could save you on shipping costs. Depending on how many printing plants a mega printer has, there could be one close to your place of business. This means you can have your project printed at one of the closer plants and the delivery charges will be less because your project doesn’t have to travel as far. With rising gas prices, this could be a big factor for a lot of people.

They can give you more options. Mega printers often have more color printing options, more binding options and can do more of your work for you. Some might even design, print and mail your entire project for you.

Cons

The customer service level is below that of a smaller printer. A mega printer has more customer service reps that are trying to get through more customer issues than a smaller printer. You could speak to a different person each time you called, rather than speaking with the same customer service rep at a smaller printer. This means you could spend more time on the phone, re-explaining your problem to a new person each time.

You’re a small fish in a big pond. You are just one of thousands of customers, so you won’t get the preferred service you might get with a smaller printer that really values your business.

More chance for billing errors. More customers mean more invoices. One print buyer reported that he worked with a small printer that was bought out by a mega printer. The billing errors got so ridiculous that he took his business to a smaller printer. How much patience do you have to deal with erroneous paperwork?

Mega printers don’t offer as much flexibility. The buyer has to adhere to constraints for invoicing, inventory and she might have to order her projects in a certain way. Smaller printers can be more flexible because they don’t have as many orders to track. You may have to give up some of your control to reap the benefits of working with a mega printer.

It is almost always a good idea to use color in your marketing literature.  Color enhances your materials and makes them stand out, which is tough to do considering the vast amount of marketing pieces out there. 

Of course, each color evokes a different feeling.  Choosing the right color to use in your advertising efforts is one of the most important decisions you will make.  Some colors make the viewer feel warm; others give off a cold feeling.  One of the most popular colors is blue – light blue in particular.  Below are some of the feelings that this color makes people feel.  Use this as a guide if you are considering doing your next color printing project in blue.

Calm

Light blue is a calm color.  It is often associated with still waters, which makes people think of a relaxing evening on a boat.  If you want people to feel calm as they view your marketing materials, consider using light blue as your primary color.

Quiet

Blue is also a quiet color.  Do not use this color if you are going for a busy, exciting advertisement.  Blue is not the partying type of color.  It prefers quiet and calm. 

Peace

Blue is also the color of choice for evoking a peaceful feeling.  You should be getting a good idea of how blue is regarded by customers.  It is a calm, quiet, and peaceful color.  If your product or service relates to those types of feelings, blue is your color.

Water

Obviously, blue is often associated with water.  Whenever you are going for a wet feeling – and especially if your business is water related – you will want to use blue as your primary color.

Cool

Because blue is associated with water, it is also considered a cool color.  The only time to avoid using blue in your marketing efforts is in the middle of winter, when you are not purposely trying to accentuate your customers’ cold attitudes.

Clean

Finally, blue is a clean color.  This makes sense, since people usually think of water when they see the color blue.  Blue is a good color to use when you design simple, uncomplicated literature.  Or you can use blue to help a cluttered, busy design look more toned down. 

I remember an amusing joke the comedian Jerry Seinfeld would often use in his standup act. Paraphrasing it, the joke went something like this: According to a poll on the things people fear most, the number one fear was giving a speech in front of other people. The second greatest fear was death. That meant that if people were going to a funeral, they’d rather be the person in the casket than the person who has to give the eulogy.

Public speaking is not any easy thing to put yourself through. Most people don’t like to be up in front of a crowd where any little mistake is going to make them look foolish in front of all of those people. But what can you really do about it?

There are certain things you can do to help beat your fear and help you give a better speech. The first is simply acknowledging that you are afraid of it. It sounds simple and it sounds like it wouldn’t do anything, but you’d be surprised how much of a difference it can make to admit to yourself that you’re afraid.

The next thing is simply respecting yourself. Take the things you know and understand how important they are and how much it will help everyone else for you to tell it to them. This should help you boost up your confidence.

Next, and this is something a lot of people don’t think about, design and make all of your own visuals. If you planned on using leaflet printing to hand out some leaflets, make them and print them yourself. If you wanted some flyers to give to people, or maybe you had a color poster you were planning to use as a prop, make it yourself.

You can get design programs like Adobe Photo Shop in order to do the work, and if you’re handling all of that color printing on your own it gives you a level of control you wouldn’t normally have. This can help make a big difference mentally when it comes time to get up there in front of everyone else.

You might also want to go to the place you’re going to give your speech at ahead of time to get a feel for the place you’ll be speaking in. The fewer surprises you have the better.

Also, keep your presentation simple. The more complicated things get the more chances there are for things to go wrong. Keeping things simply allows you to have a greater control over what’s going on.

Lastly, do your best to be yourself. The more casual you feel and the more casual you appear the more knowledgeable you’ll seem. If you look nervous people aren’t going to be as likely to take you serious.

It can be a nerve wracking experience, I know, but if you handle things right, you’ll survive the experience.

A custom business card or color business cards can be printed now quite economically.  This is especially true for large batches.  The pennies extra per card for a professional product are money well worth spending.  A poor card can cost thousands in lost sales.

Quality color printing can be utilized for other endeavors outside of color business cards.  Posters, catalogs and marketing brochures all have their place in today’s sales world.  Many business owners focus their efforts exclusively online.  This often works to their detriment.

There are audiences who are not to be captured in the interactive environment.  Direct mail allows for effective targeting of a selected niche market.  Sales conversion ratios soar when your message is being delivered to parties seeking the specific service or product you are selling.

Next time you are in need of business card printing make sure you ponder the true cost of a shoddy card.  A custom business card will convey that both your company has its act together.

The really good kinds of commercials and advertisements are the ones people are still talking about years after they debuted. This is the dream of all advertisers, I’m sure, and I’ve seen my fair share of real knockouts.

The problem is that most of these ads are usually found in magazines and other mainstream forms of printed media. When I get flyers, postcards or other printed material in the mail I can’t help but notice that they have little or no flair. You can tell that whoever designed them didn’t care very much about designing and color printing them but just getting them out the door.

I think people assume that if their ad isn’t going to appear in one of those mainstream formats like newspapers or magazines they don’t need to put as much effort into it. It seems to me this should be just the opposite. Brochure printing doesn’t benefit from the fact that it will automatically be coupled with a magazine people are buying specifically to read. A brochure needs to live or die on its own merits and nothing else.

People should be putting the most effort into these kinds of advertisements. If all I’m being given is a flyer I want that flyer to be captivating or else I’m not going to take the time out of my life to even give it a once over.

The next time I get that truly wonderful looking brochure in the mail I’ll take the time to read what it has to say. Until then I’ll be dropping them right in the trash.

The printed word goes back many centuries.  Since then, initial crude presses have given way to digital printing machines operating at the speed of light.  This is not to say many tried and true color printing methods aren’t still used today. Many techniques dating back decades, if not centuries, are still used by businesses on a widespread basis.

Those seeking quality stationery still rely upon engraving or thermography.  Tee shirt printers still use the screen printing method which has been around for many years.  Advancements have been made printing on round objects with flexography color printing.  Today, one can have printing inserted on virtually any object that exists.

The highest quality and efficiency has been attained with digital color printing.  Today’s sophisticated printing operations can operate on very short deadlines.  Catalogs, marketing brochures, or business cards all are taken to the next level with today’s digital color printing technology.

Many business owners unfortunately neglect many proven advertising routes.  Posters, flyers and color business cards are all great tools which can be targeted to your niche audience.  Failure to address this market segment can translate to lost sales.  Use the power of digital color printing to bring your business to the next level.

In real estate, you often hear that the key is “location, location, location.”  Well, when it comes to advertising yourself to new customers, and making that critical sale, the key is “quality, quality, quality.”

If you cut back on your advertising budget to save money, I can guarantee that you will end up costing yourself even more in the end.  Poor quality ads and flyers just do not resonate with consumers.  In fact, they hurt your standing in their eyes.  Nothing screams “cheap!” more than a poorly designed, cheaply printed ad.  And nothing spells doom to your business more than looking cheap to customers.

Make an effort to spend the money on good, quality commercial printing when you do your marketing materials.  I know it hurts the pocketbook up front, but you will find your pockets bursting with income in the long run.  Adding color and professional paper tells your customers that you care about your product, and you are committed enough to your business to spend what you have to spend to share it with the world.

Don’t let your customers down.  Pay for quality when it comes to your advertising campaign.