By Karen Post The Branding Diva®, co-founder of Oddpodz.

“Wanted” the nitwit who created the type justification feature on the Microsoft Word® program, or any word processing program for that matter. And all the nitwit followers who always justify documents (proposals, letters, and even PowerPoint® presentations) and continue to use goofy outdated typefaces; underscore, bold, and capitalize letters in long phrases, and then separate them from the body copy with floating headlines.

This is not cool. I don’t care if your attorney does it, he or she is mislead too. It just makes your document look cheesy and your brand unprofessional.
Just because a computer or word processing application has these type features, does not make them right. Typography was born to help you communicate. Using type correctly can act as a visual tool in conveying your cause, selling your idea, or expressing your message; not to degrade your brand with bad type practices.

Here are five tips to polish up your documents, so they work with you.

1) Justifying type dramatically reduces readability. If you want to make your reader’s experience pleasant and reader-friendly, flush-left your type.

2) If you want to draw attention to a word, select one type style, like bold, not three. Less is more.

3) Designer typefaces are like fashion. They look good when they are in vogue. When they are out of style, they look worse than a light blue leisure suit showing up in a swanky, hip bar.

4) Headlines are meant to guide the reader’s eye to the body copy. Floating headlines with space between them (under the headline) serves no purpose except to make it more work for your reader to get your communication.

5) In most cases, all caps communicates that you are screaming. If that is your intent, go for it. If it’s not, try upper and lower case letters.

Applying these simple guidelines can drastically improve the effectiveness and quality image of your documents. Share these tips with every attorney you know. Who knows: together maybe we can eliminate these goofy, uninformed document producers’ bad type practices.

About the author: Karen Post, a.k.a. The Branding Diva® is an international authority on branding, marketing, and entrepreneurial matters. She is has been featured as a business expert in print publications; on TV, radio, and on Web channels. Karen authored the best-selling book Brain Tattoos, Creating Unique Brands That Stick in your Customers’ Minds and she is co-founder and CEO of Oddpodz.com, an idea engine for creative professionals and business. Her work has benefited large and small organizations in the United States and around the world.

A few months ago, we posted a question of the week that went something like this:

This question comes to us from our pal, Carrie:

I am a graphic designer and I had to work in a “cross-functional team” at my office. I had to work with people from accounting to develop a new logo. Don’t ask me why. Here’s my question.

Why is it so hard for two intelligent people to communicate and translate a creative idea into words they both understand? Has anyone done so successfully?

(I know we’ve all been there, how do you deal with this?)

You can read the rest of the post and a few good comments here

Update (08.12.08) DARN! The video linked to below is no longer available! We’ll leave the link up in case AgencyLifer reposts it.

Over the weekend, we came across this video that shows why executives shouldn’t tell he creative department how to design. If you’ve been on either side of this “cross-funcitonal team” you will get a chuckle out of this. Enjoy!

Here’s another funny one about everyone’s favorite gigantic company, Microsoft.

Video: Microsoft redesigns iPod packaging

HOW Magazine knows you’re busy and has decided to make your life a little easier: they’re extending the Early-Bird registration deadline to July 31. That gives you two more weeks to save $60 on your registration for the new Creative Freelancer Conference, presented by HOW and Marketing Mentor.

This is the only deadline extension, though —so move the Creative Freelancer Conference up to the top of your list and register today!

Find out more about the Creative Freelancer Conference—and start making plans to join us in Chicago August 27-29—by clicking one of the banner below:

HOW magazine is teaming with creative-industry consulting firm Marketing Mentor to present the first and only business conference for self-employed creative professionals, the Creative Freelancer Conference, August 27-29, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

The event is expected to draw several hundred solopreneurs from a variety of creative disciplines—graphic designers, copywriters, illustrators and photographers, as well as solo practitioners of interactive, interior and industrial design.

“Anyone who makes a living selling creative services on a freelance basis (or would like to) will benefit,” said HOW editor Bryn Mooth. “The business challenges we’ll address are not unique to designers, but they are unique to creatives who are flying solo.”

Those challenges will be addressed by a panel of creative-business experts, including Marketing Mentor co-founders Ilise Benun and Peleg Top. They’ll share best practices for marketing and positioning, talking to clients about money, building client loyalty, crafting proposals and contracts, maintaining a work/life balance and other skills critical to freelance success.

The conference program also includes breakfast roundtables by topic, networking events and optional, one-on-one business reviews of attendee portfolios, proposals and marketing materials.

Online registration is now available at CreativeFreelancerConference.com. Attendees who register by July 15 will save $60 off the $495 registration fee. Groups of three or more will also receive the discounted rate.

Published since 1985, HOW is the creativity, business and technology magazine for graphic designers. It’s also the force behind the HOW Design Conference, the Mind Your Own Business Conference and the In-HOWse Designer Conference.

Marketing Mentor is a mentoring and consulting firm specializing in the creative industry. Founded by Ilise Benun and Peleg Top, their expertise lies in marketing and business development. Their mission is to help creative firms market their services, get their ideal clients and create the work/life balance they want.

CONTACT: Beth Dean
(513) 531-2690 ext. 11552
beth[dot]dean[at]fwpubs[dot]com

HOW magazine is teaming with creative-industry consulting firm Marketing Mentor to present the first and only business conference for self-employed creative professionals, the Creative Freelancer Conference, August 27-29, 2008 at the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

The event is expected to draw several hundred solopreneurs from a variety of creative disciplines—graphic designers, copywriters, illustrators and photographers, as well as solo practitioners of interactive, interior and industrial design.

“Anyone who makes a living selling creative services on a freelance basis (or would like to) will benefit,” said HOW editor Bryn Mooth. “The business challenges we’ll address are not unique to designers, but they are unique to creatives who are flying solo.”

Those challenges will be addressed by a panel of creative-business experts, including Marketing Mentor co-founders Ilise Benun and Peleg Top. They’ll share best practices for marketing and positioning, talking to clients about money, building client loyalty, crafting proposals and contracts, maintaining a work/life balance and other skills critical to freelance success.

The conference program also includes breakfast roundtables by topic, networking events and optional, one-on-one business reviews of attendee portfolios, proposals and marketing materials.

Online registration is now available at CreativeFreelancerConference.com. Attendees who register by July 15 will save $60 off the $495 registration fee. Groups of three or more will also receive the discounted rate.

Published since 1985, HOW is the creativity, business and technology magazine for graphic designers. It’s also the force behind the HOW Design Conference, the Mind Your Own Business Conference and the In-HOWse Designer Conference.

Marketing Mentor is a mentoring and consulting firm specializing in the creative industry. Founded by Ilise Benun and Peleg Top, their expertise lies in marketing and business development. Their mission is to help creative firms market their services, get their ideal clients and create the work/life balance they want.

CONTACT: Beth Dean
(513) 531-2690 ext. 11552
beth[dot]dean[at]fwpubs[dot]com

We recently pointed out that somebody was missing out on filling the market demand for Beijing Olympics logo photoshopping work. Though it appears that Reporters Without Borders (or, apparently, journalistic objectivity) have opened an online store for their shirts.

Anyway, we’ve noticed more than one use of the Olympic rings as handcuffs:

In addition to a couple of the above, there is a collection of “Genocide Olympics” logos here.

The handcuffs design is meant, we imagine, to represent China’s oppression of… people. It isn’t quite specific enough to be clear. And it got us to thinking about what the creative directors at various humanitarian organizations throughout history would have had to say about tweaking past Olympic logos to get respective messages across. Below, an imagining of their notes to the Board: Read the rest of this entry »

Via our friend Josh Spear.

The Society of Illustrators is hosting their 50^th annual editorial show in New York through March 23.

More details at Josh.

A few months ago, we wrote a post about some interesting business cards that we’d come across in our travels. Since this week’s main article about personal brands highlights calling cards as an important touch point where you can reinforce your brand and make it stick, we thought we’d bring you a few more cool, creative examples and the names of a few printers that we have had good experiences with.

Flickr has a great business card pool.

Once you’ve got your design in mind, where do you go? We’ve tried a few different vendors and have had luck with a company in Chicago called M13 Graphics and moo.com.

M13 Graphics created our Brain Tattoo Branding cards . M13 had several unique offerings including the size, the shape and the finish. They worked with us to make a card that truly stands out from the crowd. Moo.com is easy to use and turns out fun, high quality cards.

Do you ever have those dreams where you’re still at work? I do. Never the good parts, only the seemingly hopeless stressful parts.

I worked in the service industry for years, waiting tables and bartending to get through school and pay the extra bills. One dream I will never forget was my odd currency dream. When I delivered a drink, the customer gave me a hundred dollar bill. I had to go get change (causing me to get even more behind…) and when I returned, he was furious. He said, “I specifically asked for my change in a $38 bill, an $18 bill and two $9’s.” I spent a good portion of the rest of this dream trying to deal with someone who was asking for things that I could not give him. It was like we were living in two completely different realities.

I remember this dream even years later because my feeling of helplessness and frustration was so acute. Since then, I’ve experienced many times in my career as a designer when I felt I was being asked to perform a similarly impossible task. Or, as one of my instructors used to say, to try to put the Gettysburg Address on a business card. And sadly, no matter how much you may be attached to simplicity and negative space, you’ve got to make it work. So, what to do?

Ask questions. Get to know what your client does in far more detail than your initial consultations can provide. What are the lesser known details of their industry? What is their audience? (And do they actually have a grasp on what it is?) What are their goals beyond the scope of the project you are working on?

You might come to find that the $38 bill really does exist to them. You’ve just never heard of it, and all you needed to do was understand more about where they were coming from to get it. Or, you may discover that what they have asked for initially is not actually what they need. (I don’t say this in a “designer always knows best because other people don’t understand my creative vision…” way.) If you think there is a better method for them to meet their goals, offer suggestions. The worst that can happen is you still have to complete a difficult project but with a much greater understanding of your client. And the best is that you collaborate to come up with a creative solution and in the process develop a relationship that will last longer than one individual project.

Practice some design Zen. I know, I know people throw the word “Zen” around like it’s going out of style. But it really does have some value in this situation. The goal is to do what you’ve been doing, only with a completely different understanding of it. As the lecturer Genro Seiun Koudela says, “…the mind has a chance to quiet down. You get away from this habitual way of thinking, and discriminating - judging good, bad, unpleasant, and so on.” I’ve occasionally caught myself thinking things like “I can’t do X, it’s not the way layout (or logos, or whatever) works…” or so on. Don’t fall into that trap.

While I’m practicing design Zen, I like to assume that I already know the answer top the problem I’m facing, I just haven’t given my my mind a chance to tell me about it yet. But I know it’s in there. This allows me to deal with “blocks” without loosing too much sleep about it.

I know you have some suggestions to add to the mix.

…where do you find great, inexpensive photography?

The quality of photography is so important in strategic communication. In fact, I believe it’s the most vital magnet to draw an audience into your message. It used to be great stock photography was very expensive and prohibitive to most small companies. Well today there are many viable options. Here are some of our favorites.

We like these first two sites because they provide good photography and illustration by letting their members show off their talents. You can use them exclusively as a stock house, or you can upload some of your own images to earn credits toward future purchases.
iStockphoto
dreamstime

Or, if you want a choice between royalty free or more exclusive rights managed photography, try these:
Veer (make sure to check out their fonts and clothing, too)
Corbis

And there are always subscription services, too:
Shutterstock
photos.com
Index Open

Happy hunting!