What is the best way to reach your audience and create a relationship with them?

 

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Small business direct marketing is dependent on the computer. Maintaining your database of prospects and customers and balancing your books are critical functions. But the same machine that sorts your lists and tracks your leads can be used to design your ads and mailers, too. You can also create the finished artwork or electronic composition you need for printing. A large-capacity removable hard drive or cartridge system such as Iomega or SyQuest models is also necessary to expand your storage.

 

Capacity and let you download your layouts and take them to a printer. Advertising designs take up more storage space than standard floppy disks can accommodate.

 

What you need for your do-it-yourself art department is a relatively fast computer with plenty of memory and a large hard drive, a high-resolution monitor with as big a screen as you can afford, a flatbed scanner for transfer-ring images on to your hard drive, optical character reader (OCR) software to let you convert printed pages into text files you can edit, one of the leading desktop publishing (DTP) software programs, a program such as PhotoshopTM that lets you modify and manipulate pictures, and a laser printer.

 

 

 

Although you can use these tools to start producing layouts and even finished artwork, they are only half of what you need. The convenience of desk-top publishing has given small business a variety of new, low-cost options. It has also spawned unappealing, ill-designed advertising. The power of DTP needs to be used with restraint. Just because you can use six different typefaces in one brochure doesn't mean you should.

 

This chapter focuses on design principles, the other half of what you need to create direct response advertising that's appealing and easy to read. You may choose to do it all yourself, you can have your artwork prepared by a de-signer, or you can share the work. This chapter will help you, no matter which method you choose. Included are terms and concepts you'll need to know if you work with a graphic arts professional.

 

Let's start the review of direct marketing design with a brief look at the procedures and terminology involved when you start with an idea and finish up with a completed ad or brochure. This is a synopsis of the design steps for a brochure, from a designer's viewpoint. First-stage drawings, sometimes called thumbnails, may look like glorified doodling, but they're done to get ideas and arrange the design elements in different ways.

Assuming a designer has been given approved copy, he or she first brain-storms to get layout ideas. Sometimes this brainstorming is done on paper with a pencil. A designer may sketch out several ideas for placement of the de-sign elements, such as body copy, headlines, borders, and artwork. If artwork, such as photographs or drawings, has not been provided, the designer reviews the copy to see how best to illustrate the benefits mentioned.

 

Preliminary designs may be sketched on paper or drawn on a computer screen.

 

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