The importance of colour in business

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The importance of colour in business

Changing the colour of your brand can be a bold step. But you need to first ask yourself if you want to select a new colour or modify the existing look by adding a colour. This is based on the principal of whether or not you want customers to associate the old with the new, keeping with your traditional look or launching into a new business persona.

For example; you could have an existing car company that uses yellow in it’s logo and stationary – do you want to update the colour and refresh your brand by moving to a yellow and blue combination? Or completely start over and go with a green? Making this choice will be making a statement about your business. Are you wanting to blast off in a new direction and make a bold new decision about the look of your company, or keep with your existing look and feel while updating and letting your clients know you are changing with the times?

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Open Your Doors To Successful Business!

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Open Your Doors To Successful Business!

We want to help small to medium sized businesses open their doors to compete with corporate identities. We have both the technology and the design skills, coupled with our positive and friendly team attitude, to work with you in successfully marketing your products and services in the great ocean of opportunity that is – the internet.

We are Graphic Designers, Web Developers, Print Specialists – for both offset and digital. Some of us are practically technical geniuses! – and can create iPhone Applications and iPad Applications to give you the edge to stay ahead of modern trends. Why limit your business and your potential points of contact to just a business card?

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Window shopping on the web

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Window shopping on the web

For a customer, web shopping is like going to a store. They will browse for a bit, skim the first bit of written information available, and grab whatever catches their eye – perhaps dashing into a changing room for a quick try.

This is much like browsing web in that your potential customer will skim your page, flick over your text for the highlights of information they find relevant, and perhaps click on any links that catch their eye and perhaps dash through to your linked pages for more information.

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What do you mean you don’t have a website?

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What do you mean you don’t have a website?

If you own a business in today’s modern, technology-driven world, people expect you to have a website. Simple fact.

A business without a website is the exception and in our techno-conscious society we can be put-out by not having instant access to a companies’ information, quickly and efficiently, from their website. I’ll tell you that it frustrates me when I am stopped in my tracks while internet surfing to compare product prices, by a company that either has no website to speak of, or does not have relevant, up-to-date information on their products and services. Those companies are simply missing out as consumers bypass them on their way to find companies with open and instant information.

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Basic Information on CMYK, Spot Colours and RGB.

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Basic Information on CMYK, Spot Colours and RGB

Further to the previous blog detailing basic setup for designing your own business cards and DIY print setup, here is some simple yet useful information about choosing and using colour in your designs; for your company logo, or for printing in general.

Digital printing is done in CMYK; Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. (Blue is ‘B’ so that is why black is ‘K’). Generally, whatever you need printed, be it letterheads, business cards, compliments slips, brochures and flyers or most other business stationary or printed material will be printed Digitally. The exception will be if you want to do very large quantities, say if you needed x 2000 or x 5000 brochures – Offset printing in this case is far more cost effective than Digital, as Offset “plates” are made of your design and can be re-used. This is also the reason why repeat print runs are better printed Offset – by repeat runs I mean printing that does not change in design, and is printed regularly, ie. brochures or rackcards.

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Tips for Desiging Your Own Business Cards

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Tips for Desiging Your Own Business Cards

So you’ve decided to design your own business cards. This happens for many reasons – you may be a student wanting to cut costs, you may have an existing design that you can update and get printed without needing a professional designer, or you may be a designer yourself, merely requiring the digital or offset print services that we supply. If you have your own design then we are more then happy just to help you through the next process of deciding which direction to go with printing your business cards – or letterheads, compliments slips, brochures, envelopes and more, and we can arrange your printing for you. We will take your design file, run it through our pre-press checks, add it to a ganged-print offset run or slip it into the que for smooth digital printing and deliver to you a printed product you can be proud of.

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Utilising New Zealand Pride in Business

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Utilising New Zealand Pride in Business

If there was ever a time that we, as Kiwi’s, feel a pride in our country, in our lifestyle and our people, it is now. So right now, use that feeling; that force of pride, to re-orient your business toward success.

There has never been a better time than now.

At Activate Design we have revelled in the sucess that New Zealand has seen, witnessed the struggles and the sheer amount of work that has been put in through so many arenas ; both sporting and marketing, image and organisation, management and creativity – these things that have had to come to a new level of quality to show New Zealand is the beautiful country we know it to be – for those many, many visitors that have come to see where we are lucky enough to live. And it’s been through this marketing of our country that many of us have come to realise how amazing we are, how awesome are the things we have to offer – places to go, people to meet – and that it is simply through time and effort that we can PUT THE POLISH ON WHO WE ARE AND WHAT WE CAN DO and present ourselves to the world in the same light.

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From concept to design to print!

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From concept to design to print!

Need to get some printing done? It can be hard to know where to go, what to print onto, how to print, who to trust, and how to ensure you get what you need for the best quality and sharpest price available. There are so many options and so many methods to get an idea from the screen to the page, and we’d like to help.

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Upgrade Your Logo Design

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So it’s probably time you upgraded your old logo. Right?

When logos are not designed with both the web and print media in mind, it can cause you a whole lot of issues with colour / resolution / print reproduction and digital reproduction – all kinds of headaches we know how to work around – or better yet – create a NEW brand with these issues in mind. At Activate Design we have the advantage of being in both the online media and print industry, to work with the boundaries of any media.

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Why do you need a website for your business?

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Why do you need a website for your business?

This is a good question that opens up a multitude of reasons why a business without a website, in these times, is at a distinct disadvantage. Don’t be left behind in today’s thriving online business and social media applications – contact us at Activate Design where we make website development for your company, group or just yourself, an enjoyable and smoothly efficient process. You may even find some new enthusiasm for what you do simply by opening your world to us so we can show your talent to the world.

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