Here’s the anecdote …. let’s call the client Josh.

Josh approached me through another client’s referral. He wanted a logo and after some bargaining we agreed on an amount. I took him for his word and on good faith send him some design concepts. Three sample designs caught his eye and he wanted to take ‘em  up.  I tweaked the designs a bit to make it more riveting and relevant and send it across to him. He told me that the new designs were neat and that he loved them ….however … I had to convince his wife as well. Whhhoa This was new …..

After 10 designs and 15 revisions his lady finally approved a design. Back on course , I now send him the source files, pdf style guides etc.
I had struck a chord with Josh hence he  was very keen to collaborate on some other projects. I hadn’t been paid for my work so I send him a reminder. He told me it  was taking  time for money to be credited into his paypal account hence  I got cracking on the new assignment.  Send him some quality work which he liked and this continued for  some time before we hit a road block. You see I hadn’t yet been paid for any of my designs and things were getting awkward.

Well he finally summoned the courage to tell me that he had to sell his dog to pay me. I was incredulous but he said he was serious. I thought I’d humour him a bit so… encouraged him to sell his pet… as pets are no good, they won’t bark at website hackers, can’t chase out content stealer and are a nuisance anyways . And the outcome, Well….I Finally got paid

Conclusion: Nowadays for every assignment, I prefer 50% of the total amount in advance & the rest post completion .

You see A man’s got to be paid for an honest days work ……… one of life’s lesson’s for me

Scroll down slowly and share your thoughts

FedEx: Statue of Sugarloaf

MTV Networks: Black Ribbon Michael Jackson

The Lotus Awards: Breakfast
THE OFFICIALLY LICENSED POSTER OF THE GAMES OF THE XXI LOTUSIAD BREAKFAST O’ CHAMPIONS

Unicef: Orange Folders
Pedophiles hide the truth. Help us find it.

Guinness: Novel

WWF: Earth

McDonald’s: Wi-Fries
love free wi-fi

Adelaide Casino: Ladies Poker
Thursday Nights in October at the Adelaide Casino. Ladies Poker

Sports Association for the Handicapped: One foot can change someone´s life. Remember Cinderella?

CNN: Zip
Get the story behind a story.CNN International

Google YouTube, Secret Talents Award Campaign: Gandhi
Find out where your talent can get you. YouTube

Presidium: Be what you want to be,
Ask big questions. Get bigger answers.
Be what you want to be. Presidium

DEVK insurance: Driver

Asociación Salvadoreña de Agencias de Publicidad: Popeye
In order to grow strong.

Levis
Slim Jeans

Please, click on the logos to know the details about the designer and the logo.

Earth Branding
By Hayes Image

CodeMaus
By Mads Burcharth

Quote Stork
By Draward

apostrophe
By: Johnny

Godpress
By Matthew Reynold

Kriszha
By Me   (Shameless self promotion)

MoviQuotes
By Jupiterpol

Curious
By: Action Designer

PunchQuotes
By Felro

Ouch!
By Strangeideas

NHow (Question Mark “O”)
By: Colorbook

(1) Keep the design simple but interesting. It is not necessarily true that people do not read ads. People love creative ads. You only have a few seconds to impress a potential customer through your banner, so don’t lose them right from the start by having an over the top, complicated advertising banner.

(2) Keep your wording short and simple. You only have few seconds to grab attention of the viewer, so those short and simple words must be able to make them understand about your service or product.

(3) Give people a reason to click: Mainly viewers will only respond to a compelling proposition, they react favorably to banners that provide them a chance to win something. A banner where they can get something for free or a special discount also gets high click rates.

(4) Provide a call to action. You have to make sure, you are asking your potential customer to “Click Here” or “Submit” for more information.

(5) Target your ads : If you are looking for graphic designers for a site catering fonts, a SEO professional who clicks on your banner is less relevant to you. A campaign targeted to a specific audience is likely to return better results. A targeted campaign is geared to a specific audience, be it a certain demographic group or people working in a specific industry.

(6) Use enticing words with eye catching font. Everyone likes to get something for free, so if you are offering it, throw in the words “Free” or “Special Offer” to increase the CTR on your banner ad design. If you use fewer words, you can use a bolder, larger font. If you must use more than one font, use two at the most.

(7) Choose images creatively; use only bright/rich images: Using bright images will help attract attention, however, be careful not to use irrelevant images to your service or business.

(8) Test your banner ads before going to full blast campaign: No rush, before shooting the banner ad campaign, upload the banner in a page with other contents and images, and share the link through twitter or facebook, and see the reaction.

(9) Do not be misleading, wrong message won’t help you to get business: In order to make advertisement tempting, some people show something that has nothing to do with what they are selling just to grab a viewers’ attention. Don’t do that. Make sure your banner ad design portrays the truth.

(10) Don’t just send them to your home page: If the banner ad doesn’t carry the viewer (clicker) through to the product landing page, it’s pointless. Always use a cleverly designed killer landing page so that none of your potential customer get chance to escape.

Well, if you think these points make sense or should I have to add some more points? Just leave a comment below, I value your comments.

And, If you need any assistance or help to create effective PPC banner ads, please feel free to get in touch with me.

Enjoy the video.

You can download the original video here, as imagonewmedia.com explains “This is our one minute advertisement for the launch of Turkish Edition of The New York Times.
We constructed typographic versions of the most recognizable landmarks in Manhattan and Istanbul, and created a compact tour taking the audience from the New York Harbor all the way to the Bosphorus. Actual pages from the first issue of the newspaper were used to create the textures used in the scenes. The financial news page became NYSE and Wall Street, entertainment news turned into Times Square, and so on.”

I’m sure there is no undo option for Apple or Microsoft tattoos, what if someone have a tattoo of Lehman Brothers or General Motors LOGO kidding.

Since two years, I’m surfing through a variety of corporate tattoos like Nike swoosh tattoo and Adidas. Do you think people who exhibit these tattoos are paid to do so?? I explored into the subject deeper and came to a conclusion that none of those corporate tattoo exhibitors are paid. Those people are just loyal to those brands. Mostly designers are fascinated with Apple tattoo & sports person with sports brand tattoos.
I think a successful branding is what, which can leave a footprint of their existence in the viewers sub conscious state of mind. But corporate tattoo proves there is another pro successful branding process, which can motivate peoples to make tattoo for the brand.

While digging the topic I passed through a similar post which is wired here in brief.

There are all kinds of people with Apple tattoos, from graphic designers to leading academicians. Most have Apple’s famous logo tattooed on an arm, leg or their backside.
But it’s not really about advertising for Apple.”I’m a Mac freak,” said Mark Tappert, a graphics designer in Denmark who has a black Apple logo tattooed on his left biceps.
“I identify strongly with Apple and Mac computers,” he said. “I work on Macs every day, and a lot of nights. I got it done to convince myself I would always be true to Apple, not for religious or political reasons, but to convince myself that Macs are the way ahead.”
There are, of course, other corporate brands that inspire tattoos: Coca-Cola, Nike and Lacoste are some examples.

Apple is one of the few companies that inspire tattoos through pure love of the product. There are perhaps only two other companies that enjoy similar devotion: Harley Davidson and Campagnolo, an Italian bicycle parts company. Apple is certainly the only computer company with tattooed users.
The closest analogy is fans of sports teams, members of fraternities and other social groups, such as Marines, Manchester United soccer fans, gang members or fraternity brothers. And just as sports fans will often get team haircuts, Apple haircuts are another form of adornment peculiar to Mac fans.
“So many tattoos are about love, loyalty and bravado,” said Amy Krakow, author of The Total Tattoo Book. “Don’t Mac users fall into all those categories?”

Read the Wired story

Enjoy the Flickr group pool for Apple Tattoo

• Easy to reproduce- Logo should be easy to reproduce in various types of media.
• Easy to understand- Business logo should be easy to understand, customer should never look at your  logo and be confused as to what the image represents.
• Easy to relate the business- Corporate logo should be easily identifiable with the business.

Finally, Logo needs to be scalable, memorable and meaningful.

Here are 10 example of simple and memorable logos:

Marlboro
Designed by Allison Muir Severe, 1950

WWF
Designed by Sir Peter Scott, in 1961.

Nike
Designed by Carolyn Davidson, 1971

Jeep
Jeep is an automobile marque (and registered trademark) of Chrysler. More

I love New York
Designed by Milton Glaser

Apple
Designed by Regis McKenna Advertising, 1977.

American Broadcasting Company
Designed by Paul Rand, 1965

Mitsubishi Motors
Designed by Yataro Iwasaki, 1870.

Lufthansa
Designed by Otto Firle, 1918

For a prospective client and upcoming graphic designer here are some pitfalls to be avoided.

1.  Its not an exhibition of your font collection. So don’t use more than two different fonts.

2.  The world is neither multicolour nor monochrome. Avoid using more than three different colours unless you want a rainbow.

3.  If you are still using clipart or photo, then it means that you still use Windows3.2 with your dotmatrix printer , or else you come from the era when air was clean and sex was considered dirty.

4.  People love symmetry. Scientific study has shown that beautiful people have a symmetrical face. So avoid creating a visually imbalanced logo.

5.  A logo has 0.1 millisecond to make its impact on the customer. So avoid making unrecognizable company logos which are either mirrored, resized or inverted.

6.  Follow the golden rule of KISS( Keep It Simple Stupid) Avoid using symbols that are irrelevant or unrelated to the business of the client.( If your client is in nuclear business no need to show trees and children)

7. Some symbols are cliché, so avoid them. Like symbols of handshake, Globe etc.

8.  A Logo without a concept is like hiring masons to build a house without any engineer or architect.You will build a house in the end, but not many guests. Always better to start the logo design process with a brainstorming session with the client and sketch out your ideas with a pencil and papers.

9.  Imagine watching two different movies in two separate screen.  So unless your target clients are Siamese twins avoid using distracting effects over logo.

10.  Imitation is not the greatest form of flattery. Besides the legal hassle its also shows your company logo in poor taste. Only imitate logos if your client is into selling counterfeit products.

I wanna call this year as GREEN year for me, because I just wrap up a logo design assignment for a news portal focusing entirely on everything renewable energy, the site is not up yet may be my client is busy with organizing contents, for his privacy reason I’ve not shown you the logo and designs for his business. I’ll post those logos and designs later, when the site will be up.

As per my client, his site will focus everything about renewable energy in the news/media.

To get the complete Green environment feelings I watched couple of documentry movies like Al Gore’s anInconvinient truth and Lionardo Dicaprio’s the 11th hour.  This is the way I start my pre design research for each assignment.

And Hey! if you have time please watch these movies, our earth is really in danger, People are busy making cash, even I’m busy with my own survival strategies. Very few people are there who think about the Global warming, Climate changes and Green earth. I think its really 11th hour, We have to think about the green.

This year I want to dedicate 33% of my time to aware people for Global warming, Climate changes and other environment challanges, but I dont know where to begainwith

What your opinion, please share…

If you are hired for a project, don’t try to complete the project at one go, the outcome will always be a mistake. It will be far better if you try to tackle the project step by step. Just analyze the project break it into steps, then start doing it. You might have experienced that a client sometimes asks for a change in your design, what do you think is the reason for that? To me that is due a lack of communication with the client. When you get the project, don’t make a hush just ask the client properly until an unless you are clear with the clients idea, because you are designing for the client. He is the main priority at that point of time.

If you are not able to meet the deadline (probably you have overcommitted), just contact the client and try to fix another deadline. It’s much better to contactthe client to let go the deadline without any communication. It’s ok for only once that you haven’t meet the deadline, so for your future progress take a few minutes to analyze the reason or what went wrong that you were not able to meet the deadline.

If you want to have a productive schedule you have to maintain your own time like when to work, when to sleep and when to eat. Some people whenever they feel like working late they work late and when they don’t want to work they don’t. This is not a way o maintaining your schedule. You should sleep 6 hours maximum for your good health. A healthy body has a healthy mind and if you have a healthy mind you can concentrate on your work. You should avoid junk foods and start having a real food. After working for an hour or two you must take a rest of at least 10 minutes having a glass of water. It will make your mind relax and then you can make a good pick up on your work. Even if your deadline is coming near don’t stress on it, just be calm and try to concentrate on it. In that situation you shouldn’t concentrate on useless thing while you are working on your project.

If you are a new freelancer graphic designer, when you are hired for a project just try to make two deadlines. It’s just for your convenience only, so that you wouldn’t stress. Even if your client agree to give you 2 deadlines, it’s good for you. It depends on you that you finish the job before the 1^st deadline or the 2^nd. If possible don’t go for the 2^nd deadline, better to complete the project before the 1^st deadline.

As a graphic designer you always make designs, you may take it easily. Its ok… according to your experience you can act like that. But, personally I always take my work seriously and as a challenge which has always motivated me in my work. Because of this I have never crossed my deadline; I have always been able to complete the project on time.
Thanks