Business How-Tos

HerGeekness Says: Convert Custom Letterhead to Microsoft Word Templates

Is your client insisting on a Word version of your letterhead design? Follow these conversion guidelines to cut down on your pain and maximize your profit.

Design Tips: Logo Inspiration

Design legend Malcom Grear reveals how to create memorable logos. The many examples are sure to spark your own creativity.

Design Tips: No Mailing Surcharges, No Way

It might look hip and stylish to use black envelopes, fluorescent inks and ornate type when you design bulk-mailing projects, but your client will pay the price in more ways than one.

Tips for In-House Design Teams

If you feel like your in-house team gets the short end of almost every stick, try these tips to turn it around.

Design How-To: Impossible Deadline and Budget? Time to Go Back to the Basics.

See how one expert successfully meets the challenge. Along the way, you'll pick up tips on ideal images; page layouts and color palettes that simplify the job; and making the most of one type family.

Putting Your Best Blog Forward

Blogs and podcasts aren't just for blowhards who like to hear themselves talk. Done properly, they can bring potential customers to Web sites -- including your own. Here's how to create them.

Design How-To: Make Eye-catching Small Calendars

Electronic organizers are a great way to manage your calendars when what interests you is data. But to tell a story, present a product or stir a memory, you'll want a good, old-fashioned paper calendar. Here's how to design a small calendar.

Creative Fuel: Design Your Own Postage Stamps

Whether it's for work or play, your correspondence can get a boost from personalized postage. Molly Joss tells you how to make your own -- legally, easily, and for not too much money.

Keep Editorial Fingers Out of Your Layouts

Widows, orphans, bad breaks. Just the sound of them is enough to make you cry. And in your carefully designed layout, they look even worse. While today's page-layout software automates many things, beautifully set type doesn't just happen. Charles Purdy shows you what to look for and how to fix it.

Paper Tips: Paper Cuts that Help, Not Hurt

One way to reduce printing costs is to cut the cost of your paper. And who better to give advice on that than PaperSpecs.com, an independent, online paper database? In this article from PaperSpecs, you'll find 27 ways to trim paper expenses.

Paper Tips: How to Choose the Right Paper

Choosing the most appropriate quality paper for your project can be a daunting task. Paper has many features to consider and new sheets are continually coming into the market. How to decide? Here's 10 tips for choosing the right paper for your job.

Design How-To: Repurposing Art for a Digital Portfolio

Instead of lugging around a big black case, creating a compact digital portfolio that you can post on the Web or send via e-mail makes sense. But how to translate your traditional-media work to a digital format? And how should you prepare your existing digital files so they appear in the best light? Here's what to do.

Acrobat How-to: Enhancing Tutorials With Interactive Elements

A funny thing happens to students after class: They forget what they've learned. But adding interactivity can engage the reader. Try these simple methods.

Illustrator CS How-to: Design a Business Card in 15 Minutes

Start the new year with a bang by creating a new business card in Adobe Illustrator CS. Using basic templates and tools, you can design a great-looking card in no time. Here's how.

Paper Tips: Top Ten Ways to Save $ on Paper

After the flush year-end spending, now is the time to look at how to economize for the lean months ahead. Paper is a major expense for most print designers and therefore a good place to cut costs. Start with these 10 tips.

Paper Tips: Trees, Trees, Trees

Reduce, re-use, recycle. While we may apply this mantra to our personal paper-consumption habits, how many print designers and paper buyers follow tree-friendly practices? Here's what you can do.

Web Design Tips: Using Graphic Elements to Persuade Customers

Designing Web sites that invite customer interaction is an art in itself. The choice of images and the look of buttons entice a user to click and ultimately to buy. Here's how to these two elements contribute to persuasive Web design.

Web Design Tips: Integrating Design and Production Teams

Still keeping the Web development team at arm's length? Then it's time to change your thinking. Learn why the best Web sites result when designer and developer work in harmony.

Design Tips: The Power of Logo

Before you redesign that logo, consider the ramifications. As "Before and After" editor John McWade explains, you don't have too look to far to find compelling examples of the power inherent in a logo, especially when it changes.

Design How-To: Fixing an Indistinct Logo by Using Figure-Ground

Your company's logo should be a distinctive stamp, not a weak symbol. In this inaugural column from the folks at the design magazine "Before & After," follow along as a just-OK logo is transformed into a powerful personal brand by following the concepts of figure-ground.