Print Design: invite cards, posters, fliers, direct mail postcards, indoor/outdoor vinyl banners discounted 15%.

Identity Design & Branding: new corporate identity design and redesign projects, including logo design, business card design, letterhead, color scheme, typography and brand standards guide discounted 25%.

Contact me today to find out what we can do for you. A good rebranding or well-designed marketing effort can make all the difference during a recession. We wanted to offer these discounts to encourage small–medium businesses to be bold and keep themselves in front of their client base. It’s important during hard economic times to stay ahead of the curve. Now is the time to set trends so that when the economy picks back up, you’ll already be an industry leader.

-Joseph Cotten

I’m switching over tsd’s RSS feeds to Feedburner today, so you might have to resubscribe.

Thanks!
Joseph

If you’ve never checked out what they do, head over to the Apple Photo Services page and read up.  It’s ridiculously cheap, strangely easy to use, and the finished product really is top-notch.  I ordered a hardcover 8.5 x 11 photo book, and I customized the layout to my liking.

I don’t use iPhoto for photo editing/retouching, as it’s pretty limiting for my needs.  I edit my work in Photoshop, then Export the saved Jpeg directly to iPhoto, where I can organize and create the photo book layout.

I also had the best-ever experience with customer support during this book’s delivery.  I initially gave an old, but technically correct delivery address to them, and when FedEx tried to deliver it, the driver wasn’t experienced enough to find it, due to a recent street name change.  I spoke with an Apple Photo Services Customer Support person (named Dustin), and he had the book reprinted immediately, shipped to a newer address with the fastest shipping possible, destroyed the old book when it came back to the warehouse, refunded the original cost, and didn’t charge for the new print!  So, I was able to deliver the book to a happy client, and ended up paying nothing for the whole thing.  Awesome.
Check it out the next time you need to make a print album!

What is Macworld?
Well, it’s kind of a mix between a Star Trek convention and a World’s Fair.  The Macworld Conference and Expo is an annual event held in San Francisco, CA where developers, vendors and geeks from all around the world gather to find out what Apple’s future holds.  It’s always been the place where Steve Jobs would walk onto the stage with sneakers, blue jeans and black turtleneck and lay down the gauntlet of what next year would hold.  He’s positively prophetic at these things.  He’s inaugurated whole shifts in the design and technology industries, by calling one year “The Year of the Laptop” or another year “The Year of Digital Music”.

Macworld represents the old Apple: not so much a company as it was an enclave of creative, eccentric fanatics devoted to the whims of a single leader.  Kind of cult-sounding isn’t it?  The Macworld expo fed the Mac culture for years, and it has always been an integral part of how Apple grew it’s fan base.  Yes, I said fan base and not market share.  Apple’s users aren’t just users; we’re fans and evangelists.

So what does this mean?
Good question.  Does this matter at all?  Apple’s press release says that, first, this has nothing to do with the rumors about Steve’s health.  He battled and (supposedly) conquered pancreatic cancer recently, and he still looks pretty thin by most estimates.  The press release says that Apple is seeking greater control over their media exposure, using Special Media Events at Apple headquarters to announce new products, instead of the IDG MacWorld Conference and Expo.  I suppose that makes sense, in a Microsoft kind of way.  Control has it’s lures – you can have greater power to determine how potential customers view your product.  If Apple only announces new products at what amounts to a geek festival, most Windows hold-outs aren’t going to be attracted to the product.

Here’s my opinion.  Apple is making an intentional shift away from being the underdog with an incredibly loyal fan base to being a respected, professional competitor with the rest of the technology industry.  They are seeking market share above customer loyalty.  I believe that over the next ten years, the customer support ethos will change, and will gradually be equal to the rest of the industry (read: Dell, Microsoft, HP).  Apple’s products will always be superior, since that’s what they continue to use as their differentiating factor, but the atmosphere and customer support will degrade as market share increases.

Here’s the other thing: Steve Jobs is working his way out of a job.  At next year’s Macworld, the keynote will be given by Apple’s Phil Schiller, and will be the last keynote delivered by an Apple exec.  So, the last-ever Macworld keynote will not be delivered by Steve Jobs.  That’s huge.  He’s trying to destroy the cult of personality that’s been built up around him, I believe because he wants to retire soon.

The impact on the design community will not begin for several years.  Apple has always been on the forefront of industrial and user interface design, and they will continue to be.  However, at some point they will lose their “cool factor” amongst designers.  Artists like to use Macs because the operating system is intuitive (requiring less tech knowledge), the machines last longer, and you get more power per dollar than with a Windows-based system.  It used to be the case that Macs were better at graphics, but that’s just been an ungrounded myth since the early 1990′s.  Once Apple loses it’s cult following, artists will lose a lot of incentive to get Macs.  I foresee a great equalization of the industry approaching, where both Windows and Macs share equal market share among designers.

Then again, maybe I’m just a dissapointed fanboy.
Here’s a link to the story I found at macrumors.com>

My pricing is based upon the exposure that the finished design will have.  For instance, if you are a small business needing a new logo, business cards and letterhead, and you only have a few hundred customers, I may only need to charge $500.00  If you are a large multinational corporation with five hundred employees, needing a full corporate identity system, I would charge anywhere from $8,000 to $15,000.  The reason for this is that good design breeds good business.  If you have a great logo that effectively communicates who you are and what your vision is, while simultaneously reaching your target demographic, that logo will reap tremendous benefits for your business.  Your image among the target demographic will be improved, your name recognition will increase and the rewards that you will reap will continue for the life of the business, even if the logo is changed down the road.  That well-designed logo then is an excellent investment, and the price you pay for it should reflect that.

Therefore, the more exposure my design will get, the more it will benefit you, and the more it is worth to you.

Contact me with the information below, and I’ll be more than happy to give you a no-cost consultation to help you find out what your needs are, and how to fulfill them.

Joseph Cotten
Trend Setting Design
trendsettingdesign@gmail.com
(336) 471-3104