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Alt Creative Blog
Special: Happy Valentine’s Day
We love to design. So what better way to celebrate Valentine’s day than with a graphic design special? Between now and Friday, February 17th, mention this post/ad and receive 10% off any of the following graphic design services: invitations, rackcards, business cards, or postcards.
Why We Need an EPS Version of Your Logo
Graphic image files can come in many formats. However, upon creation, a logo needs to be done in a format that allows it to be resized without losing any quality. Logo designers generally accomplish this by creating EPS, or encapsulated post script files using software like Adobe Illustrator or Corel Draw which allow the designer to create “vector-based” files. EPS files can only be opened using software that works within the vector based contraints. However, sometimes files created in these vector programs can be saved as PDFs as well so they can be opened via Adobe Acrobat Reader.
So what’s so special about vector-based graphic files? Simply put, they’re incredibly small, scalable and editable images. In absolute terms, a vector graphics file is your logo, broken down into a series of geometric shapes, consisting of outlines that are curved and joined at coordinates/points. These coordinates and shape outlines are stored as mathematical equations, creating small and portable file sizes that are infinitely editable.
Other file types like JPG, PNG, and GIF are pixel-based file formats and therefore can not be scaled. If you attempt to enlarge a pixel-based image, it will pixelate (the actual pixels that make up the image will become visible). In practical terms, this will lead to your logo appearing ‘blurry’, dirty or fuzzy.
Therefore, in order for a web or graphic designer to manipulate your logo into the correct size and quality on a project, it is necessary for you to give them a vector-based (typically and EPS) version of your logo.
If you are unaware of how to get a vector-based version, try contacting your logo designer or your printer as they should have these on file.
7 Website Mistakes New Businesses Make
When venturing into a new business, many new entrepreneurs diligently plan their business and marketing strategies. However, for those who haven’t been involved with a website project before, online branding and marketing can prove to be a serious potential pitfall. At Alt Creative, we’ve worked on dozens of sites whose predecessors have fallen victim to these 7 mistakes:
Why We Love Join.me
Join.me is a free tool from the creators of LogMeIn, a company that specializes in software for remotely controlling and interacting with your computer. Join.me is a simple way to share your screen with a client, friend, or coworker when you aren’t in the same location.
January Font Showcase: Famous Fonts
This month we are showcasing some fonts inspired by some pretty big brands. While they aren’t the exact fonts used, they are reminiscent of some pretty famous logos. While we don’t recommend using these fonts for any new branding, they are super fun to use in invitations and other non-branded creative collateral.
Ideas & Tips for Celebrating the Holidays with Clients & Colleagues
It’s holiday time! This time of year can be busy for many businesses, but don’t let the end-of-year grind prevent your business from celebrating. Observing the holiday season can be a great way to further connect with your customers, partners, and staff.
December Fonts: It’s Holiday Time!
This time of year we at Alt Creative find ourselves enjoying the crisp, cold air and the sweet smell of pine and firewood. We’ve found inspiration in this month’s font showcase for all of our holiday designs. Get in the holiday spirit with us with this month’s festive font showcase.
Why We Love: One Time Secret
OneTimeSecret.com is a wonderful tool that we recently discovered at Alt Creative. Have you ever needed to send a password or other personal data, but you don’t want to put it in an email? That’s the brilliance of OneTimeSecret.com. You just visit the site, type in your secret, and the site generates an encrypted URL. You can then send that URL via email or instant message. Once the secret has been viewed, it’s deleted.
Managing your Business’ Online Reputation
More and more businesses are reaching their customers online through their websites and the increasing number of social media outlet’s available. Managing your business’ online reputation is important throughout the year, but it is especially crucial during the holiday season if you have a retail business. This month, we’re looking into the best ways to close the gap on how you want to be viewed and what your client’s are actually seeing about your business online.
Why We Love Fantastical
Fantastical is a Mac OSX based program that allows you to easily add items to your calendar in natural language input. Fantastical’s natural language engine is expressive and intelligent so you can write in your own style. Fantastical automatically recognizes the location of your event and can even invite people from your Address Book to the event.
Instead of the tedious filling out of various fields that is required with Outlook, iCal, Yahoo, and Gmail calendars. Fantastical allows us to simply type it all out. For example, if I type “Meeting with John Smith next Friday at the Coffee Bean on S. Lamar”, Fantastical interprets that sentence and adds the meeting to my iCal calendar on the correct date with the person’s name in the title and the venue in the location.
In addition, Fantastical adds an awesome search capability for past, present, and future events and automatic alarms.
Learn more about fantastical at: http://flexibits.com/fantastical
November Fonts: Ornate & Embellished
This time of year while decorating for the upcoming holidays, our minds start to focus on the ornate. Something about the winter season gets our hearts all aflutter thinking about the shimmer and shine of silver embellishments. Which is why this month we are focusing on sophisticated and detailed ornate fonts perfect for those holiday invitations.
Increase Sales with a Killer Call-to-Action
When asking a customer to do something – buy a product, sign a service contract, visit your website, etc., the most effective means of getting them to actually do it is to ask. The same rule applies to online actions. Slick marketing pages and cleverly worded status updates are much less effective without a call-to-action. In this article, we’ll discuss some creative ways to implement a compelling call-to-action.
October Font Showcase: Halloween Fonts
We love Halloween! It’s the perfect excuse to get creative with some fonts full of horror. This month we are showcasing some of our favorite fonts that are the perfect accessory to a goulish design.
Why We Love Hootsuite
At Alt Creative, we handle social media for both clients and ourselves. It can be overwhelming. That’s why we love Hootsuite! Hootsuite is a web-based social media service that allows you to schedule and monitor all of your social networks from one dashboard.
SEO Tips for Beginners
The goal of your website is to turn visitors into customers, so your search rank is key. If you are an Alt Creative customer, we have only done the “on page” search engine optimization for you. This document is intended to help educate you further about the different aspects of SEO. Very few web design companies do SEO and very few SEO companies implement a complete strategy when it comes to SEO. Before attempting to improve your search rank yourself OR via a SEO company, it is vital that you understand the basics.
Basic Rules for an Effective Logo
As a web designer, I get all sorts of logos from clients and their partners. Some are great, some are good, and some are downright unusable. As a graphic designer, I am often tasked with creating logos and using them in print pieces. I’ve learned that sometimes the hardest part of creating a logo is educating the client on what makes an effective logo. In this article, I’ll layout exactly what you need to know before working with a designer on your logo. Even if you already have a logo, I’ll give you some tips on how to use it effectively while keeping it’s integrity with your brand.
Why We Love WordPress
At Alt Creative, we understand the need for an easy-to-use content management system. We’d struggled with CMS platforms for years – we’ve tried Joomla, Drupal, Mambo, and more. But WordPress is hands down our favorite. Here’s why…
September Fonts: Symbols & Glyphs
A picture is worth a thousand words. This month we are highlighting some of our favorite symbol fonts to help your design say exactly what you need it to.
What Google+ Means for your Online Marketing Strategy
How the New Social Network Is Already Affecting Your Business
By now you’ve likely heard the hub-bub about Google+ (Google Plus), a new social network launched by Google. Google+ is essentially Google’s answer to Facebook. It pre-launched in July on an invite-only basis. Invites have been notoriously easy to get which may explain why Google managed to get more than 1.7 million users in the first week.
Why We Love: Transmit
Transmit is an FTP program designed by a company specializing in Mac software. An FTP (or, File Transfer Protocol) program is used to upload and download files between a local computer and a web server. As you can imagine, a reliable FTP program is a must have for a web design company, but it is also useful for our tech-savvy clients who have file uploading tasks.