Do-It-Yourself Marketing: If You’re Going to Do It, Do It Right
I began my career many years ago in the field of Graphic Arts in which I was portrayed by those around me as somewhat of a sorcerer’s apprentice. Using some form of “wizardry trickery” it seemed, I transformed my creative thoughts and ideas into the pages of magazines and onto brochures and record sleeves. Nobody outside of my profession understood how I did my job. I thought of myself a magician of sorts.
Winter 1990. I recall being summoned by my boss at the time to a attend a training course on how to operate this contraption he had invested in that was going to ‘revolutionize’ my job. Behold! Apple Computer’s IIci. It came well equipped with a Syquest drive and a device called Scanman. Now, I was familiar with our service bureau at the time having these monolithic desks with built-in typewriters that decoded my typographic instructions and a few hours later, spat out what I needed for paste-up, but this was the beginning of the end of the world as I knew it. My point of all this reminiscing is that up until then you HAD to be a graphic designer to produce graphic design.
Present day. EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER IS A GRAPHIC DESIGNER. With the onset of all this wonderful technology and the prevelance of graphics software, digital cameras, the Internet, etc, etc, we all know a self-proclaimed designer. A fair portion of our customer base, besides graphics professionals, are small business owners and in-house marketing personnel using Microsoft Office software and HP desktop printers taking on the role of the do-it-yourself ad agency. Well if you’re going to do it, then do it right! Microsoft has a great resource for all you DIY’ers on their Office Online website with a wealth of free templates that will help any hands-on novice create professional looking designs for most industries. Also, check out the new StockLayouts business template set that we just submitted comprising 13 matching templates for the those of you in the technology industry.
Link: Microsoft Office Online Template Resource
Link: StockLayouts Graphic Design Template Resource
