Guest Post from Vladimir Charvat, Production Coordinator at Still Creek Press …

If you’re at all involved in Vancouver’s print community, Ken Anderson’s retirement from the paper distribution industry will not come as any surprise. Ken Anderson has over 34 years experience working with Coast Paper and serving Vancouver’s community of printers.

I would say I’ve known Ken for about 30 years now – about as long as I’ve been in the business myself! My first memory of Ken was as our paper delivery guy. He would haul load after load of paper from the alley – along busy sidewalks and a bus stops – to the front doors of our shop on East Broadway. He also helped me make a pivotal career change, leaving my current job of 16 years to switch to JYT (now Still Creek Press). After my move to JYT, he continued to be our driver and later our sales rep. I could always rely on Ken to give me the best advice and pricing. His industry knowledge and easy going nature also made my transition from running presses to coordinating production a lot easier. I’ll always remember the Friday morning chats over coffee and donuts, taking in Canucks hockey games in luxurious private boxes, wining and dining, and mingling with print industry professionals.

I would like to wish Ken all the best in his retirement and to many exciting future endeavors.

Brochure printing is the centerpiece of many marketing strategies for good reason: it works! Customers are accustomed to navigating through commonly folded brochures and are usually familiar with the layout.

One of the reasons brochure format is so successful is that it allows your business to tell a story and guide a customer through its sales presentation. This means that your brochure printing and design are vital to the success of this marketing format. Poorly designed brochures can confuse or even frustrate customers. So consider the following on your next brochure print run.

Front panel

Simply put, the design of your front panel will make or break any brochure printing project. If the customer does not understand your products and services or what benefits you can bring to them, why would they reach for the brochure? Make sure the front panel engages the customer with images that communicate your company’s core competencies.

Tell a story

Your brochure should guide your customers through a story or process. Whether you are communicating your business’s basic products and services or explaining a specific product or service, use the natural flow of a folding brochure to tell your story one panel at a time.

Separating lines

Each panel can work as its own separate storyboard, but sometimes you need to separate ideas, products, or services on a per panel basis. Use separation lines or other graphical elements so your customer can clearly tell that you are discussing a different idea, product, or service. This will help the reader follow along much more clearly and also allow them to simply pick and choose what information they want to read.

Brochure printing can present a number of design challenges, but keeping your customer in mind can help you avoid brochures that are difficult to read. Use a front panel that really grabs their attention, tell a story across each panel, and separate different elements with lines or other graphics. Keeping these principles in mind can help you make sure that your brochure printing effectively drives sales.

Was this article helpful? Leave a comment below, contact us or ask about our different print solutions and which type works best for you.

Come join us on the greens!

We will be a returning sponsor at this year’s 2nd annual Canaccord Financial Big Brothers Golf Classic, BC’s premier charity golf tournament. The popular charity golf classic benefits mentoring programs for children and will take place on Monday, September 27, 2010 at the Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club.

If you are interested in attending this highly sought after golf tournament and would like to supporting the Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver, registration is now open.

Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver is a registered charity and community-based organization that has been operating in the Lower Mainland since 1957. They offer friendship-based mentoring programs for boys and girls and provide volunteer opportunities for men and women.

Now is the time – before the hectic holiday season kicks in – to start thinking about 2011 calendar printing. We can advise you on the type of printing best for your needs and/or help with the design aspect of it all.

Our featured job this week which is also hot off our press room floor here at Still Creek Press is the new 2011 calendar from Rogest. The final printed piece looks absolutely stunning and showcases fantastic new artwork from Rogest. His latest inspiration is from time spent deep sea diving off the coast of Curaçao.

Ron Steven, better known as Rogest, is a local painter, author and environmentalist. Rogest is a recognized painter in the dotalistic style of painting and a pioneer of modern day bright dot art. Through his art, words and teachings, Rogest combines his passion for diving and the oceans, sharing its beauty and fragility. He has donated his art work and time to the Cayman National Trust, O.W.U. Scholarship Society, Conservation International, Ocean Pals, Oceans for Youth Foundation, REEF, Catalina Conservancy Divers, W.W.F., Coral Reef Alliance, Reef Check, the Marine Mammal Care Centre in California and many other events and organizations worldwide.

Any of Rogest’s images are gladly donated towards environmental causes. Contact Rogest directly for permission.

Exchanging files between designers and printers is easier these days than it was in the past due to the increase in average Internet bandwidth (file transfer speed), the increase in maximum email attachment size, and the adoption of PDF as the accepted file format for output. However, there are times when you’ll find FTP most useful. For instance, for large files that exceed the maximum attachment size of your mail server or the file upload application built into the remote website.

A brief history:

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, an “ancient” network specification used to copy files over the Internet. All Internet applications began as geeky command-line tools but have largely given way to graphical user interfaces like modern web browsers and email clients on modern desktop operating systems. It’s this “low-tech” non-graphical nature that allows FTP to remain an attractive solution to transferring large files to a remote host. The FTP server can devote more of its computing power to the download itself and not serving up superfluous graphics. As a result, transferring files using FTP is typically faster than Web protocols.

What you will need to get started:

First you’ll need connection information to the FTP server you wish to communicate with. This involves knowing three important pieces of information:

•  FTP server name – What computer are you connecting to? This will either be a URL (such as ftp.example.com) or an IP address (like 123.45.67.89).
•  User name – What name will you type in when prompted to log in?
•  Password – What password will you type in when prompted to log in?

Note: It’s also possible, but relatively unlikely, that the server will be configured to allow “anonymous access”, which means you won’t need a username or password. If you’re connecting this way, you will probably be able to download files, but you will not be able to upload any of your own.

Next, you’ll need an FTP client. In a pinch you could use Mac’s Finder or Windows Explorer to FTP, but you will be much better off using an FTP application suitable for Industrial Strength downloading. See the “How to Connect” section at the end for instructions as to how to connect with Windows Explorer.

At Still Creek Press, we use Cyberduck for Mac and FileZilla for PC (available for Mac too). Both of these clients are fully capable free alternatives to the many shareware versions that can be found on the Internet.

Some of the key features available in a dedicated FTP program include the resumption of an interrupted download, the ability to bookmark connection information and login credentials to multiple FTP servers and the ability to view the contents of your local and remote directories much like you would with Mac Finder or Windows Explorer.

How to connect:

Fire up your FTP client and connect to the FTP server using the login credentials supplied to you by the administrator of the remote site.

For example, you could be given the following information to connect:

FTP server: ftp.example.com
User name: user
Password: password

FTP clients will usually have a series of text boxes at the top of a viewer window or a dialogue box that becomes available at the time you select “Open Connection”. Either way, connecting to the server is usually as simple as typing the name of the server, user name and password into the boxes or dialogue box.

As promised earlier in this article, if you are hell-bent on using Windows Explorer to connect to example.com’s FTP server, you would open any Explorer window and type: “ftp://user:password@ftp.example.com” (without the quotes) into the address bar at the top. Note that in this instance, you are actually passing the login credentials to the remote server within the URL itself.

Problems connecting?

Double-check you’ve got the correct login credentials. Occasionally the FTP server name will begin with “www” and not “ftp”. Otherwise, note that user names and passwords are usually case-specific.

If you can connect, but either the connection soon drops or you stall out when you begin a file transfer, try alternating a network setting in your FTP application’s preferences between either a “Passive” or “Active” connection. In Cyberduck, find it under “More Options” > “Connection Mode”. In FileZilla, select the “Transfer Settings” tab > “Transfer Mode”.

Lastly, it’s possible you may only have “read” access to the remote directory, meaning that you may download files to your computer but you will be unable to rename files or folders or transfer files to the remote directory.

Do you have any suggestions in regards to a preferred FTP client? Is FTP still an option for you when exchanging files with your printer?  Let us know in the comments below.