FINALLY, FREE CLIPART IMAGES

Have you run out of clip art images? Or do you want to share your own clipart?

Open Clipart Library tells you where to find loads of unique clipart that can be utilized in catalog printing, flyers printing, brochures printing, etc.

Creative Commons created a website in which you can share your own clipart and/or use other clipart for free. It allows you to publish your work while protecting your rights as the original owner. Those who want to contribute must first fill in the information asked on the Public Domain Dedication. This dedication states the responsibilities of the dedicator or certifier. You are given a chance to think it over before you submit your dedication.

There are eleven conditions or Creative Commons licenses to choose from. Conditions include attribution, noncommercial, no derivative works and share alike. Every condition allows the dedicator to share all or part of their work provided the user live up to the conditions. Say, a clipart you want to use for your full color catalog printing needs falls under attribution, you should give credit to the owner on your page. If there are any violations, dedicator may sue whoever is responsible. On the other hand, the user has the right to copy, distribute and display the clipart. Also, they are allowed to make digital public performances of it and shift the work into other format. Licenses will be expressed in three ways: Commons deed, legal code and digital code.

A project like this not only helps, it also encourages people to experiment and be more creative. A simple clipart, when used by other people, can be improved. It also reminds users to acknowledge other’s works.

Smart Marketing: How to write your marketing plan

Developing a marketing plan is the most significant strategy for any budding business. Marketing strategies and activities will help make your products and services available to satisfy your target clients, as well as earn profits for your company. Simply put, a marketing plan targets your revenue goals and lists the resources you need to be able to meet those goals.

Preparing a marketing plan helps you to better understand your business. Because it requires you to assess current trends in your marketplace, as well as how your business can make an impact, a well-thought of marketing plan can provide you the means to enhance your business profit capacity. Often, simply involving yourself in the process of writing a marketing plan can guide you in developing a successful marketing strategy. With a marketing plan on hand, you would be able to evaluate your progress later.

So what do you need to plan out a great marketing plan?

Know the inside and outs of your products… Say, if you are a catalog printing company, you need to focus on your revenue and marketing objectives, and on how you intend to accomplish them. A thorough understanding of your products and services- from their features and benefits, to your target market's performance and potential competitors- will help make your plan more focused and well organized.

Your plan starts here… Begin your research by checking on the demographics of your target region. Information you need are age, gender, income, occupation, education and other key elements. You need to realize that your marketing plan should vary according to the industry your dealing with, the size of your company, and the stage of growth. Different plans for different folks. It is imperative that you realize that the process is very important because it makes you think about your goals in terms of revenues and what your marketing strategy would be to achieve your goals.

Your plan is divided into sections… These sections are what you usually find in a marketing plan. However, the components of your plan will vary depending on your company type, stage of growth and goals.· Executive Summary- This part allows you to introduce your company and major points of the plan in summary. It further highlights the mission and objectives of your company to establish the framework of your marketing strategy.

· The business- It provides the general introduction about the catalog printing company which includes your business, your company's products and services, distribution process, and the marketing personnel.

· The Macro-environmental Analysis- This is an analysis of elements and factors outside your direct control that affect your day-to-day operations. The factors include economic, industry, legal, regulatory, political, social, cultural and technological issues.

· Market Analysis- You need to define and characterize the market you are in. This analysis will describe the market itself, its opportunities, market segments, customer needs and competition.

· Issues and opportunities- This would be the SWOT analysis part of your plan. It should contain the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of your business, as well as the resulting issues.

· Goals- This is where you transform your overall mission and objectives into actual financial and marketing goals. This would help in identifying the tools and means to operate your business and measure the rate of success of your efforts.

· General Marketing Strategy- The 'goals' chapter explained what you want to achieve in very specific terms. This portion indicates how you would accomplish those goals in more descriptive terms.

· Specific Marketing Strategy- It details the product, price, promotion, and place of distribution. It provides detailed direction for all four areas of your plan.

· Specific Marketing Programs- It details exactly what you will do, when you will do it, and who will do it for each of P's in the specific marketing strategy.

· Risk Analysis Planning- This chapter presents the major risks resulting with the plan and corresponding contingency measures.

· Sales Forecast- This includes the number of units you expect to sell and the resulting revenue. The projected sales forecast tells of how you quantify the results from selling your products and services.

And finally,

· The Budget- This chapter shows the planned expenditures brought about by the marketing activities.

Your marketing plan is a guide in determining where you want to go and how to execute your strategy to get to your goal. It should be clear, concise and well-thought. There are several agencies and companies available that can help you create a professional marketing plan. For a fee, they will be able to direct you through every step and provide you with detailed instructions and examples.

On Photorealism

American photorealist Audrey Flack has once said and I quote, “There is an instinct for realism, a powerful drive to reproduce oneself. The fascination of photorealistic paintings lies partly in their apparent replication of life, but these are not merely replications. These paintings are often out of life scale, varying from over life-size to under life-size, from brilliant, heightened color to pale, undertone hues."

Flack’s thoughts sum up what Photorealism is all about. Known as a painting movement of the mid-20th century which began in the late 1960s, scenes are painted in a style closely resembling photographs in Photorealism. Artists painted from photographs or depicted objects and people as close to real life as possible, including every minute detail. However, the true subject of a photorealist’s work is the way we unconsciously interpret photographs and paintings in order to create a mental image of the object represented. These masterpieces can then be utilized for the different printing processes that include catalog printing, brochure printing, and a lot more.

The movement’s center is located in the United States. Among the most highly-regarded American photorealist painters are Flack, Richard Estes, Chuck Close, Charles Bell, and Ralph Goings. Estes and Close are the leading members of the Photorealist movement. Estes specializes in street scenes with elaborate reflections in window-glass while Close does enormous portraits of neutral faces. The Photorealism movement was also strong in Europe from the late 1960s into the 1970s, where his type of illusionism is known principally as Superrealism. The style is tight and precisionistic. Some of the renowned Russian photorealists include Andrew Abramov, Soryn Codytsa, Jack Demeraux, and Arlette Steenmans.

With the existence of Photorealism up to these days, renowned artist Bert Monroy introduces “Photorealism with Bert Monroy, volume 2” which will once again take you inside his creative mind and show you how to create ultra-realistic images using Adobe Photoshop. It showcases Monroy's personal methods for creating realistic details to enhance a digital image. From this book, you’ll learn to make fireworks, rusty text, a glazed donut, an antique photo, a speeding bullet, and a lot more. You'll also learn to master the pen tool, layers, alpha channels, and masking by watching and following along with one of the great digital artists of today. These skills can then be effecietly applied in the catalog printing process.

Photorealists typically specialize in a particular subject matter. Very ordinary, as you might think but then, Photorealism will always be a part of our lives. After all, ordinary things and events around us are what make photorealism artists so great and impressive.

About: “Photoshop Secret of the Pros” Book

Photoshop Tennis?!?! It’s actually discussed in the book, Photoshop Secrets of the Pros. For those who have no idea about this thing, here’s a brief overview – in Photoshop Tennis, two designers take on one another over the Internet over a 10 round or 'volley' period. In each volley, the designer either creates a new theme in the initial volley, or they take what has been sent to him or her and start playing off of what was previously created. The results can be amazing as each volley can result in drastically different appearance each time out. Hmmm, sounds very interesting.

The main objective of Photoshop Tennis is to bring together the most talented web, print, broadcast and 3D designers in the world and launch friendly competitions among these designers. With this, you’ll see the different approaches and numerous styles that every designer adopts in the creation of their works of art and in the different printing processes such as catalog printing, brochure printing, and many more. You’ll realize that the world of web, graphic, print and broadcast design is so complex yet fascinating.

The participants of these competitions might use different software applications in their design process but it will be their creativity and imagination that will work for them to stand out among the rest. Programs ranging from Illustrator and Freehand to Flash to 3D Studio Max and Maya were all used during the competitions. However, you won't see too much use of Photoshop's own plug-ins in the process. You’ll see lots of brushes, erasers, fills and use of various Levels commands to create their impressive artworks. The graphic art professionals used these tools to create their designs for catalog printing, brochures printing, business cards printing and the like. Personally speaking, however, we shouldn’t judge them in the same way because they certainly have distinct personalities. Remember that art is a form of self expression. Their creations imply the kind of persons that they are. Indeed, when you get these strange bedfellows together, you’ll see what types of pieces result.

This is the first time I’ve learned about the book, Photoshop Secrets of the Pros. I find it interesting. After I finish doing this article, I’ll run to the nearest bookstore, look for this book, and buy it. I’ll still find out if I’ve already seen every Photoshop book possible. I also agree with the author of the article, I will love to see a video of the highlights of the series of these competitions that will show everything done in a step-by-step manner. We can follow this at home and attempt to obtain similar results.

Why do We have eBooks?

The Internet has become the leading information portal because of its ease-of-use and reliability. It provides us with comprehensive information on almost all aspects of our lives such as foods, fashion trends, lifestyle, politics, economics, entertainment and a lot more. Also, different establishments are now doing business transactions online because it’s faster and easier to manage. The printing industry has significantly been using the web for the promotion of various printing products and services such as catalog printing, poster printing, and many more. At present, the eBook technology has also become a big hit for aspiring writers and authors, too. Through the web, they can now publish their own written books and sell them online. Truly amazing, right?

Through the upsurge of library websites, we can already track our books and personal favorites or receive lists of suggested reading materials from the web. At least, with eBooks, the services found inside a library are now being offered online and lending can be 24/7. You can now borrow from anywhere in the world and have instant portable access to the library collection.

eBooks are ideal for those who want information in the quickest possible time. It can provide us with video clips, sounds, color images, games, children's activities, and many other interactive multimedia elements. They also have search engine and electronic navigation technology. You can also acquire information about anything under the sun - world history, world's greatest inventions, the latest in the catalog printing industry, etc. Now, authors can also have an easier means to publish what they want and how they want it to be and distribute their works at relatively low costs.

Creating and publishing eBooks is by far one of the most profitable business ventures anyone can have. Once you have the required knowledge and tools, creating an unlimited number of eBooks will cost you absolutely nothing. In fact, it will only bring bountiful profits for you. You can deliver your eBooks on demand via automatic download or by email immediately after a customer pays for them. They are also great marketing products. They are great lead generators. They are great back-end and up-sell products. Once you start your own eBook business and your eBooks start to spread in the web, you won't be able to stop the profits from rolling in, even if you wanted to.

eBooks have a magic little way of floating around the Internet for years and years after their initial release. With this, they will definitely become a part of our future. How big that part is remains to be seen. Eventually, the eBook technology is a new development destined to become important and it’s only one thing that makes the Internet so powerful.

Some words are worth a thousand pictures

As the maxim goes - a picture is worth a thousand words. We are all aware of that. But can some words be worth a thousand pictures?

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? written by Jamie Kiley, is a manifestation that words can be worth a thousand pictures. “As a graphic designer, she reveals, my natural inclination is to create graphically-rich, light text websites. Since I'm focused on what a site looks like visually, I like using impressive images, bold splashes of color all over the page, and not very much copy. The end result is an attractive, visually-appealing site, with very few words.”

Based on her observation, she noticed that visitors want specifics and they want them quickly. So it is advisable that you tell them exactly what you can do for them. You should tell why they have to choose you over other competitors. For this purpose, words are far more effective than images. This can be compared to catalog printing where information is also necessary in order for it to serve its purpose well. In some if not most cases, pictures cannot convey the message nearly as specifically or quickly as well-chosen words can. Thus, it is necessary for the web to be informative and use the right words. Visitors want explanations, answers, reasons and motivation – and that’s exactly what you suppose to give them!

“I firmly believe that pictures and images enhance a website, but they should be used to provide a tasteful, professional frame for your copy, not replace it”, Kiley added. “It is true that web users are notorious for having short attention spans and not wanting to read large amounts of copy. However, the problem is that most of the copy on websites today is vague and not enticing. It's focused on the company rather than the customer. So it should be no surprise that visitors avoid reading it.”

As with catalog printing, one must not focus strictly on graphics in your website, focus on what the customers need. And what they need is information. If you supply them what they want, they sure gonna purchase from you.

Now, do you subscribe to the idea that a picture is worth a thousand words--and therefore images, not a lot of text, should be the major drive of your home page? Or do words have more influence to capture a visitor's attention and motivate them to purchase?

Jamie Kiley, the author of the aforementioned article creates inviting websites. If you want tips on website building or you want your website done, you can contact her at jamiekiley@kianta.com.

Who is David F. Kyte?

Millions of people especially men – are obsessed with cars. This obsession can be traced when they converse with other people. Many of them safe keep a collection – from real cars to limited edition miniature cars to posters and the likes. At the moment we will be acquainted with a man who is neither a collector nor a fanatic with these but he has a valuable contribution with regards to automobile art.

David F. Kyte, is a graphic designer, automotive painter and artist living in Detroit Michigan. He is the man behind the marvelous “The Caterham Super Seven Painting ”. In The art of David F. Kyte, it was revealed that even though David's background is formal training and years of experience in computer graphics, he still resorts to pens and brushes when the need arises.

These images were sent in to DTG back in 1997, and show a wide spectrum of interest. Today however, David has focused on Auto art which he sells at his web site. David admits that more and more of the his artwork is done on a Macintosh computer, however he still holds to the belief that computer art should not look like it is done on the computer. We must note that computer art has been widely used in large format poster printing, catalog printing, brochures printing, flyers printing, and many more.

Automobiles are complex subject and it can tend to look very strange if not drawn correctly. No matter how good you are in drawing, it is hard to draw automobile without any reference. Kyte’s secret is using photos. “ I do have a large collection of photos I have taken over the years plus lots of books on automotive and racing subjects, these come very handy when I start a painting. I do a lot of photographing of cars but my photos have been relegated to reference for future paintings. This is the advantage of being a painter, something that is not exactly what I want in the actual scene does not mater, I will make what I want when I do the painting”, he disclosed.

To guarantee the optimum in print quality, Kyte has given a valuable piece of advice – prints should be created from high resolution digital files and this is also applicable to catalog printing. According to him the reason for this is simple, resolution = detail. “I pride myself on the fine detail I incorporate into my artwork and for that detail to show on the final print it is important to start with a file that for a typical 12x16 print can be as large as 200 megabytes or more. This makes for a print that has vibrant color and smooth crisp lines.” This must be the reason why he emanates outstanding obra maestra !