and get some FREE Design and Marketing advice

We have deemed November “Free Lunch for Pi Month.” In order to score as many free lunches as possible I am willing to offer up all of my design and marketing expertise in exchange for a meal at the restaurant of your choice. You can pick my brain for the entire lunch. We can talk about how to integrate Social Media into your marketing, brainstorm about email campaigns, and figure out new target markets for you to explore.

There’s only one caveat – It must be a sit down and order restaurant because we will need a table large enough to spread out papers and work (the little paper place mat they give you at In-N-Out just won’t suffice). Also, I am trying to stay away from fast food joints at this juncture in life.

WHAT’S ON THE MENU:

1. An assessment of your existing marketing materials – I will look them over and we will discuss them. I will let you know, in my humble opinion based on 20 years in the industry, what I think works, what doesn’t work, and what could be improved.
2. Brainstorming session – Together we will throw around ideas on how to generate new leads, better communicate with your target market, and drive more traffic to your website.
3. Development of your target persona – I have a quick and fun way to help us understand your customers better and figure out what influences their interactions with you. By analyzing demographic and psychographic information we will create a fictional representation of your targeted buyer. This persona will allow you to create more tailored marketing strategies.

At the end of lunch you will have a better focus on where and how to direct your marketing attention. I will email you a “wrap up” document to remind you of all that we discussed along with a list of recommendations. This information will inspire you and allow you to keep your marketing fresh and relevant. I guarantee that you will be amazed how one lunch can increase your marketing ROI.

So call me (805.383.0054) or email me and let’s make a lunch date!

Facebook has made so many changes and updates to their site this year that it is difficult to keep up. However, the one that seems to affect businesses the most is the shrinking of the tab size to allow for more advertising space on the right. The maximum width for any Page tab is now 520 pixels, which is down from the old 760 pixels. This happened back at the end of August and I am still noticing that many companies have not reformatted their tabs and applications and they appear as broken. This change was rolled out slowly with notifications and warnings in part to let brands, agencies, page management companies and other marketers finish running campaigns that relied on the wider tab size. But still there are folks that haven’t made the adjustment.

Twitter has also done a number on us by redesigning their pages so that the cool backgrounds we all made last year or before that are now covered up by the application itself.

If your company needs assistance with your Social Media graphics, call us. We can create spectacular tabs to attract visitors to your page and keep them coming back. Included on the post are some samples of tabs we have created for others.

Presenting data with boring old charts and graphics is out. INFOGRAPHICS are in. This new buzz word means fusing your business or other message with conceptual visuals to create a concise and instantly understandable graphic. Representing data in a visual fashion is not a new idea, it’s what we do here at Pi Design for a living. But I find it funny how many people are taking advantage of the age old Periodic Table to create visual rankings of all kinds of crazy things. One of our office favorites is Camdon Wilde’s Periodic Table of Typefaces. (Available for purchase here)

I have put together a fun collection of these “new” infographics for your viewing pleasure.

The Periodic Table of Awesoments

This is a hilarious Table of truly awesome stuff that most of us geeks can relate to. Please notice that the number one element is bacon. This guy must know what he is talking about. Am I right?

The Periodic Table of Rockin’

This funny, interactive musical Table will keep you entertained for quite awhile.

The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense

The Periodic Table of Cartoon Characters

How many can you name without cheating? More than 40? More than 80? Seriously? All of them? Grow up.

The Periodic Table of Cars

In case you can’t get enough of these tables then try this shirt on for size.

After all that if you still want some more periodic-ness in your life, memorize this song and then tell me if you have had enough.

Purchase David Pu’u works here at our Studio Shop.

Please join Pi Design as we launch our new venture, Pi Studio Printing. We are opening our doors on March 12th to artists, photographers, friends, family, clients, and design professionals! To showcase the capabilities of our latest addition to the Pi family—the giant Epson Stylus Pro 11880 printer, we will be showing the breathtaking work of David Pu’u, editorial photographer and cinematographer. David will be in attendance and to share his experiences traveling the world photographing and filming surfers, sea life and other wondrous phenomena.

Please join us for refreshments and great company as you tour the Pi Studio Printing facility. This grand event takes place two days prior to our favorite holiday, Pi Day! In honor of this glorious day we will, of course, have much pie on hand as well as other roundish treats.

Pi Studio Printing will be raffling off all kinds of great prizes like gift certificates to Vie, the Spa upstairs, David Pu’u prints and more!

Leave work a bit early on Friday and come have some pie with Pu’u. (Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.)

When: March 12th 2010 from 3:30pm to 6:30pm
Where: 760 Las Posas Road, Suite A1 and A2, Camarillo, CA

To RSVP click here

Read more about David Pu’u here: http://www.davidpuu.com/bio.php

We had such a great response to our previous post on this subject matter that we compiled the comments to craft these new gems added a few more submissions of our own. Thanks (and apologies) go out to Barbara, Kathleen, Jerry Lund, Joe Howard, Ed at CR Print and Josh Brown for their comments, which we so selfishly tweaked to fit our twisted thought process.

1. I already have an idea for my logo, on this bar napkin, and I shouldn’t have to pay someone just to stick it on a 3.5″ x 2″ piece of paper along with my name and phone number. Can’t you just make copies of it? Oh, but I want to make the letters nice and clean and maybe spruce up my drawing a bit.
2. I can download free fonts and a paint program to create an effective brochure for my upcoming trade show… Can’t I?
3. 4 Colors?! WTF?! There are billions of colors in the world and that !@$#@ designer only wanted to print with 4 of them?!?!? (more…)

A Tale of Two Cards

There are a constant barrage of business cards left on my front porch from tree trimmers, cleaning folks, landscapers, gardeners and others insinuating that I am not doing a very good  job of these things myself. I don’t take offense because I am busy and don’t put as much attention into my house as I probably should. Hopefully my friends and family get that and don’t think less of me. But, as I am sort of in the market for a cleaning person, I kept two cards in particular from last week. (more…)

In order to help the designer truly capture the essence of your company when designing or redesigning your corporate identity it is necessary to provide them with some background material. This is often done with a design brief but simply answering these questions should give any designer a great head start in the right direction.

1. What services and/or products do you offer?
2. How would you describe your corporate culture?
3. What makes your company unique? (more…)

by Joel Dualan

Before we begin, I feel it only appropriate to preface this article with a public service announcement, brought to you today by Pi Design:

Friends don’t let friends use comic sans.
Together we can overcome.

With that out of the way we can now proceed.

You might be thinking to yourself (at least I hope you are), “Who in their right mind would choose to use that typeface for a wanted poster?” This example is clearly a dramatization to illustrate a point, but I kid you not, the poster was based on a real life example.

Choosing typefaces to use for your project isn’t something that can be determined by answering a few predefined questions. There isn’t a set of rules that are written in stone that designers can refer to, but we instead rely on years of education and experience to lead us to the best choice. When faced with the task of choosing a typeface, many factors must be considered, but among these, content, media, and audience should be considered foremost.

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Another post from the purposely silly “This Looks Awsome” Series (yes, we know it’s spelled wrong. It was done on purpose to be silly, you nit)

1. Create your project in any program with “Microsoft” in the name. You’d be better off finger-painting with mud on an old pizza box, dousing it with gasoline and throwing it briskly into a portal to hell.
2. OPTIMA OPTIMA OPTIMA. Did I forget to mention that use of COMIC SANS will also immediately discredit you as a designer?     (more…)

My daughter has kept herself busy this summer creating origami animals and geometric shapes out of paper, Post-it notes in particular. I, too have always had a fascination with paper. I love the different textures and colors, especially those of the handmade variety. Fashioning something three-dimensional from a flat sheet requires extreme patience while completing a challenging combination of cutting and folding in just the right places. I have been amazed by the tiny things she does like the miniature presents in this photo. She will often cut a Post-it note down to a half inch square and fold microscopic origami cranes that sit on your fingertip

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