There are a few basic terms that we use when we start talking about typesetting which will be helpful for clients to be aware of when dealing with graphic designers. I've listed a few of the more common terms below along with a short description of each.

Kerning

You may have heard this term before, but not quite sure what it means. That's ok! It is sort of easy once you wrap your mind around it. Kerning is the distance between two letters. Some letters 'tuck' together closer than others. For instance, the Letter 'T' followed by a small letter can be tucked close together. Another example might be a capital 'W' followed by a capital 'A'. Because of the angled sides of each, they can be kerned tightly together. How tight or loose the kerning settings are depends on the eye of the typographer or designer.

Tracking

If kerning is the space between two letters, then tracking could be best defined as the spacing between an entire group of letters--typically an  entire line or paragraph. Tracking is often confused with kerning because both deal with letter spacing. However, once you understand that kerning deals specifically with a single pair of letters and tracking deals with an entire set, the difference becomes clear.

Marketing is often one of the most misunderstood aspects of business. Too often people think advertising and marketing are the same things, where in reality, advertising is a subset of marketing. 

What is marketing?

The simplest definition is marketing includes everything you do to put your product or service in the hands of your customers. This goes far beyond advertising in that it includes research and development, advertising, sales, packaging, user experience, distribution, customer service and branding. 

What is advertising?

Advertising is a small part of marketing. In reality it is using various media to make customers aware of your product or service and attempt to lure them into a specific action like calling a number or making a purchase. 

22 tips to improve your marketing program 

1. Be clear about your objectives before beginning your market research.
2. Identify your target audience, how many respondents you require and what data you are hoping to collect before beginning.
3. Make sure your target group is relevant to your needs and represents the market you are targeting.
4. Watch for and incorporate unsolicited feedback you receive on social networks or review sites.
5. Say thank you to every single person who contributes to your research.
6. Provide a place for open-ended comments on any survey that you use.
7. Make it common practice to ask clients for suggestions at every interaction.
8. Understand the difference between qualitative and quantitative research and format your questions accordingly.
9. Review your surveys and questionnaires to ensure you're not phasing anything offensively.
10. Develop a chart or graph from the data collected to make it easier to visually analyze the results.
11. Record interviews or focus groups whenever possible for review and analysis.
12. Don't ignore criticism because you don't want to hear it; it can be the most valuable feedback you receive.
13. Ensure your survey is neutral and doesn't involve leading questions.
14. Make it quick and easy to complete your survey or questionnaire.
15. Aim for a large enough sample group to give you meaningful data.
16. Create your surveys and interviews so the focus is on measurable data.
17. Follow surveys with a phone call or other personal contact to round out the answers provided, whenever possible.
18. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential clients when writing your survey questions.
19. Ensure that all participants will remain confidential to encourage participation.
20. Be impartial throughout the whole process, or use an outside person to facilitate.
21. Keep your mind open to new opportunities and needs that you didn't consider before conducting your research.

What is gestalt design? As you might have guessed, gestalt is a German word. There is no perfect translation in English. A close translation might be "a pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts." (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gestalt). In brief, it is a bunch of things when together form a pattern, but when solo don't represent much at all (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology). Pretty cool stuff!

Principles of Gestalt Design

Back in the 1920s the germans started looking at how the human brain perceives patterns (http://psy.ed.asu.edu/~classics/Wertheimer/Forms/forms.htm). The theories that came from the research focus on how humans organize unified visual elements into groups. The groups are then called 'unified wholes' when certain principles are applied. These are grouped into five basic principles.

	1. Similarity When object look similar to one another, when they are grouped together they may be perceived as a group or pattern. In the image below the grouping of triangles gives the appearance of sun rays.
	2. Continuation This principle is pretty much what it sounds like. The eye and the brain follow a visual group of objects which lead the eye from one object to another object. In the example below the eye is led through the H to the leaf.
	3. Closure When an object consisting of multiple part is incomplete and the human brain fills in the missing parts, it is called closure. In the example below, half of a butterfly is found in the capitol B, the brain fills in the rest of the image. The panda is another example of the same principle.
	4. Proximity When objects are grouped close together, they are perceived as a group. In the first example below the squares are perceived as separate objects. However, when close together and evenly spaced, they are perceived as a group.
	5. Figure and Ground When the human brain is able to perceive an object as standing out from the background, this is know as the figure and ground effect. Below we have a tree, leaves, trunk and water. Each is visualized by its contrast to the background surrounding it. In the example our minds can see both a christmas tree and holiday ornament.

One of my goals for 2011 is to put a priority on converting to a paperless office. Beyond saving a few trees, some of the advantages of the paperless office are less clutter, better organization, and moving to one system of record tracking instead of two (paper and digital). The downsides are time taken for initial conversion and the risk of losing data. Loss of data can be addressed by redundant backups, and the conversion time can be stretched out over time.

Below are some of the key areas I'm focusing on for my paperless office:

Eliminate Your Fax Machine

Unless you are a lawyer or realtor, chances are you can completely eliminate your fax machine from your business. Most customers today are happy with a scanned document or have digital solutions. About three years ago I got rid of mine and now use MaxEmail (http://www.maxemail.com/) which gives me a dedicated incoming fax phone number, converts all incoming faxes to PDFs and emails them to me. I'm debating eliminating this altogether given I very, very rarely receive faxes whereas at one time there were the staple of my business. Today most of my faxes have been replaced by PDF email attachments, scans, or emails.

Digital Bank Records

I used Wells Fargo and in December I sat down with a banker there to discuss online banking (which I had avoided up till now). I'm looking at canceling my paper bank statements trusting Wells Fargo for their seven years of bank records. The risk of losing your bank records will rest on your bank and you may want to consider making local backups of your online bank records.

What is a Sitemap and why is it important?

There are two basic kinds of visitors who come to websites. One is the live person like yourself, the other are sometimes called 'bots' or 'crawlers.' The second category are basically just software programs running which visit your site and read the content. The most important of these to your business would be search engines like Google. When we start talk about Google visiting your site, we are talking about search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is a huge buzz word in the business world right now. Sitemaps are important to visiting bots and to search engines like Google.

What is a sitemap?

A sitemap is pretty much what is sounds like, it is a map of your site. It lists all of the pages in your site in an easy-to-see format.

Designing a logo seems very easy at first glance. However, once you start looking at the methodology and parameters factored into each design, the art of logo design quickly become complex and challenging. This short article outlines some of the more important parameters to be considered when designing a logo

Appropriate Style

This one is the most obvious and almost a no-brainer. Most novice designers get it right. The logos 'look and feel' should be appropriate for the company. A bank or law firm will have a more traditional look to it whereas a children's day care might have a logo with crayon style fonts and finger paint style icons. 

Image Conveys Name

Having a target icon for a company called Target reinforces the actual name with an image. The same is true for John Deer. Some names don't lend themselves to this solution. Companies like JC Penny, Walmart or Microsoft don't really have this option. If your name can be conveyed in the form of an icon or image, you'll gain a lot of branding power by using it to your advantage. If not, you might want to try to convey what you do in some sort of iconographic way. 

There are many ways to build a website and plenty of advice our there on how to do it. Below is a list of seven essentials to consider when building your site.

1. Original Content

You can, of course, copy articles from other locations on the web and give proper credit. This article I'm writing here is inspired by an article on a similar subject (credit below). But, if you really want to create a strong website, you should focus on original content and create something that can't be found elsewhere on the web. This way visitors find value in your site and have a reason to visit.

2. Valuable Content

It sounds logical, but many sites out there just don't create valuable content. Think about your customers and visitors you wish to attract to your site. Create content that is valuable to them. If you demonstrate you are an authority in your field, visitors will be more likely to hire or consult you for work. This not only means more traffic for your site, but more income.