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Should you lead with the most expensive item?

Question: When selling similar products or services, there is some thinking that recommends leading with the most expensive item. The idea is that one of
four things will happen...

1. The customer will buy the most expensive item.
2. The customer will buy one of the less expensive items because they wanted the features of one of those items to begin with.
3. The customer may not have bought anything but became more likely to buy a less expensive item because the objection to the first price lessened impact of the price of the alternatives.
4. The customer does not buy an item.

Do you have any experience with this? Thanks in advance for sharing your thoughts,

Chuck

Meet illustrator and typographer Gemma O'Brien

Two things that strike me about Gemma O'Brien's work: First, I love the diversity of the techniques she
uses-she seems willing to try anything. Second, I greatly appreciate the fact that so much of her work is done live, at full size. I think that brings a different dimension to it.

Example 1...
Example 2...
Example 3...
A video featuring Gemma O'Brien...
And on Instagram...
What do you do when someone steals your content?

I know a lot of folks who work very hard at producing content for blogs, websites, and social network platforms. Most of them do it because they love doing it. But they also do it to earn a living. Taken post by post, page by page, and comment by comment, it might not seem like much, but add it all up and it is, in many cases, a substantial body of work.

There is a small group of people who don't seem to understand exactly how destructive it is to appropriate that content and call it their own. Or, to simply rework the content slightly, and feel justified in calling it original. We have discussed what plagiarism and copyright infringement is, but I don't think we've ever discussed what to do when someone steals your content.

I was hashing this out with a friend recently who discovered someone copying his work and who was preparing to take steps to stop it. In my search for further insight to share with him, I stumbled on this excellent discussion of the subject by "blog evangelist" Lorelle VanFossen.

What do you do when someone steals your content...
Ted Leonhardt shares 10 interviewing and negotiating tips for creatives...

Mr. Leonhardt, introduces his video with this: "You're a creative professional, a photographer, designer, web coder, event producer, etc., and you've spent your career developing your creative skills. But, if you're like me, and thousands of other creatives, you are a terrible negotiator.

We creatives love doing the work, and we know its value. But when it comes to asking for money we often roll over, give in or just plain don't ask for what it's worth.

So, I've created these ten simple tips to help you ask for--and get--the compensation you deserve.

Remember...you....are...worth it."

I think it's worth a look.

Ted Leonhardt shares 10 Tips For Creatives: Interviewing and Negotiating...
Ted Leonhardt's book is Nail it.: Stories for Designers on Negotiating with Confidence...

Leonhardt's website...
Ellen Shapiro interviews Ted Leonhardt for Print Magazine under the title: Design. What's It Worth?

Two VERY different packages

Here are two packaging projects created by Hong Kong designer Ken Lo, as I understand it, to promote papers produced by Polytrade Paper. The first, for Camellia, seems soft and understated, the second, for Hilary is vivid and forward. Very simple, very nice.

The packaging...
More of Ken Lo's work can be found at his design studio: Blow...
A recent interview via Designboom...
Public and private leadership needs to educate itself about graphic design

Attention President, CEO, Chairperson, General, Chancellor, (and so on): Design missteps can do significant damage to your brand, get you lots of bad press, create a backlash in the creative community, and cost you a lot of energy and money.

As you will see by the articles below, the consumer world holds organizations of all kinds to a ever increasing standard--especially regarding the design of logos. 

The latest example has the Canadian Government running a student contest, believe it or not, to design the logo for the upcoming, multi-million dollar celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Confederation in 2017.

They are offering a prize of $5000 to the design student who creates the winning logo. Which sounds like a super idea until you apply the same logic to, for example, offering $5000 to the law student who does the best job of rewriting Canada's Constitution.

For your information...

The contest...
The controversy...

Graphic Designers of Canada petition the government...
Mark Busse's Twitter feed...
Shall we invite contest entrants to do your job?
Ask Mark Cuban how this worked out...

This, of course, is one of a long list of logo controversies. Among them...

The University of California logo controversy...
The Gap logo controversy...

The Pepsi logo controversy...

The Quark logo controversy...
The 2012 Olympic Games logo controversy...
The 2016 Olympic Games logo controversy...

The 2020 Olympic Games (we gotta stop meeting like this) logo controversy...

Meet illustrator: Andrew Fairclough

Andrew Fairclough has said, "I've always been fascinated by the tactility of printed matter..." and his work shows it. He creates an idea in his comic-book-like style and uses grain and screens and color offset to make his illustrations look as if they were photocopied, silkscreened, or otherwise reproduced in the real world.

Example 1...
Example 2...

Example 3...
Andrew Fairclough's website...
An interview of Fairclough with CX.CITY (caution, a couple of the illustrations would be considered racy)..

He sells some prints here...
If you use InDesign (or QuarkXPress), you might find this useful

The idea is simple. Modifying a well-designed template is far easier than starting from scratch. My InDesign Ideabook includes 315 researched, designed, and meticulously formatted documents in a clean, simple style that it easy to build on.

The Ideabook lets you breeze through time-consuming document setup and get right to the important stuff. Instead of spending 15 minutes to create a simple layout, you'll spend 15 seconds. For complex projects--books, newsletters, catalogs, reports--you'll save HOURS.

"If you need to create winning design and your time is important to you, there is no better investment than Chuck Green's Idea Book. I write copy and create marketing materials for small business, and Chuck's world class layouts have me up and running in minutes instead of hours. I can't recommend this book enough!" Kory Basaraba, Copywriter and Consultant, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

For Adobe InDesign
For QuarkXPress
On the direct mail front: Special interests deliver obstacles to fixing the Postal Service

Hear, hear...
Connect the dots, Twenty-First Century style...
About this newsletter

I try to remain as objective as possible about the information I share here. Unless I tell you otherwise, I receive no compensation from the organizations and people mentioned except for occasional product samples. I am an affiliate of Lynda.com and MyFonts.com -- that means, if you purchase something from them, I get a small commission. Comments? Suggestions? Write me at [email protected] -- Chuck Green