Rick Howard

ARC Design was part of a feature story about Smart News on NBC-17.

You can read the article or watch the video at NBC 17’s website.

Adage has an article today titled, “Give It a Try: Put Brands in Consumers’ Hands (Literally)“.

Essentially, the article discusses why it is good to give out samples of your product so customers really know what they are getting.

How does this apply to Graphic Designers in any mediums?

Simple, hand out your business card, make posters and advertise. It is the same concept, you are giving a sample of your work. Other ways are to keep samples of everything you print to put into books to give to prospective clients. Its a lot easier to win people over when they can see some of your prior work.

Our internet has been spotty since Friday, pings to our ip are ranging from 2ms - 4ms with spikes of 76ms-120ms. Not good.

The in office assumption is that our router is going on the fritz or one of the cable or connectors is bad.

An employee from our cable company showed up and informed us that it was due to the new billing system they are implementing.

Who would have thought?

Is this relative to the Chaos Theory?

Although some may say Foxnews is not a reliable source, they have an interesting article on swearing.

More specifically swearing in the workplace.

It is said to relieve stress, which I could understand. Holding in any high-powered feelings such as Anger, Depression or Bliss could cause one to go mad. If the best way for you to deal with Anger is to swear, I say have at it. Just make sure you aren’t going to offend those around you.

Otherwise, your stress relief may turn into additional stress for someone else.

Today I am at Showbiz, it is an expo for Cumberland County Businesses to show off their services.

We obtained the both closest to the front door so when people enter, we are the first thing they see. We have set up a 36in. Vizio flat screen tv running a slideshow of the various websites and identities we have done. We also have 2 laptops, one is for showing visitors possible improvements they can make to their websites and the other is for showing our promotional video.

We have met a ton of people and have set up a few appointments and have several promising leads.

One thing I have heard a lot today is “I already have a website”.

You may have a working website, but who is it working for. Are you paying for a site that does nothing for you or is your site driving customers to you on a daily basis.

One of our greatest success stories is Cape Fear Staffing. They are set up here at the expo as well and have done an excellent job both in their own promotion and promoting us. They have saved time and money by having a website to automate their job listings and have a consistent stream of visitors. Deservedly so, they are a great advantage for those in the community looking for a job and are highly recommended.

We soon hope we can offer glowing reviews for all the businesses we have met here.

Stay Tuned!

Am I wrong in thinking the new Payless logo looks like a fetus?

Can your readers contact you?

I read a great blog post this morning at http://www.goldbusinesstips.com/keep-customers-happy-100-of-the-time

It is an article informing small design businesses that lying is important to keeping your customers happy. Sounds like it would be a bad idea, but it actually provides valid points about under selling and over promising.

Unfortunately, one of the paragraphs must have been hurried because it has quite a few grammatical errors. I was going to contact them about it privately, but no email address or contact link is provided.

One key part of a blog is having a way for readers to contact you. It creates a small sense of intimacy and can promote return visits.

So go look at your blog and make sure you aren’t hiding behind your words without allowing visitors to reply.