Q: Why go to a designer in the first place?
A: When you're not quite sure how to communicate your idea to the world and you're looking for bright ideas. When you want to stick out from the crowd and present a clear picture of your idea, service or product. When you want to say a lot with as few words as possible. When you've tried it yourself and you're not getting the results you want.
Time is precious these days. No one has enough of it. Do you take time to read ads? Not unless they are compelling to do so. An appropriate graphic or design can pull someone in to get your message. Good text is useless unless someone reads and understands it.


Q: Why do I want to hire a designer?
A: Saves you from making costly mistakes and wasting your valuable time.
For the same reason people covet designs from Gucci, Ralph Lauren and Versace. They effectively make a clear statement: I am stylish, culturally sophisticated, polished, successful, I understand great design and quality. That idea is transferred to you, the consumer of their designs. It's a fact that these designers are not selling clothes, handbags, watches, etc. They are selling an image, a feeling, pride, comfort.
Now we get to my point, which is, you! You want to be remembered in a positive way. You've bought your clothes from a good designer, your shirts are clean and pressed. Your shoes are nice leather and polished, and your colors are coordinated, so you impress people in a great way when you meet them, and now you need a way to keep the impression alive. You need a something that will not only allow your friends, colleagues, prospective clients and customers to get in touch with you, you also want them to remember you.


Q: What are the things a designer can or will do for me?
A: A Professional Graphic Designer is qualified by education, experience to enhance the function and quality of your communication media. For the purpose of improving the quality of communication, increasing productivity. Professional Graphic Designer analyzes the client's needs and goals. Formulates preliminary design concepts that are appropriate, functional, and aesthetic. Develops and presents final design recommendations through appropriate presentation media. Reviews and evaluates design solutions during implementation and upon completion.


Q: How do I know who to go to?
A: Easy, go on the Internet and search for logo designers or web designers or even graphic designers. Look at their portfolio. You will find a designer that has the look you want. You can also ask for referrals. Look for someone you can talk to during hours, convenient for you. Do they publish a phone number? What time zone are they on?


Q: Why are designers so expensive?
A: With all the state of the art tools out to create cool fonts, effects in 3D designs, it's not surprising to wonder why good designers cost so much. Your perception may be that they use something like Illustrator and whip out a design in ten minutes. The truth is more like they research several of your competition to see what they're doing. They look at design trends for your industry, and then create over a dozen of possible designs, which you never see. They refine several of the designs they like and then ultimately show you one or possibly up to six designs. You then get to pick out the design you prefer. Since you miss seeing the design process, the perception is that all they do is think of the perfect design within seconds, move the mouse around a few times, press a few buttons, and voila! If you do something abstract that others don't understand, you can understand the misconception. Most people probably don't understand all the details of your job, but then, they're not supposed to. You are!
Most customers don't have the time to look at the design process along the way. A good designer takes the responsibility of the final design by knowing what the effect of the design is supposed to do. Therefore saving the customer the time from having to decide which designs are the best for the job. Most customers appreciate this. Do you ever go to a restaurant with a huge menu? How long does it take to order your meal? Same thing with designs. Too many choices often creates more confusion than benefit. Again, you're paying for the experience of the designer to make intelligent decisions to communicate your idea effectively.


Q: What is the hardest thing you do?
A: Understanding your goals and expectations and then taking your ideas and turning them into information other people will understand. The hard part is to take abstract information and make it understandable by others. If you deal with highly technical ideas or abstract concepts, trying to explain to others is very difficult. I specialize in conveying these very ideas.


Q: Why is a custom designed logo so important on a business card or web site?
A: Humans respond best to images. Text requires complex thought to process. Images are remembered much faster and longer. Plus a good logo can convey a lot of information in a small amount of space. When you see the logo for Coke or Pepsi it keeps the idea fresh in your mind. Text just doesn't have the impact or power a logo can deliver. Think of all the brands you remember, next time you watch a popular sporting event on TV, notice how many logos you see. Ask yourself why the sponsors pay thousands of dollars to display that simple logo. When there is text, notice how short the text is. That's because we can't remember it. It has little impact.
Whenever company corresponds or markets itself, whether it be through brochures, product sheets, packaging, web presence, billboards, invitations, annual reports, letters, envelopes, business cards, faxes, or any form of advertising, the logo serves as a potent PR piece that builds credibility, reinforces presence in the marketplace and encourages sales. Since a logo represents or stands for the company, it should speak of the company's capabilities, potential and vision. Logo is a most central marketing tool.


Q: Do I need a business card in our e-world?
A: Yes! Business cards are still the most common way to identify yourself and leave a lasting impression. So the question is, what impression do you want to leave? How do you leave that impression? The most common way is with a business card. There are other things such coffee mugs, pens, etc. that can work, but they tend to be left at the office or thrown away. Business cards are still the premier way to leave a lasting impression.
You should send a card out with any correspondence you send. You should tell all your friends and family what you are doing. Give them a bunch of cards to give to others. Do you go to a dry cleaner? A special car repair place? What about the grocery store, do you like to go to a particular checker? All of these people should have your business card, and know what you do. Your card should be simple and clear. Most people look at a card for only 1 second! Since everyone is visual, it should be clean: lots of space and attention should be drawn to the most important part: your logo, then your name and then your contact information. If you're worried about moving, then get an 800 number and a permanent email address.


Q: Can't I go to the print shop myself and get business cards made?
A: Print shops are printing specialists. A few have designers there to help you, but most are there to transfer the image a designer created and turn it into hard copy or a printed page. Often, a print shop does not have the time or staff to explain how to design a good design. They will simply print what ever you give them. No thought is given to what it's being used for or even if there's a better way to get the results you want. A designer's job is to work with you to get the exact result you're looking for. What media is best for your needs, what costs are required, inks, etc...


Q: Can't I just buy some software and a sheet of cards for my printer to save money?
A: That depends on what you mean by saving money and what your time is worth. You can do it for free by simply writing your name and number on a scrap piece of paper. What does that say? For less than $20 you can print on inkjet or laser cards. For $100 to $200 you can have multi color cards printed on card stock. You can have cards made into shapes, and different materials.
The next question is, if you're going to invest in your image, how do you know what image to use? Sure you can do it yourself with pre-made templates and stock images from Business card maker software or have a designer create an image just for you. A reputable designer is skilled about how people perceive images know how to turn your ideas into the perfect image you're looking for. Another way to look at it is, a designer will save you time and money by guiding you to what you really want without wasting your valuable time.


Q: I have a small business and would like a web site. Where do I start?
A: Do you have a company brochure? A company logo? Anything that would contribute to telling the world about your company? This is where the designer starts. Typical business web site topics: Index (your main introduction page), About Us (Company history, Awards, Testimonials), Services (Detais of the products or services), FAQ (Frequently asked questions and answers, Customer Service help, etc...) and Contact.


Q: Why hire designer to build a web site?
A: Save you time and money. I've learned how to use many tools to make creating a web site work. It's much more than knowing HTML, XML, PHP, CGI, ASP, SQL, WebLogic, .NET, JavaScript, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver or FrontPage, it's knowing how people will react to your site. How your page will work on all the browsers, how the search engine and people will find you. How the user experience is affected when they visit your site. Optimizing and balancing your content with speed and performance. Will they stay or leave? It's placing the graphical elements together in a way that makes people enjoy going to your site. Keeping people who come there from using the back key. Promoting your business or service to make you money. It's knowing what hosting plan you need and how much it should cost. It's understanding what your true goals are so your site meets and exceeds your own expectations. It's knowing the abilities and limitations of technology. It may even mean setting your expectations so you can make informed decisions. It's experience with communications, technical aspects, it's your business and unless you're a technical guru who loves to design web pages, I've made all the mistakes and learned from them. In short, you'll actually save time and money hiring me to listen to your needs and guiding you to the proper design and technical details so you can do what you enjoy.


Q: Can you help me make my existing web site look more professional?
A: Yes, and help you make your site work for you! Simply give us a link to your site, tell us what your goal is: to sell items, to inform customers/clients, attract people to do business with you, etc... Tell us what is working for you and what you want to improve. What other web sites do you like, are there things you would like to have on your site? Shopping cart? Search? Audio/Video? Content? It's your site, we can help you make it do what you want. Consider that if you're paying for a site and it's not working for you, why have it?


Q: Will you charge me to make minor changes to my design?
A: We realize that changes are part of the business and we don't want to bother you with lots of small charges every time you make a small change. We want to be fair, so if you request frequent changes, then we'll let you know before we do the work that your change will be billed.


Q: What web sites do you think are the best ones?
A: Performance is our measure and right now Amazon.com is profitable, eBay.com is profitable. Google.com is profitable, Yahoo.com is profitable, Expedia and so are many others. These are the examples you want to use. Obviously, copying them isn't always appropriate, but using them as models is. They have good techniques and design. However, many sites have better design in terms of aesthetics or usability, it depends on what you want.


Q: Why aren't people buying from my web site?
A: After you've discovered how to get potential customers to your site, you need to keep them there in order to buy. People are sophisticated these days and have short attention spans. Take a look at Amazon.com and eBay. These are the models to follow. They are familiar, intuitive and fast! Notice the lack of flash, animation and other distracting graphics. Those sites are designed to get people to buy! Period.
Most people don't buy from a web site due to slow page loads! Think about how impatient you are when you surf. How many seconds (yes, seconds) are you willing to wait for a page to load? Bad page design is also a reason people won't buy. Make 'buy' buttons easy to find and don't require people to click too many times.
Ask yourself this very tough question: Would I buy from my site? Be honest. Is your site fast? Convenient? Safe? Intuitive? If you answer no to any of these, then it needs to be fixed. Ask a friend to have someone they know critique your site. You can't do this yourself since most people won't answer you honestly. Have them report back what they like and don't like. Fix those items and do it again until there are no more bad problems. You will see an improvement in sales.


Q: How do I get people to my site?
A: The first thing is to make sure your site is ready for lots of hits. (See above FAQ). People need a reason to come there and then your site needs to keep them there in order to buy. Word of mouth is STILL the most effective method, even in today's e-world. The problem is integrity, how do people know hype from truth. They believe their friends. Still, the number one resource for publicizing your site is Google. Don't waste your money on companies promising to list you on 15,000 search engines when taking less than 30 min. yourself to list on a few good engines is all you need. Google, Altavista and Inktomi will get you over 90% of the search traffic. Why bother going after only 10% when it's so easy to get 90%? There is some prep work for your site to make it search engine friendly. This is important! Be careful, some of your friends may not understand how the search engines work and can cause your site to be black listed! This is death to your site!
Remember, if your site isn't buy worthy, wasting your time in generating a lot of hits is going to cost you money and return you nothing.


Q: How do I make my site search engine friendly?
A: The most important part is key word selection. The mechanics of adding meta tags is easy and making the page so spiders will index it is also easy. You need to concentrate on good key word selection.


Q: I have a web site, but I'd like it to look more professional. Can you help?
A: Yes. A web designer specialist will examine your current site, discuss your goals, and redesign your site. I'd like a web site. Where do I begin? To minimize the involvement and cost of the web site designer, supply as much information as possible. The following are suggestions to start with: 1. Decide what you want on the web. 2. Set your goals - What do you want to accomplish? 3. Organize your ideas into main topics. 4. Decide what you want your web site to look like (colors, layout ideas). 5. Do you have a web site you admire? (Always save the URL address!)


Q: Can I start with approximately eight pages to my web site and add onto it later?
A: Absolutely. After your web site is up and running, contact designer with additional ideas.


Q: What is the difference between web design and web maintenance?
A: Web design is the actual creation of the initial web site. Web maintenance is the updating and changing of content on that site. The web design contract is separate from the web maintenance or web master contract.


Q: Can I do what ever I want with the image after you give it to me?
A: When I create an image for you, the image is yours to use as we agreed. Please understand that even though you paid for my time to create the image, it's in both of our interests to keep the image as high quality as possible. I would be pleased to discuss with you any uses you have for the image so that I can make your image look as good as possible.
For instance, if I give you an image designed for the web and you would like the image to be used in print. I want your image to look as good as possible, so I would provide you a high resolution image suitable for printing. Likewise, if I provide a logo for a business card, and you want to use it on the web, no problem, but scaling a print logo for the web or a scan will not look as good as taking the original artwork and creating it for the web.


Q: Can I hire someone else to change your design?
A: It's tempting to hire your friend or co-worker to change a design you've had for a long time. Since it's in both of our interests to maintain a good image. It's always faster and easier to have me make any changes you would like. Each designer has their own vision of how an image should look. If you feel that you'd like to hire someone to maintain a set of images I created for you, they should simply recreate the images from scratch and change it sufficiently so no one will confuse their design with Aniaar Designt. Please call me if you have any questions about this.


Q: Why are you here?
A: My guess is that you have an idea that you need to communicate something about yourself to the world or to your community. Perhaps you have a talent, product or service you'd like to tell the world about


Q: Why should I hire Aniaart Design?
A: I can make you money: I know how to get people's attention so you can turn that into cash. I can save you time, which is money for you. The return on investment is high, since your ads will be more effective by catching your customer's eye. I will make you proud: your logos will be remembered; you will get compliments on your website's good design. Potential customers will stay longer on your website, which will translate into more sales, which makes you more money!

Aniaart Design will work with you to make sure your graphic and web design suits your tastes and your purpose.

Article Copyright © 2004. All rights reserved. Do not reprint without written permission.