Manuals are found everywhere; every public building will have a safety manual and every hotel will have a manual for its customers. Chances are if you run a public facing company, you’ll have a manual of some sorts. Take a look at these few steps in making the perfect manual.

1) Use The Right Language

Getting the appropriate language for your audience is vital if you wish for the manual to be read, understood and followed properly. A safety manual for children under 16 will have to be written in a completely different fashion to one which has been written for a group of scientists. Doing this will help  the reader to get the best out the material you have prepared.

2) Offer Solutions

The likelihood is that someone will be reading your manual to find answers to a question. Make sure that you know what the main questions people are asking and answer them, providing a solution to their problem. Clear instructions are important, especially when health and safety are involved.

3) Make It Easy To Find

Break down all information into sections which can be easily scanned by the reader so they do not waste their time reading literature that is irrelevant. A contents page and page numbering is a necessity and will provide a reference point for when the reader opens the first page to try to find what they are looking for. This is especially important when there are dozens of pages involved.

4) Make Use of Diagrams/Pictures

The old saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words, so put as many relevant pictures and diagrams in a possible as a good way to help the reader understand what the words mean. This is key, especially in instruction/safety manuals where the person will have to follow a set of instructions. Adding pictures helps to clarify the words on the page.

5) Print Professionally

This manual could be one of the first things that the customer sees when dealing with your company. At hotels for example, there is always a manual by the door, listing emergency procedures, hotel information and places of interest around the area. It’s important to get a good impression from the off, no matter what business you are in. Book printing has become cheaper over the years with the improvement in printing methods, so take advantage of this and create something to be proud of.

Plenty of hard work and thinking goes into creating a good, reliable manual and one that people can use practically. The most important thing is to know who you’re writing for and cater your content to the people who will be reading it. Make sure it looks good too; you only have one chance to make a first impression!

Some companies rely heavily on paper advertising (flyers, posters, leaflets) to rein in people for their business, others don’t quite need it as much, but whatever company it is, the chances are that if their marketing strategy is done well, they use some form of physical advertising. If you’re just starting your business or want to move your marketing strategy forwards, here are a few tips to get the ball rolling.

Know Your Audience

A flyer handed out in the busy city centre will contrast starkly with that of one handed to older people who could be attending a theatre show, so tailoring your promotional material to your target demographic is essential. Catering the colours, layout, fonts and design to your audience must be done perfectly to get the maximum impact out of your material.

Standing Out From The Crowd

There’s no point in someone seeing your material if it doesn’t have an impact on them. Making it eye catching is a necessity if someone is not physically there, putting it into people’s hands. Vibrant colours (where appropriate) can be used to make a visual impact and draw the eye to your company.

Sell Your Products Or Service

There is no point in producing a leaflet/poster/flyer if you are not going to blow your own trumpet. Make sure people who read it know what service or product they can obtain from you and why they need that product/service.

Don’t be afraid to make a song and dance about what you could do for your potential customer! Don’t go over the top though, less is usually more when it comes to the text on a page, so choose your words carefully.

Save Some Money!

Something which is on everybody’s mind at the moment is trying to save some cash in these difficult economic times. There’s no better place to start than with the actual design. Save some costs by going and trying a university or college designer to create your material. They might well be rough around the edges, but certainly a lot cheaper and surprisingly, fresher with more ideas than seasoned campaigners in the business.

The great thing about this idea is that there are so many students coming through that it is easy to keep looking until you find the person you are looking for.

Getting A Quality Finish

There is little point in going to all this effort should you not create a piece of work which you then print on the cheap. People will compare the quality of your material and associate with your company, rightly or wrongly, consciously or subconsciously, whether you want them too or not. There are a handful of reliable, high quality digital printing companies out there, make sure you use one of them!

Advertising has changed drastically over the past decade with the popularisation of the internet, however digital printing still has a key role to play in the advertising strategies of nearly every company. It’s highly likely you or your company has used digital printing before at some point, even without you realising!

Traditionally, to have something digitally printed can cost more per page than more traditional printing methods, however digital printing allows for on-demand smaller-volume printing, leading to a more flexible printing method alternative.

What’s Digital Printing All About?

Digital printing is a method of printing where the design is created on a computer using a piece of software and then sent to the printer to create runs to distribute. In a business, this is likely to take the form of a flyer, leaflet or another form of advertising which has been designed to generate sales or leads for a company.

Why Choose Digital Printing?

Digital printing benefits include advancements in advertising, photography, desktop publishing and printing on demand.

1)  Advertising: Digital printing helps provide cheaper printing for businesses. Promotional material and personalised letters/leaflets are some of the main uses of digital printing in business along with signage and banners. Among other things, the need for printing plates is removed, making it far easier for companies of all sizes to do runs of their material at much cheaper prices.

2) Making changes to business-related photography though various kinds of image altering software allows businesses to create and change photographs to achieve the exact effect they are after. Thanks to digital printing, these results can be put straight onto paper and a variety of other substrates for a large variety of business uses.

3) On demand printing can be a huge benefit when time is of the essence in creating a leaflet or flyer; digital printing offers a short turnaround time, vital in today’s fast paced market and, if desired, it is possible to quickly alter the image mid run to something slightly different in a short space of time.

The continuing usage of physical material (leaflets, brochures) en masse in what many describe as the internet age of advertising means that digital printing and a new approach to physical advertising is something which cannot be ignored.

The ability to create a design to be printed quickly and easily (which looks professional) is now easier than ever thanks to mass-market software programmes. Digital printing allows a quick turnaround which is of great importance to all businesses of today.

There is no end to how inventive or exquisite the card can be. Sometimes it’s all in the detail.

Sometimes it’s in the quirk and sometimes it is in the simplicity. If you have beautiful design you can’t print on cheap materials, there is just no point. We can advise on the types of paper and card available to send the design of your first impression to a higher plane. Exceptional business cards are a talking point that gives you a chance to start a conversation. They may well show someone else because the card is amazing and we’re pretty confident they won’t end up in the bin anytime soon.

This Japanese picture is breath-taking, it has so much depth. Printing it to do it justice is what we aspire to do with all of our work. The lady, Cindy Wong, who originally pinned it has some other pretty cool stuff on her pinboards http://pinterest.com/dearlydevoted/

We at Purely Digital pride ourselves on the quality of our print work and this client job is no exception.

These invitations we’ve made for Twenty 9k feature a sumptuous matt cerise background with a glossy gold floral design, embellished with the time and date details using a spot UV pattern technique; a high gloss, slightly raised pattern that feels smooth to the touch providing a truly exquisite and luxurious finish.

These invitations are simply stunning.

Talk to us about making your print needs a cut above the rest.

Finally, ugly Bridget Jones pants are a thing of the past! Pelham and Strutt have launched a range of intelligent compression underwear that provides support “in all the right places” enhancing what’s already there. What’s more important to ladies and gents out there is that when you’re wearing it you have a visibly slimmer silhouette. Bring it on – look lbs lighter by wearing the right underwear! If only everything were that easy.

The designs are not only functional in their body sculpting and confidence boosting capabilities but also classic and elegant in appearance.  We at Purely Digital have enjoyed working on their brochures and are thrilled with the result of our hard work.