It’s Thursday afternoon around four o’clock and the entire Bates Creative studio stops what they’re doing to gather around everyone’s current projects, printed out and pinned to the walls. We grab a beer or some snacks and take an hour to collectively critique everyone’s work.

More than just a weekly meeting, critiques have served as our time to visually strategize, question, share, brainstorm, and catch a glimpse of how all the current projects are coming along. Over the years we’ve realized that these weekly critiques have contributed largely to our company’s success.

Top Five Reasons Why Weekly Critiques are Good for Business:

1. It promotes a healthy student-like mentality.

During a critique employees are learning, teaching and getting better at their craft with every new assignment.

This may sound demanding to some, but keep in mind that our comments range from “that’s awesome, here’s why…,” to “this works, this doesn’t,” or “focus more here to take it up a notch,” and “I like where you’re going, but it needs work.”

Think of how many other professions would benefit from having their work publicly displayed to peers to be questioned, congratulated or critiqued. I can only assume the business world would be a better place.

2. Critiques instill and reinforce company culture, which incidentally is one of the most important factors to consider when growing a business or maintaining an efficient, successful company.

Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, shares this enthusiasm for company culture stating, “We really wanted to build the company around culture, company culture being the number one priority. And it’s much easier to build a culture when it’s actually in person versus remotely by email.”

From president to intern, these weekly interactions with everyone in the office provide staff with a solid sense of direction, authentic empowerment and beneficial face-to-face engagement.

3. Critiques present team members with the opportunity to take a break from their computer screens.

Before getting down to the nuts and bolts of the critique, employees have some down time to grab bite to eat or chat with a co-worker. Either way, it provides a few minutes out of the day where employees can recharge and still be productive. It’s somewhat ironic, but we’ve found that relaxation is key to our productivity.

4. More feedback = better employees.

The recurring critiques build a safe environment for learning and discovery. In essence, they are grooming current employees for future success. Critiques allow newer staff to learn the tricks of the trade from the more seasoned team members, while also learning how to take criticism positively, not personally – an essential skill to master in any career field.

A comfortable environment where everyone feels safe to voice their opinion is key to a successful critique. This kind of trust is essential for the discussion to be honest and therefore beneficial.

“It’s only when we are free to abandon our need to measure up and instead simply trust our abilities that we will begin to see real creative brilliance,” says Todd Henry, author of The Accidental Creative.

5. Frequent critiques always ensure a better product and more client satisfaction.

It’s simple math that 10 brains are better than one, and 20 eyeballs are better than two. We can only benefit from having other people, all experts in their respective fields, checking our work not only for visual appeal, but strategic results and creative problem solving techniques.

A lot of companies or CEOs talk about the importance of employee engagement, satisfaction and retention – at Bates Creative Group we feel that there is no better way to accomplish all this and more, than through weekly critiques.

“This is brick red. I wanted RED-red.”

Color is in the eye of the beholder. This is especially true when it comes to setting color expectations in printing. While saying “I want the cover to be red” sounds simple enough – “red” means many things to many people. The red car that just drove around the corner is a different red than the apple you just bit into; just as the red of  a sunset is different than the red of a stop sign. This article will provide information for your print piece as it relates to color selection, and insight to help meet your final color desires.

It may seem that the design and color selection process for your printed piece starts when the designer sits down at the computer to begin working. However, if your piece is color-critical, it is a good idea to meet with the designer prior to discuss your color needs. If the company logo is mandated to be a specified color, the designer will be able to ensure this happens. Early consultation will reduce the need to make adjustments further into the process that could hinder overall timing or result in unexpected design modifications.

As a print consumer, it is important to be informed of the fundamentals when printing with color.  Without getting into the depth of color theory, here are some terms and definitions that will aid in your understanding.

RGB: the acronym for Red Green Blue. This is what you see on your monitor or TV. Every color you see is made of a combination of these three colors. Not every RGB combination is able to be produced in print, which is why things on your screen won’t look exactly the same when printed, and your monitor is not a reliable indicator of what will be your final color output.

CMYK: the acronym for Cyan Magenta Yellow Black. These four colors and combinations of these colors are what you see on printed pieces. The visual range of CMYK color combinations is more limited than combinations of RGB.

PMS or spot colors: PMS is the acronym for the Pantone Matching System, the most recognized international color reference system. In short, they set the standard of color definition with a numbered system (for example, a dark brick red would be PMS 187). Pantone creates a consistency where there would otherwise be ambiguity. Each one of the PMS-numbered colors is referred to as a spot color (a standardized, pre-mixed ink).

Once the designer has been informed of your color requirements, he or she will communicate with the printer to guarantee the anticipated final colors. A printer can provide a Contract Color Proof to give the best color representation (but not exact) before going to press. Finally, you can arrange to meet with the printer to view the piece while it’s on the press, referred to as a “press check.” This allows you to give your final approval before giving the green-light (PMS 354) to finish the print run.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a huge and complex subject, so I’m only going to touch on a tiny facet and assume you know your way around a style sheet.  But I hope that some of these ideas will help smooth out and speed up the creation of your CSS.

Plan
Though not actually CSS, nor really a secret trick, a good plan can be on of the most important factors in having a good workflow for creating your CSS and HTML. I know it’s boring, but the more planning for your site and CSS you do before you start design/code the easier life will be in the long run.  With some planning, you’ll be able to see ways to use some of the actual tricks below, and perhaps find some of your own time saving CSS tricks.

Auto is your friend
The attribute ‘auto’ can be used with a number of CSS properties – it comes in really handy when used with the dimension properties, height and width, and the margin property.

Using one fixed dimension combined with ‘auto’ for the other is a great way to create thumbnails, or resized images via CSS, so you don’t have to make multiple sized of images.
For example

.thumbnail {
height:120px;
width:auto: }

In this example, you would give an image the class ‘thumbnail’ in your HTML, no matter what the original image size it would be made 120 pixels wide and the height would be scaled appropriately.

Using some more HTML and CSS, you can do even more complex variations of this.  For example, look at the thumbnails used on the front page Marines magazine site. The images used for the thumbnails are of various sizes and aspect ratios, but all are resized via CSS, and if the image is taller than the space template, that excess height is hidden.

Combine multiple classes to create effects
Remember, you can assign multiple classes to any elements in your HTML. By using a base style (a great place to use a complex selector – see below) for your element to ensure a unified look for your site, you can add a set of classes that add to, or modify that base class that work along with your base.  For example you have a basic treatment for an image, and then a suite of classes that govern the display size of the image.

You can see this in action on a Marines Magazine article page. You’ll see that all the images share the same basic treatment, but are different widths and page justification that are set by using a combination of classes.

Use complex selectors
This will take a little more understanding of the syntax of CSS, but once you get a grip of complex selectors you can save yourself a lot of effort and lines of code.  You can use complex selectors to modify how an element or class appears based on where it falls in your HTML.  As a result you need a lot less named classes in your style sheets and will not need to assign as many classes to elements in your HTML – all of which makes for faster production and less chance of errors when creating a page.

Grids
There are a lot of excellent free CSS grid resources.  Using a predefined grid system can make going from design to code a simple, speedy process as long as the grid is part of the plan from the beginning of the design phase.

Reset.css
Though some day soon, you won’t need to use this trick.  But for now, be sure you use a CSS reset to make sure as much of your code appears the same way, from browser to browser, as possible. There are multiple variations available on the web, for free.  A quick search will find a number and more detailed thoughts on using them.

Creating a piece for mailing can be both rewarding and educational – and actually more of the latter than you’d think. When designing a piece that will be mailed, you may be surprised by how many variables there are to be explored. Creating a design plan based on these variables prior to beginning the project will ultimately save time, money, and sanity (especially for the designer!).

Below are areas of consideration when planning:

Costs of Production
Cost always plays a part in decision-making for production. The design of the piece will have not only an affect on the printing cost, but also how the post office will estimate the mailing costs. Some of the areas to consider are size; flat versus specialty (i.e. 3-dimensional, tubes, etc.); final weight; and shape (square pieces may require more postage, which is why your local store offers rectangular envelopes for square greeting cards.)

Postal Regulations
The US Postal Service (USPS) has defined requirements for all items that are mailed, and these requirements seem to change often. It’s important to be sure the requirements you are using are the most current. You don’t want to have a finished piece that the USPS refuses to send (and yes, they can do that). These include: placement of labels for periodicals or magazine-type pieces, clear zones for areas containing mailing information, size and shape requirements for flat pieces, and more.

Packaging & Mailing Options
Also keep in mind these items which can affect cost and/or design: speed of mailing; bulk or sorted mailings; domestic versus non-domestic; polybagging; belly bands; double or half covers; and tip-off sheets.

Resources
You don’t need to be overwhelmed by all of the options. You have a valuable resource in your printing company’s mail house. They will be happy to walk you though all of the variables and provide options as well as estimates. You can also utilize the USPS Postage Price Calculator to provide a bird’s eye view estimate per piece at http://postcalc.usps.gov/.

This week is all about time. Seth is taking on how to work quickly; I’ll be looking at how to find time to even do that.

We are all busy – in the office or at home there’s always a competition for your time and attention, it can seem like too much. There’s so much to do, so much to learn and things change so quickly that one could never hope to keep up… or could you? The same tech that inundates us with information and allows for such quick changes can be used keep you on top of it all. So here are just a few small items that can help you free up some of that precious time and use what you’ve got more efficiently.

Aggregator Web sites – The classic and oldest example of an aggregator is the newspaper, but with the rise of easy digital publishing it’s easy enough to find aggregator sites on any and every topic. All you have to do is mine these sites and not the whole web. Just tune in, and let them do the work for you. A news site is a classic example of an aggregator, be it the BCC or NY Times. Smashing Magazine is one of my personal favorites, and is aimed at the Web design community. And of course, there’s LifeHacker for information for ‘getting things done’ – from cleaning house to better code, LifeHacker collects it all.

RSS and Email Feeds – RSS (Really Simple Syndication) aggregators (known as readers) and email feeds are huge time savers. Both allow you to pull the content you want, directly to you.

RSS readers will be based on your computer, which can be a con since it’s less mobile, but most can handle pulling a wider variety of media, including podcasts, making a RSS reader a one stop shop for your web content.

Email feeds send you an email of the most recent content for any site you’ve subscribed to (that offers a feed). For the traveler or commuter this is a great option since any email-capable phone or device can be grabbing the latest updates no matter where you are. That time on the train or plane can easily be used to keep up on your favorite feeds.

Podcasts – Portable players are a great way to keep up. Be it news, tutorials, Car Talk or those back episodes of LOST that you missed; podcasts let you take your media with you. As a train commuter, it gives me 10 hours a week to watch and listen to media on my terms that I would never be able to enjoy otherwise.

Delicious – Tag based social bookmarks are a great tool to see what’s ‘cool’ in the world right now, very quickly. With a couple clicks, you can see what the newest or most popular items are for a given subject or keyword.

Tagging (as opposed to folders) lets you mark and retrieve your information more quickly. Also, since it’s decentralized, services like Delicious mean you can take your bookmarks anywhere – no more trying to remember how you found that site when you move to a different computer.

These tips are by no means a comprehensive list. But if you find yourself struggling to keep up, they might just help.

These days, deadlines are getting shorter. Many organizations need reports and printouts on the fly, and the decreasing costs of full-color laser printers has made instant gratification a reality. However, there are still many projects that require special attention to detail and will ultimately have a lasting presence that should reflect positively on your organization. For those individuals on whom this responsibility falls – this is for you.

What you need to know about getting your job printed is that you have two excellent resources that are at your disposal who will be more than willing to offer their expertise: the designer and the printer. Both designer and printer can help guide you through the process from development to completion, and can offer you tips and techniques, some of which you may have not been aware.

The designer can offer many suggestions on the creation of the printed piece. Because of experience with developing a variety of collateral, often a designer will have instantaneous print solutions for your piece. Be sure to discuss in specifics what you expect of your final product: Who is the audience? Will it be a small quantity or a massive distribution? Does it need to be sent in the mail or be seen on a newsstand? It is also certainly appropriate to discuss up front the overall budget for your printing. An experienced designer will be able to determine print and design limitations based on this information. Questions like these will create the parameters from which a designer may explore ways to make your printed piece shine – such as whether it becomes a custom die-cut piece with a unique shape; if a special folding technique adds intrigue; if a spot-color metallic will draw attention to important text or details… the possibilities can be abounding, and can ultimately make the piece a stand-out from the rest.

The actual printing of a designed piece is often regarded as the secondary step of the production process. However, the expertise that your printer has to offer can also be a source of inspiration and guidance of what is possible for your final product. The same information you provide to the designer can be just as useful to the printer (including budget expectations). A printer will have samples of finished printed pieces that may fall in line with the information you provide. In addition, a printer can request upon your behalf free paper samples or mock-ups to give you a better idea of the weight and feel of the paper you’re interested in using. If you speak with the printer prior to the designer, be sure to let the designer know what you’ve discussed. Bring to the designer any samples provided by the printer, especially those you feel may provide more insight to your goals for the final piece.

Once you have decided upon the direction of the piece in terms of design and printing options, gather these specifications: quantities, paper selection, ink usage, binding, special requests (die cut, folding, etc.) and send them out to three printers to get a range of pricing. This practice is commonplace and printers are aware of this. It may be that the printer you’ve been working with to gather information isn’t the least expensive, but it is important to consider most printers are willing to work with clients on prices if possible, and client-printer relationships tend to yield better customer service to the client. Cost should not necessarily be the bottom line when choosing a printer. As stated by Gucci Slogan, “Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.”