Too many visual elements

Often designers assume a logo should visually convey what the brand is all about. They often think if it’s a fine dining restaurant brand, its logo should visually depict that by including visual elements like a fork and knife or chef’s hat. But it’s not necessary. Don’t force yourself to include such visual elements within a logo. Include visual elements only when they fulfill the purpose, match with typography and don’t look too much stuffed forcibly. A logo may still look very appealing and eye grabbing without any visual element. Visual element need not be an object or literally what your brand is all about. It can be abstract too, but with reasoning behind it, conveying the brand promise.

Don’t fall for italic fonts

Quite often designers fall in love with calligraphic italic form of fonts. But, such fonts come with their own limitations. They are hardly legible from a distance and specially keeping in mind when print outputs are not of great quality. Such fonts also do not go with every category of product, may be doing justice for perfume brands, lifestyle brands but hardly match with an educational institution’s logo. Don’t fall for such fonts unless you are confident about them and it matches with the product category in hand.

Don’t make it look fine only when big

Designers often get tempted to put too many elements in a logo, make them multi-colored and as a result clutter the entire logo. They forget it may look fine only when they are projected big, but when compressed the logo may look very confusing and not readable. There will be occasions when you will have to print your logo in really small size, in a corner of the documents like envelope, writing pad, letter head, calendar. If your logo is not clear enough in such a case it may get totally unnoticed. So make sure your logo is clear and distinct even when small. Key to such clarity is simplicity. Keep your logo distinctive yet simple.

Your copy or content has to perform in this chaotic world. Wouldn’t it be too much to ask your content to do without providing it the weapon necessary to cut through the clutter? Those weapons are scannability, keywords, and short paragraphs. You need to keep following things in mind when writing for the web:

1. Keep the paragraph short. You are not creating a literary piece, so there is no need to make the paragraphs long. 3 to 4 sentences long paragraphs are enough.
2. Divide your articles using headings and subheadings.
3. Use important items as bullet points.
4. Use keywords in H1, H2, H3, and other heading tags.
5. Use primary keyword as early in the title as you can.
6. Use important keywords in the first 50 words, or at least in first 100 words.
7. Use headings and subheadings to communicate key ideas.
8. Use standard font in the blog or article you post on your website, so that most of the people can read the items.
9. You can also insert images and tables in an article or blog post to make the article scannable.
10. Keep the sentences shorter.
11. Do not confuse your readers by addressing too many issues in a small article. Keep it simple.

Your article or blog post should be constructed in such a way that your audience gets the central idea in the first 30 seconds. This is the amount of time one has for any online item. The visitors may stay longer if you succeed in retaining the audiences’ attention within this time limit.

We notice only few advertisements because we relate to only a few products somehow, or some of the advertisements are done creatively, or they have some unique placement innovation. Apart from classified advertisements, rest of the display advertisements have started showing less of overwhelming response in comparison to others forms of media of advertising. Mostly they go unnoticed. Have you ever thought despite of being most credible medium, offering benefits like refer back value why this medium is not doing well in terms of advertising?

Too many advertisements in newspaper, that’s advertisement clutter, may be one big hindrance on the way of its success. Too many advertisements make us feel irritated and we don’t bother to see each of them. So the message goes unnoticed.

News paper advertising has also become quite expensive. To save expense nowadays people advertise within a small space and compromise with the creativity, making mandatory things like logo, brand name, package shot prominent within the small space. So dearth of creative advertisements has made it quite obvious for the people to ignore them.

In a busy day an average person spends around 20 minutes in scanning the newspaper. In that short time grabbing attention of the person towards the desired message is really challenging act. And also daily news papers stay with us just for a day. Relative short life span of the medium is disadvantageous for the advertisers. So multiple insertions are required to get noticed.

Newspapers generally do not use high end quality of paper, which limit’s the production quality. Poor production kills the creativity.

News paper is not a target market customized medium, rather it’s a mass medium, it talks to all. Several times it may reach all unwanted people, who may never buy your product or service and you may miss out your target market. It always has the risk of reaching out the wrong people.

With growing popularity of internet lot of people have switched over to e-paper from newspaper in hand. Online version of publication may not carry all pages bearing advertisements. And in this case print ad turns into online ad, which is mostly ignored and not remembered.

Hopefully some innovation will change the fortune of news paper advertisements.

Since last couple of posts in the series on building rapport with prospective employers, I have been talking about twitter etiquette, which I will continue in this post as well. A sound knowledge of particulars of etiquettes related to twitter is necessary to make it big in here.

Check your language for appropriateness

Seeing the informal nature of twitter, it is easy for us to give in to the temptation of using informal language (read slang), wrong spelling, and misplaced grammar when tweeting. You should avoid doing this. It can spell doom for your twitter job-search dream.

Advice when asked

Many a time, people sends out a tweet to anyone and everyone asking for advice on certain topic. Seize this opportunity and make big of it. Participate in the conversation and hang in there until the discussion is devoid of all its juices.

Use shortening services

Use URL shortening service when posting a link in your tweets. Shortening services like Bit.ly, Tiny URL, etc., will not only help you keep your URL short, but it will also help you track the clicks. You should also use these services to post pictures and videos on twitter. It will also help you keep your tweets clutter free.

With these tips, our discussion on twitter job-search etiquette comes to an end. You will get desired result, if you apply the tips I have shared so far. Each one of them is very valuable.

Time management tips for freelance writers

Tip 1: Fix schedule for each client

The very first thing a freelance writer can do to manage time is to set a schedule, client-wise. Let’s say you have three full time clients and one or two one-time clients. Fix one proper time for each permanent client and keep one-time projects floating in between them. For instance, you can work from nine to eleven on Client A and then from one to three on Client B and from four to six on Client C, and keep the other one-time projects floating in between them depending upon when you get time. Do not follow my two-hours to one client timing. You can vary the duration of work according to the amount of work given to you.

Tip 2: Make a weekly list of articles to write

If you have a permanent client who needs so many articles each week then you should take one day out, probably Saturday, to make a list of articles’ titles that you should write in the coming week. This will save you a lot of time cracking an article idea at the time of writing.

Tip 3: Use Word 2007 for blogging

I am writing this post using blog feature of Word 2007. This is very handy. You can use it to write and publish blog posts. All you need to do is add accounts using XMLRPC link to the client’s blog. IF you do not have word 2007 then you can also consider using other offline blog editors. It will save a significant amount of time.

Tip 4: Install Clutter Cloak

On computer, it is quite easy to get distracted, and it is equally easy to save yourself from distraction while writing. You can save a lot of time by installing clutter cloak or any other similar application on your computer.

There are many more things that you can do to save yourself the horror of missed deadlines. Stick to these and see the improved performance.

I am a big fan of the label feature. Currently, I am using around 125 labels and filter combination to short my mails. Labels in Gmail are such a lifesaver. It helps us organize our mails and keep the inbox tidy. You can use label along with filter option to create a rule to categorize the mails and even remove them from your inbox. I will tell you how you can use the labels.

Create a label and a filter rule

This is the very first thing to do. Let’s say you have created a label called Sweetheart, and in the filter you mention that any mail from your sweetheart’s mail ID (even more than one) should go directly to that label skipping inbox, or simply apply the label to the mails coming from her.

Color code your labels

Like me, you can also color code your labels. It makes it easy to visually scan through the kind of stuff is there. Like all my SEO newsletters have Orange code, online marketing ones has red code, and all my writing related newsletters has blue code. This has helped me visually scan through the labels.

Activate Hide read labels from Gmail lab

Click settings (you can find it near logout link in Gmail) followed by lab then scroll down to find “Hide read labels”. Enable this feature. This will help you keep the sidebar clutter free, and only labels with unread mails will be visible to you.

Using labels to search

You can also use labels as a shortcut to reach the mail you want. For this, you will need to enable “Go to label” feature from settings >> lab. (See pic for detail).

Hide Labels from subject

I personally do not like hiding labels from subjects, but not everyone shares the same view, therefore, Google has this feature to hide labels from subjects. To activate this, go to settings and then to lab, search for “Hide Labels from Subjects” and enable it (see pic). That is all you need to do, if you do not like seeing colorful labels beside subjects.

Well, the first thing that gets noticed is the design. People come to your website, and decide to read or leave your website on the basis of how it looks. Not on the basis of how it reads. No matter how informative your website is, or how well researched your content is, your website is not going to witness visitors, unless you have a well-designed website. If you want your website to be read, make sure that it doesn’t look visually cluttered. There are 3 elements that you need to keep in mind while designing your website.

1. Clutter-free layout: Content is the king. No one is contesting this fact, but no one will care, if a king is draped in rags. Hence, a visually appealing website is a must. A visually heavy and informative website will have the same effect on the visitors as will have a non-informative website. In either case, the users are not going to stay on the website.
2. Flat Navigation: Navigation of your website, as the name suggest, is the doorway through which one person travel between different pages. If you have not planned a proper link structure then your visitors will have hard time in going from one place to another. And the more difficulty they face, the quicker they will be out of the website. Navigation also helps search bots in crawling through the pages; therefore, you should avoid using JavaScript or other opaque elements in your navigation link.
3. Awe-inspiring Over-the-fold elements: use over-the-fold space of your website to garner visitors’ interest by seeding website content that excites the visitors. Do not waste this space by explaining everything. Rather, use it to pull the visitors to the inside pages. You can use it as teaser, but be very judicious in using this space. You can also put your highest-paying ads in this space.

Along with these, there are quite a few more things that affect the quality perception of the website. Can you suggest some? Use the comment box below to add your view.

A PowerPoint presentation with objective data, three-dimensional colorful graphs, round-cornered table with drop-shadow effect, and picture of an attractive female provides useful information, which if understood well can fetch the desired outcome. This “if understood” have a big “If” which never get resolved because data, graphs, tables, bullet points, and unrelated pictures fail to make a connect with the audience, and these things can be blamed for the failure of countless meetings and numerous PowerPoint presentations.

Various studies in neuroscience, psychology and human cognition has proved many time that human mind is not a machine fuelled by logic and rationality. On the contrary, it is an organic entity overfilled with the emotionally charged synapses and is flooded with various chemicals that get charged up by the things happening in our surrounding. A good story increases the flow of these chemicals by drawing cues from the immediate environment of the audience, and thus getting the response the storyteller seeks.

A good story helps you cut through the clutter and reach your intended audience with the message you want to deliver, whereas, a PowerPoint presentation, with graphs, tables, bullet points, etc. just adds on to the clutter. A well-crafted story helps you connect, and it will elicit the response that even hundreds of PowerPoint presentations, and reams and reams of objective data working together will not get.