Speaker Summary - Marcia Macomber, Cornucopia Creations

The advantage to writing your own speaker summary is getting to add things you forgot to say, or show samples of things you forgot to bring! Continuing along Patty’s theme of tips to help with managing the holidays, I reminded members that another product I offer individuals or businesses is custom holiday greetings cards (which I forgot to bring to the meeting). The examples shown below are my personal cards and one client’s, but it will give you a bit of an idea of what can be done with a little Photoshopping.

Ginny

Ginny Xmas Card 08

This brief example merely shows how I can dress up a non-holiday item (my dog) with holiday attire (particularly advantageous since most dogs don’t like to wear Santa hats of goofy holiday ribbons!)

 

Xmas Card 07

And the sample directly above merely demonstrates heavy application of Photoshopping with LOTS of elements that were not included in the original photography (including a fanciful vineyard view from my house and lots of decorations I’ve never actually applied to my house).

For some clients, I embellish their original logos and build upon them into a holiday theme. Here is one for Bayou Closets’ logo and holiday card:

The gator is frequently added to their promotional literature as a separate element, but it is not part of their logo. If you or anyone you know is interested in custom greeting card work, there is still time before the holidays are completely upon us. The printing cost is surprisingly competitive to the cost of off-the-shelf boxes of cards and is fairly quick in turnaround. Contact me for details.

For demonstration purposes I brought along a finished picture of my niece. Here are the “before” and “after” versions side by side. From the original I extracted the key element and eliminated scratches and poor coloring from the print before dropping in a very different background (her favorite color) to make nice gifts for the grandparents.

 

These techniques can also be applied to business photography. Here is an example of one of several print ads I designed for Sidelines, Inc. (and coincidentally, I also did the product photography since the clients hadn’t gotten the shot I needed). In this instance, I wanted to give the impression that the basket had fallen from a considerable height and had just landed. So this involved much experimentation and fanciful adjustment to achieve this effect with a still-life photo.

I showed a few other samples of work, along with examples of others’ product promotion that I deemed ‘good’ (Kraftmaid cabinetry) or ‘bad’ (a banking ad) for the execution of their design and message in print. In short, it pays to get the message and imagery right the first time. Otherwise, it is a waste of your marketing investment dollars.

Brand advertising and awareness was discussed as opposed to simply product advertising and promotion. Both are quite valuable and are most effective when mapped out in advance how you will roll out simultaneous or sequential campaigns for greatest impact in the marketplace.