After booking a studio appointment at Celebrity Kids for our first family portrait, I received a follow-up phone call confirming the date and time and asking what type of photos we would be taking so they could let the photographer know (dressy, casual, etc.).

Service with a Smile

Upon arrival, we were greeted quickly and waited just a few minutes before our photographer came out and introduced himself. He showed us around the studio and asked a few questions about our style and what types of photography we liked — candid, posed, propped, or themed. He discussed the process—we would do the whole family first, then the kids, then review the images on screen in studio and make our selections. We had 90 minutes and the photos would be ready later the same week.

The photographer was personable and good with the kids, patient and full of ideas. He took photos when we weren’t ready–photos of us looking at each other and not just at the camera. They were perfect. I spent twice what I had planned and left feeling sick about the money I had spent.

A Value Proposition

In an effort to save money on my next set of pictures, I made an appointment at a different studio.

This time we were casually greeted and left to wait as staff members chatted in the back of the store. Eventually, the same person who greeted us and one of the people to whom she had been speaking told us they were ready and took us into a curtained room. No one ever spoke directly to me; the two staff members spoke more to each other than anyone else. When I mentioned wanting to change my daughter’s outfit, as their website had recommended, I was told “If there’s time and another appointment is not waiting.”

It was clear there was a system to which I wasn’t privy. One took photos as the other strategically posed my daughter, who not only looked uncomfortable but out of character.

An Image Problem

The photos I selected were printed out and handed to me in a messy pile. “Do these look okay to you?” I was asked. The photos were gray, muted, flat. Surprised at the low quality, I expressed my concerns. They did some retouching and reprinted slightly better images, but still not great.

I spent a fourth of what I spent at the first studio, but didn’t like the results. The process wasn’t personal — I felt like a name on a list and job that was to be started and finished in the allotted time frame.

Image Really Is Everything

In recent articles about branding we’ve touched on all that a brand is and how it is communicated to its audience through the logo, colors, messaging, imagery, website, staff and service.

A branding agency can do a lot for its clients, but it can’t hire the right people for your line of service. Remember, your people are your brand and even if you do everything else right, it only takes one bad experience to ruin your whole brand for that customer.

Image source: Prettywar-stl

Have a beautiful design that still needs a little pizazz? Finishing a print piece properly can be quite rewarding and below are just a few ways to achieve that satisfaction:

Spot Varnish - Give a spot gloss varnish extra pop by adding a dull or matte varnish in the negative space. Commonly used on photos and logos.

UV Varnish/Coating – The King of spot varnishes. Ultraviolet coatings are available in both gloss and dull/matte finishes. The gloss UV has a super-glossy, richer-looking shine than a regular varnish. And matte versions can even create a soft feel to the paper.

Half-tone Spot Varnish – This spot varnish is created by using the gradual tone or dot of an image. It eliminates the hard edge of a spot varnish and highlights a photo’s features.

Tinted Varnishes – Used in spot and overall applications. A varnish is usually mixed with a metallic ink to create an extra sheen. Metallic inks are opaque and contain small flecks of metal. These inks are also commonly used without varnish as a spot color.

Fluorescent Inks – These vibrant colors, as you can image, add brightness. They can be used as a spot color with or without 4-color process printing. They’re sometimes even used to replace one of the process colors to create a more striking image.

Embossing – Is a raised area, shape or logo surrounded by the relief area (the flat paper). Embossing can be used with printed images or alone on the paper stock (known as a blind emboss). Multi-level embossing has more than one level of raised area and creates additional depth and textures to the object.

Debossing – Same features, just the opposite. A depressed area surrounded by the relief area.

Foil stamping – Usually an area or graphic heat-sealed with an opaque or clear foil. Gold foil is by far the most commonly used, but an array of colored foils exist and they are not all shiny metallic.

Die Cutting – From rounded corners to extravagant custom fold-out or pop-out pieces, die cutting offers endless possibilities.

Bindings – A brochure or booklet doesn’t always require a saddle-stitched binding. Spiral, wire-o and comb binding can add a little personality. And if you don’t think you have enough pages for that, try a grommet or sewn binding.

Have a cool printing technique? Share it with us.

Image source: Patrick Boury

One way to stand out in the digital age is to do something handcrafted.

Assembly of Text’s One Little Book a Month Club offers small, self-published, handcrafted gems like 172 Things to Do in Order to Increase Your Level of Accomplishment, Make the Most of TOAST, and, as they refer to it, “the beloved” Crust Test.

If you like interesting, off the beaten path one-of-a-kind literature, subcribe at www.assemblyoftext.com to receive a fun little handcrafted book through the mail each month.

Online radio is rife with Web 2.0 listeners. According to Techcrunch, content demand for two French-based online music entities, BlogMusik and RadioBlogClub, was so intense that both elected to go off-line this week in search of more robust and secure server space.

But What Right Do They Have?

Unfortunately Techcrunch was mislead by messages on both sites. Turns out the French Government organization SACEM—a regulating body representing original music composers, authors and publishers—mandated both companies go offline over usage fee disputes and copyright infringements.

The Irony of It All

Ironically, one commenter requested that Techcrunch remove a RadioBlogClub widget embedded in the article claiming it was illegally streaming a Prince tune.

Odder yet, Techcrunch France got the SACEM angle of the story correct (If you don’t read French, consider using the FireFox translator add-on we featured).

Pandora’s Box

Online radio is a burgeoning marketplace as suggested in our recent article about online radio sites Last.FM and Pandora.

But pressure to satiate the socially-driven, “I want it my way and I want it now” appetites of online listeners often leads to purveying ill-gotten content. And resolving Napster-like licensing and jurisdiction issues on the global stage remains an elusive task.

For now, I’m content to don my headphones, order up an up-tempo set on Last.FM and watch the drama unfold.

Image source: Patrick Q

Oh the Inhumanity

Automated phone labyrinths, surly customer service representatives and outsourced call centers got you down?
The Answer? Gethuman™

The gethuman project is a consumer movement intent on improving the quality of phone support in the US.

Talking Back

Gethuman provides loads of actionable information, everything from tips on how to get a human on the other end of the line to a subscriber-based voting system. The free website is run by volunteers and is dependent upon the contributions, votes and reports from the site’s visitors.

The critical question posed by gethuman’s very existence:

Is your brand answering the call?