A guest post by Brian Morris, who writes for the PsPrint Design & Printing Blog.
Every business and every individual employee has a unique selling point. Do you know what yours is? If not, it’s time determine exactly what is unique about your designs.
Why do I need a unique selling point?
If you’re a freelance designer, a unique selling point differentiates you from the competition. The same applies to designers employed by design firms or agencies. If you want to get the best clients or land the best jobs and promotions, you need to be able to demonstrate how you are better than your competitors, whether they’re other freelancers, design firms or even fellow employees.
What are good unique selling points?
There are several ways you can differentiate yourself in the design world. Those include price, style, speed, experience and result-generation. Let’s examine how you might position your designs for each.
Price
I recommend asking a fair rate or wage for your services – but never a low rate. If you want to be the cheapest designer around, you’ll get plenty of work and plenty of headaches to go with it. You’ll be overworked and underpaid, and nobody wants to go that route.
Style
Style is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself. A lot of designers have great design skills, but many never develop their own style. While focusing on a certain style might preclude you from certain clients and employers, it will also make you more desirable to others. Being an expert – or even an originator – of a certain design style will make you in higher demand, which in turn will allow you to charge more.
Speed
Some clients value speed above all else. While it’s fair to say you should deliver designs by deadline, speed is similar to price in terms of workload. If all you have to offer is speed, all you’ll get are jobs that value quantity over quality; that is to say, low-paying jobs.
Experience
It’s good to have experience, and you can use your experience as a springboard to promote other unique selling points. But experience alone isn’t necessarily the best selling point, given that a relatively new designer might be capable of matching your skills, strategies and style.
Result-generation
Clients love “big picture” designers who understand how their designs motivate customers to take action. When you can demonstrate diligence toward client goals, and that your designs work toward those ends, you can become a highly desirable graphic designer. Knowing, for example, what type of “buy now” buttons get the most clicks will make you a valued component to profit-savvy clients.
So, how are your designs unique? Do you have a unique style? Do you know how to get results? Those are the two best selling points. Always consider how your contributions fit into your clients’ or employers’ overall goals; doing so will help you better position yourself as the most qualified designer to help them achieve those goals.
Break down your unique selling points: Are you an expert in designing landing pages for conversions, designing user-friendly interfaces, designing outdoor stickers for brand impact, designing direct-mail response postcards, or designing minimalist websites? Whatever it is that sets you apart from your competition is your unique selling point. Focus your own marketing strategy on promoting your USP, and you’ll get higher-paying – and more rewarding – jobs.
Author’s Bio: Brian Morris writes for the PsPrint Design & Printing Blog. PsPrint is an online commercial printing company. Follow PsPrint on Twitter @PsPrint and Facebook.
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10 Of The Most Creative Wine Label Designs
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A guest post by Josh, the social media marketing guru at DBP, a printing company specialising in banners, stickers and labels based in the UK.
There must be thousands of varieties of wine and usually, when you’re looking down the aisles at the supermarket, very few of the labels really stand out. They’re usually quite generic and uninspiring.
However, there are a handful of wine companies who really go that extra mile when it comes to designing and printing labels for their bottles. Here are some of those more creative examples for your inspiration.
1 Oggau Estate
Oggau Estate is one of the most well known wineries in Austria and it’s easy to see why. At Oggau estate, they don’t just make wine, but also add a huge amount of personality to their labels by adding a different character for each bottle. According to Oggau Estate, each character is based on a certain family member (e.g. children, grandparents etc).
Source: Oggau Estate
2 /M/A/S/H
This minimal, yet hugely creative design from the team at /M/A/S/H is named “Return of the Living Red” and it’s easy to see why. Although it might appear quite minimal, the blood-like seal over the cork combined with the attached envelope is all it needs. The envelope contains details about the wine inside the bottle as well as a horror story.
Source: /M/A/S/H
3 – Matsu
Matsu are creators of fine, organic wine and their label designs are certainly creative. There are three designs for each of the three different wines produced by Matsu and the labels each feature a family member (grandfather, father and grandson), portraying the history of the company and its family values without a single word.
Source: Matsu
4 – Logan Weemala
Logan Weemala is an Australian winery based in the Weemala region and their labels have been designed to represent the region where the grapes are grown. Each of the birds on the five variants of wine are common in the area and therefore, portray the history of the wine in a minimalistic, beautiful style.
Source: Logan Weemala
5 – Segreto
These beautiful looking wine bottles are the result of an anniversary label design for the Segreto company. The bottles were very limited in their production but if you were lucky enough to purchase three of them, you can pair them together spell out the name of the company (as pictured). Such a beautiful design.
Source: Segreto
6 – Boarding Pass Shiraz
Many people indulge in a bottle of wine during a long flight and this exceptionally creative label design makes that experience even more fun. The wine label is essentially designed in the style of a boarding pass with essential boarding information replaced with wine information. It looks great and no doubt goes down well onboard.
Source: Boarding Pass Shiraz
7 – Delhaize
These wine labels were produced by a Bulgarian supermarket and were created to reflect the wines country of origin. Corks were used as part of each design and decorated accordingly to represent the various countries with a recognisable icon. For example, South African wine features a cork decorated like an elephant.
Source: Delhaize
8 – B Frank Wine
This label is only half designed for you; you have to do the other half yourself. B Frank Wine allows you to fill in the label yourself and let your co-drinker know why you’re drinking with them. For example, “I’m only drinking with you because…I’m about to fire you and you don’t know it yet”. The design is minimal and makes drinking a great wine even more fun!
Source: B Frank Wine
9 – Lazarus Braille Wine
Although this design might look like nonsense to most people, those that can read Braille will have absolutely no trouble understanding it. The label is printing almost entirely in Braille (although there is an English description near the bottom of the bottle) and although it might look quite mysterious and strange, the design is cool and certainly stands out from the crowd.
Source: Lazarus Wine
10 – TwentyFour
The label for TwentyFour was created by artist, Ben Schiller. Ben is known for creating interesting designs from regular objects and in this case, it’s rubber bands. The result is a minimal, cool looking label that is certainly one of the more creative out there. The name TwentyFour is derived from the circumference of the bottle at exactly 24cm.
Source: Ben Schiller
Author Bio: Josh is the social media marketing guru at DBP, a printing company specialising in banners, stickers and labels based in the UK.