September 2007

We win 4 American Graphic Design Awards!
We are delighted to announce that our firm has won four American Graphic Design Awards for projects spanning print and web development. While we’ve been awarded AGDAs in the past, this is the most number received for any particular contest.

American Graphic Design Awards have recognized excellence in design for over 30 years. Selected from over 11,000 entries, winning work represents the best of design studios and ad agencies, large and small, from across the nation.

Our winning pieces were: Logo for Indiana University’s Collins Living-Learning Center; Poster for Fashion+Function+Art, an event sponsored by Optiks to benefit the Buskirk-Chumley Theater; Website for internationally known artist Jennifer Garant; and Bohemian Rhapsody Greeting Card for Sequel Designs, an art licensing business.

All of these designs have been featured in previous issues of Sparks (linked above) and can be viewed as a group in our press release.

The winning entries will be featured in Graphic Design USA’s Design Annual, a 300-page special edition magazine with a circulation of over 100,000 creative and marketing professionals, schools, and organizations.

We are especially pleased to have received awards across a wide range of products, from logo to poster to website to greeting card! Our award-winning design skills can help build your brand and bring you success, too! Contact us to discuss your next project!

It's our sixth anniversary & Erica De Santis wins tickets!
September 20th marked our sixth anniversary of creating smart design and marketing for Bloomington and beyond. Congratulations to client Erica De Santis of the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce who won two tickets to Lotus Festival as part of our anniversary celebration! Thanks to all of you for your support, good wishes, and continued business! It's been a wonderful six years and we look forward to many more!

This month's winner: Jerry Downs!
Jerry wins a digital print featuring this one-of-a-kind design. Have a favorite quote or saying? Send it in! If your quote is chosen, you'll receive a digital print of your custom design, suitable for framing! Check out your competition here.

See the creative process for the design above

What makes you unique?
When positioning your business, you want it to grab people's attention. You want to make a compelling case that your product or service is the best fit for your need. How do you do it?

• Superior knowledge: Demonstrate your expertise through helpful tips and a variety of more in-depth resources people can't get anywhere else.
• Unusual responsiveness: Treat your customers like queens and kings. And when your customers talk, listen. Make eye contact and reply sincerely. Most people aren't used to this level of responsiveness!
• Quirkiness: This doesn't work for everyone, but if you can add something wacky to your marketing, you'll make people laugh—that definitely gets their attention!
• Extraordinary Specialty: If you're in a microniche, that means you're the specialist's specialist! It's very easy to promote what you provide because very few others will have the same thing.
• Stunny Variety: Whenever you can say, "We have the most ___" (fill in the blank), you instantly differentiate your business from everyone else's.

Your business is unlikely to have all these characteristics, but you only need one! Focus on it, promote it, and you'll have found our position!
Learn more about positioning this way in The Sedona Effect on Robert Middleton's blog.