When I get a marketing project, I go all in….whether it’s a magazine ad, direct mailer, trade show lead card, or a sales folder. I always start out with “how can I make this the most AMAZING sales folder I can possibly create???” And then I sit there staring at my computer for….days 🙂 At the end of my creative stalemate, I emerge with a half dozen concepts, and 2-3 I really like. I figure every chance you get to really push yourself creatively and to output something you’ve never done before, you should take it! Make every project a piece of art, nothing feels better than accomplishing something as simple as that!
Brushed metal technique in photoshop.
I have 2 folders that I wanted to share here. The first one is a sales kit folder that makes me smile to this day. I’m still amazed I came up with this idea and actually pulled it off. This folder was for a program focused on our hardware association members joining. They, of course, were in the hardware industry, very industrial. Most of these members dealt with purchasing raw steel on a daily basis. I came up with the idea of makeing the folder look like brushed metal, a look I knew very well (my entire home is adorned with brushed metal everything!) I stared at my bathroom faucets trying to figure out how I could replicate this texture using photoshop and a metallic pantone. I was nervous….but I plunged forward. I ended up creating a canvas in photoshop, filling the canvas with Metallic Pantone 877C, and then taking my paint brush tool and painting some vertical squiggles in black (not too many, you’ll see why). I then went to my filters menu and selected FIBERS. It took my messy looking canvas and turned it into something that looked very SIMILAR to brushed metal. I had to play around with the texture size in order to get it just right, but in the end, I was very impressed. Now the most important ingredient to this all working was the print vendor I dealt with on this project. He was GREAT. He was willing to play around with the metallic ink using my folder design 4 or 5 times, trying to get it just right….and he DIDN’T CHARGE ME. A miracle. The finished product was beautiful!! I highly recommend this texture, it’s simply stunning, and my little piece of art truly created a finished sales kit that the association could be proud of.
My other sample here is a folder that I created as a general sales kit folder for the association, mainly to encompass membership paperwork.
Modern simplicity does the job.
I used our signature BLUE and the letters in our name to create the design. I really loved the modern simplicity of this design, however, it was not the one chosen to move forward with. The folder chosen was simply BLUE, and that’s it 🙂 Oh well, you can’t win them all!
To view larger versions of the images above, or to see more pieces from my portfolio, click here!
Have you created a masterful piece of artwork that you’re super proud of?? Post it here! Or send me a link, I’d love to see it!!!
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