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One often-overlooked element of design is color. Color has the power to influence a viewer’s perceptions in some amazing ways. Sure, a certain color might look nice, but what about the psychological impact it has on the viewer? Does a certain color make the brain happy as well as the eyes?

“Bah!”  You say. “I don’t care. Yellow is my favorite color and we’re gonna use it!  Yellow everything!”

But we assure you that color plays an important role in our visual perceptions. Creating the right palette that makes people react the way you want them to is part of the whole thing we do when we design stuff.

We’ve been in the design business for a long time, GLAD WORKS friends. During that time, we’ve seen many design trends come and go. Since the days of the Web 2.0 aesthetic, to that cool retro thing everyone is doing right now, we have seen it all.

No, we haven’t lost our minds.

Serifs and Zapf Dingbats are real and they have feelings! Today, GLAD WORKS friends, we’re talking about typography, or the art or process of setting and arranging type. Typography also refers to the style and appearance of type.

We know this might seem like a little nitpicky issue to some of you, but is your logo social media friendly?

Is your website starting to look like it was born in the 90’s?  WAS your website born in the 90’s?  If so, it’s definitely time to start thinking about a redesign. You didn’t think that site you had designed a millionty years ago was going to work for you forever, did you? 

Why are we boring you guys with this topic?

Because if you’re thinking about having a website designed, this is definitely something you want to consider, so listen up peeps!  Plus it’s wicked cool, so there’s that too.

Before we get into telling you what responsive web design is, go here and slowly make the desktop browser thinner and wider. Do you see how the layout magically changes to fit the new width of the browser? See how you can make it really small and skinny just like the screen on a smartphone?

Did you guys know that we design websites?

You did? 

Oh.

But did you guys know we can design them for kids too and not just grown-ups?

No?

So, is a picture really worth a thousand words? If the picture's on your website, it could be worth ten times that many.

Considering that the average visitor spends less than a minute on your website, the design of your site needs to quickly and easily communicate who you are and what you do. When you have a small window of time to say, "I am a friendly, thoughtful, customer-service-oriented business with happy customers," good quality images may be the perfect way to do it!

Whether used in print or online, designing an ad is all about one thing: delivering a message that drives a prospect to become a customer.

Most companies change their ad designs over time to reach new and changing audiences. As your company's profile changes, your market matures, and your product offerings grow, your advertising and marketing efforts should evolve to suit your needs.

You know that your audience has a finite amount of attention, so you want to make it worth their while to give you some of it. To that end, it's important that your message be succinct and simple.

With the prevalence of email, text messaging and IMs, it seems hard to imagine that conventional mail (a.k.a., "snail mail") could be an important marketing vehicle. And yet, millions of dollars are spent by companies each year to create direct marketing pieces that deliver an experience right to your door.

How do you know if you should reach out and touch someone in their mailbox? Just ask yourself three questions: