Ask any successful businessperson what’s at the root of his or her success, and over and over you’ll hear, “It’s all about relationships.” But building meaningful business relationships doesn’t happen overnight. It all comes down to establishing credibility and trust with others who will then refer your business to friends and partners. Not sure where to start? Expand your networking opportunities by actively looking for events and venues that will give you prime networking access. Join a social networking site, start a blog, sponsor a charitable event, attend a tradeshow or actively participate in local business organizations like Rotary or Chamber of Commerce. Just getting your company’s name out there is your first step to weaving a wide web of valuable relationships.
January 29, 2008
Expand your networking opportunities
January 28, 2008
Recycling – what’s the big deal?
RECYCLING is a word that we hear everyday – in discussions, on television, on billboards, and in magazines. Chances are, you pass dozens of recycling bins as you go about your daily routine.
So, what’s the big deal?
Why is recycling so important?
How does it happen?
Can tossing your old paper in a recycling bin instead of the garbage really make a difference?
The answer is yes. Paper recovered for recycling accounted for 37 percent of all fiber used by the U.S. paper industry in 2003. More than 80 percent of all paper mills in the U.S. use recovered paper to make their new products. Recycling paper also helps our communities by keeping it out of landfills and incinerators. The paper that we recover for recycling helps us improve the environment and produce new paper products that we use in our every day life.
While many of us have an idea of what recycling is and why it is important, few of us actually understand the recycling process.
What happens to paper after we place it in the recycling bin, or drop it off at a community collection center?
Contrary to what some people may think, paper recycling is not a new idea. In fact, the process of making paper out of recovered materials is quite old. Prior to the 1880s, paper was made from a wide variety of recovered materials, including rags and linen.
Today, many different grades of paper can be recycled into different products. Used newspapers are usually made into new newsprint, egg cartons, or paperboard. Used corrugated boxes are recycled into new boxes or paperboard. High-grade white office paper can be recycled into almost any new paper product, including tissue.
The recycling process can begin at any number of locations, including community curbside programs, drop-off centers, schools or offices. Regardless of where the recycling process is started, it is important to understand what can be recycled in your community and what steps you need to take to recycle.
According to the 2000 AF&PA Community Survey, 237 million people (86 percent of the U.S.) have access to some form of community paper/paperboard recycling, either through curbside collection or drop-off programs. Currently, more than 50 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. is recovered for recycling. This is important because for every ton of paper recycled, it saves more than 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space. In fact if measured by weight, more paper is recovered for recycling from municipal solid waste streams than all glass, plastic, and aluminum combined.
After it is collected, recovered paper is transferred to a recycling center or Material Recovery Facility (MRF), where contaminants such as glass, plastics, paperclips and staples are removed. Once the recovered paper is free of contaminants, it is baled and transported to a paper mill where the recycling process begins.
In broad terms, recovered paper uses paper diverted from the solid waste stream to create new paper products. The process of papermaking is essentially the same whether or not recovered fiber is used..
To begin the papermaking process using recovered fiber, the fiber is shredded and mixed with water to make a pulp. The pulp is washed, refined, and cleaned, then turned to slush in a beater. Color dyes, coatings, and other additives are mixed in, and the pulp slush is pumped onto a large moving screen. Computers and special sensors monitor each step of the papermaking process.
As the pulp travels down the screen, water is drained away and recycled. The resulting paper sheet, also known as web, is pressed between massive rollers to extract most of the remaining water and to ensure smoothness and uniform thickness. The semidry web is then run through heated dryer rollers to remove any remaining water.
Chemicals are filtered out and often burned in an on-site cogeneration plant that helps to meet the energy needs of the facility, and, in some cases, of the local community.
The finished paper is then wound into large rolls, which can be 30 feet wide and weigh close to 25 tons. A slitter cuts the paper into smaller, more manageable rolls, and the paper is ready for use in your school, workplace, and community.
Paper that is recycled begins life again as part of the products that we use in our every day life.
Recycling is good for the environment, good for business, and good for the community.
Recycling – it starts with you.
January 21, 2008
Fonts & branding for Small Businesses
There are many components of a brand identity: logo, color palette, font choice, and the Visual Vocabulary. There’s a lot of information available about the use of logos, colors, and Visual Vocabulary, but not much on the effective use of fonts. So, here’s some information on the creative, practical, and technical aspects of fonts.
Font Basics
A font is a set of all the letters in the alphabet, designed with similar characteristics. This is also known as a typeface.Fonts are usually designed to include several style variations. This can include styles like light, regular, bold, semibold, ultra bold, and italic. Some fonts also include “Expert” versions, which are fonts that include fractions and mathematical symbols.Font families are typically packages of fonts that include all of the different versions of a font. Using fonts with large families will give you a wide range of fonts to use in your materials, for variety and emphasis.There are many basic classifications of fonts. Four of the most common classes of fonts are:
- Serif fonts, which have little “feet,” called serifs, at the ends of the lines that make up the letters. Some examples of serif fonts include Times, Palatino, and Garamond. These fonts are more traditional, elegant, and old-fashioned.
- Sans-serif fonts don’t have those feet. “Sans serif” means “without serifs.” Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Helvetica are some of the most common sans-serif fonts. These fonts are more clean and modern.
- Scrípt fonts are calligraphic or cursive fonts. Brush Scrípt and Nuptial Scrípt are two common scrípt fonts.
- Display fonts are decorative and often used for logos or headlines.
There are other types of fonts as well, including handwriting fonts and all-caps fonts. However, the four listed above are the most common and useful in business communications.
Creative Font Usage Guidelines
Each type of font has certain characteristics that translate into that font’s personality. A font might be serious or light-hearted, traditional or modern, legible or decorative, or any number of other personality traits. The traits of the font that you use in your marketing materials and business communications should reflect and enhance your company’s brand.Your company should have designated fonts to use in the following situations:
- A logo font, which is typically not one of the fonts that come installed on Windows machines: it should be more unique and interesting. Some logos will have two or three different fonts in them. If this is the case, then consider using one of those fonts as the secondary font as well.
- A secondary font, used for headlines, sub-headlines, taglines, special text such as graphics and captions, and decorative text such as pull quotes, which are the large quotes that are used decoratively in articles and documents. This can be the same font as is used in your logo. This is typically an interesting and unique font as well. This may also be used as the font for your contact information in your stationery, depending on its legibility.
- A tertiary font is optional and may be used when the secondary font is not always legible, for mid-length texts such as pull quotes and contact information.
- A serif text font, for lengthy printed documents. Printed materials are more easily read if they are in serif font rather than sans-serif font.
- A sans-serif font, for shorter printed documents and on-screen use. Text on a computer monitor is easier to read in a sans-serif font than in a serif font.
- A website font, which may be the same font as is used as the main sans-serif text font, depending on how that font translates for online viewing.
All of these fonts should have similar or contrasting characteristics. Choosing fonts with similar characteristics will make your fonts match and create consistency throughout your documents. Choosing fonts with contrasting characteristics will build visual texture and interest into your materials. For example, you could pick all thin, sans-serif fonts such as Arial and Frutiger to create a harmonious, matching suite of fonts. Or you could pick fonts with contrasting characteristics to create greater interest, such as using a serif font like Palatino for the headlines and then using a sans-serif font like Verdana for the text.
Each piece of marketing material or document created should have a maximum of three or four families of fonts on them. (A font family includes all of the bold and italic variations of a particular font, so using bold or italic effects does not count as additional fonts.) Using more than three or four fonts is confusing, and it looks unprofessional.Fonts can require special consideration when you send materials to a professional printer for reproduction, use them on your website, or send Word documents to others. Let 1260 take the guess work out by being your one-stop design team!
Font Basics for Branding Your Small Business By Erin Ferree (c) 2007
