How to Enter:
“Like” our Facebook page, and give us the best sob story you can muster about why you need new business cards, here on this post. We encourage creativity. ;)

One lucky fan will talk with our designer to create an awesome business card design that represents their business or organization.

We will choose a winner on Friday, March 9, 2012.

Have fun and good luck!

1. Sketch Out Ideas

Come up with some rough ideas and concepts and put them down on paper before you even touch a computer. Start by drawing out anything and everything that comes to your head. Good, bad, ugly, it doesn’t matter, just get it out of your head and onto something you can see and work with.

 2. Know Your Audience

Who will be looking at your logo? What are they interested in? What’s the demographic?  You must know the audience and plan accordingly. Many colors evoke different emotions and marks and icons can mean different things in other parts of the world. You don’t see cupcake shops using thin, seriffed open spaced fonts in their logos. It’s the same reason lawyers don’t use Comic Sans. (Don’t use Comic Sans.)

 3. Keep It Simple

Logos need to be memorable, they need to be recognizable and above all, they need to be familiar. The simpler your logo is, the easier it is to recall. This is the main purpose of your logo. Customers, fans and your target market need to see your logo and immediately associate it with your brand. A good test is to quickly flash your logo to someone for a few seconds, then see how accurately they can reproduce it.

4. It Must Be Flexible

Logos are used in many different  mediums.  Environments such as print, web, television and mobile devices should be considered when creating your logo. Your mark should be easily translated for use on anything from a black and white fax to a roadside billboard. Don’t forget versions in CMYK (for print) and RGB (for screen).

5. Limit Color Use

Since your logo needs to translate to many different mediums it’s important to keep your colors down to 3 or 4 swatches. This means that the colors you choose are there for a reason and can be used throughout the rest of your branding.  This makes it more memorable, as I mentioned colors evoke emotion.

6. Should Be Easily Describable

Like the Twitter “bird”, the Nike “swoosh” or the McDonald’s “arches” someone should be able to describe your logo in just a few words. This assures the simplicity and uniqueness of your mark, as well as a lasting memory.

This template comes with 8 different backgrounds and two photo arrangements. Fully sized and prepped to fit the dimensions of the Cover photo space. You will need Photoshop to edit the template. Enjoy and share!

The’re are plenty of arguments against keeping all your files on someone else’s servers. What if the company goes out of business? What if their servers crash? What if a dinosaur attacks the building and destroys all my files? These concernes don’t bother me too much. If the company goes down, you will more than likely have plenty of notice to grab your stuff. Crashing servers, same as crashing hard drives. I’m sure Google has a much better redundant back-up system in place than I do. And dinosaurs don’t exist. I’m all for it. Having my files somewhere else keeps my harddrives free, and gives me easy access.

I’m getting off topic. (Go cloud!)

Rdio is a cloud based, on demand, music streaming jukebox in the sky. You simply launch the app, search for a band or song, add it to your collection, and listen to that music whenever you want.  Rdio has somewhere around 10 million tracks in their collection which makes for stumping it pretty difficult. 9 times out of 10 they have the music I’m looking for. It has some great social networking features to connect to your friends on Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm.

For $5 bucks a month, you can listen through your desktop browser or with Rdio’s new full featured desktop app. And for just $10 a month, you can listen unlimited on your iPhone, Blackberry, Android or Windows 7 phone. This is includes a syncing feature, which will download tracks of your choosing to your device, incase you find yourself without a connection to the toobs. God forbid.

I’ve tried the other guys. Pandora, Last.fm, MOG. No other service compares right now. (Haven’t tried Spotify). I like to listen to my music all the way through. I pick an album, and enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed, like a story. As opposed to having an algorithm create a playlist for me, that I have limited control over.

The iPhone app has a great UI, easy to navigate and is simply fun to use. From the home dashboard I can search for jams, access my Collection, take a look at my recommend music, playlists, see what my fiends are listening to and check out the Top Charts. Even though the Rdio community has the same terrible taste in music as the rest of the planet.

I love this freaking service! I have 10 million + songs at my fingertips whenever I want. My collection grows larger everyday. As soon as I log in, I’ll check out what my friends are listening to, add a couple albums to my collection and start jamming out. I’m logging somewhere around 8-10 hours of music streaming a day. And for just $10 a month, it’s a no-brainer.

When you sign up for an account, be sure to add me as a pal. Let’s spread the music!

http://www.rdio.com/#/people/smashbit/