Design pitfalls and how to avoid them. We mess up. Not every project we ship is perfect. As the co-founder of Lightboard it pains me to admit it. In 2017 we completed a few thousand projects. The overwhelming majority finished
Pearls of wisdom from the father of advertising What can a 38-year-old failed farmer with no marketing experience teach us about ad copy? As it turns out, quite a lot. If you aren’t already familiar, let us introduce you to
PowerPoint Tips PowerPoint Themes: Two minute cheat sheet PowerPoint presentations are the first tool in every sales and marketing team's toolbox, and you've spent a lot of time and money building your brand. Don't let an off-brand presentation ruin it. Here's
tips and tricks Branding: Beyond The Logo As marketers, we’re fighting for our audience’s attention. We have to create great content and make sure people actually see it—while our audience is drowning in a sea of other
Seattle Mayoral Candidates Ranked by Logo Design Today is the primary election for Seattle's mayor. The unexpected dropout of the current mayor created an unusually large field of candidates—and has crowded Seattle's street corners with yard signs. Politics aside,
Storytelling How (and why) You Should Tell Your Brand's Story Storytelling may be a marketing buzzword, but there is actual science behind why it’s a powerful tool your brand should be utilizing. Research has indicated that our brains respond to the descriptive
Illustration The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Our MS Paint Tribute. A fond farewell to MS Paint. Today Microsoft announced that MS Paint, the graphic design program derided by designers (but beloved by middle schoolers) will not be included in the Windows 10 Fall
Stock Photography Unexpected Free Stock Photo Sites for your Marketing Projects At Lightboard we live and breathe marketing design, and that means we’ve spent hours sifting through cheesy, expensive, and not-so-great stock photography to find the diamonds in the rough—authentic, fresh stock
Why hire a professional PowerPoint designer? PowerPoint and Keynote Presentations are ubiquitous in today’s world. Chances are you’ve already created a ton of them yourself. So why hire a professional presentation designer? We've outlined some of the
PowerPoint Tips Distract yourself with these silly PowerPoint Charts. Pie charts, bar graphs, and scatter plots. We've all sat and stared at our screens trying to figure out the best way to visually represent data in our PowerPoint design. It’s hard,
tips and tricks How to do a Great Case Study Interview Let your customers do the convincing. You know your product is great. Your current customers know your product is great. But how do you convince your potential customers that your product is great,
What type of marketing materials does my company need? Ask 50 different marketing experts what type of marketing material is the best for your business and you're likely to get 50 different answers. There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution. Each business
Encourage Action Using CTAs Every piece of content you put out is part of a customer journey. You’re building brand awareness with blog posts, educating with slides decks, persuading to buy with how-to videos, and retaining
What to Include in a Killer Sales Presentation It’s a given that your sales presentation should have a professional aesthetic that matches your branding. But aside from the looks and the benefits, what else do you need to include? We’
tips and tricks How to Structure a Case Study that Converts Case studies are the perfect way to showcase your services for prospective clients—and help build authority in your industry. But there’s a certain art to putting them together. It’s not
PowerPoint Tips How to Design a Great Presentation Cover Page A cover page is a quick and easy way to add polish to your presentation. We'll cover a few tips for creating a great cover image, and we've got ten free PowerPoint cover
How to Lose the Jargon in your Marketing Simplicity sells Your audience comes to you for your expertise but being an expert doesn’t mean using super-specialized terminology that can confuse your reader or make them feel “less than.” Being an
PowerPoint Tips 5 PowerPoint Best Practices for Great Presentations We’ve all sat through terrible PowerPoint presentations. Presentations where the slides were filled with a book’s worth of text. Presentations where the presenter read the slides verbatim in a sleep-inducing monotone.
Feedback Give and Take of Creative Relationships First, a lesson on time vs budget My first Creative Director, a tattooed Yankees fan with a knack for all things design-ey, once gave me a piece of advice that I still refer
Feedback How to Give Feedback to a Designer Communication is a huge component of the design process. Designers depend on you, the client, to communicate your vision for a project—and, most importantly, to give them feedback once you see the
Design Tips Iterating on a Design: it Gets Better with Feedback Wahoo! Let’s talk about feedback! This can be a hairy area for both the designer and the client. As a designer, we're expecting the worst—but secretly hoping for a quick "
Design Tips Finding the Right Look They've been called many things: inspiration boards, look & feel trajectories, lookbooks, moodboards. There are platforms dedicated to them (Pinterest) and a million different tools and techniques to create them. Regardless, their purpose
tips and tricks Getting the Details Right in a Creative Brief When you hire anyone to do a project for you, getting the details right is important. And that’s especially true when you have a creative idea that you want someone to make
tips and tricks What Kind of Designer do you Need? Graphic designers are like doctors (stay with me, here). While there are some generalists out there, you’re better off going to a specialist for a specific need. You’re not going to
PowerPoint Tips Designer's Secret Weapon: InDesign as a PowerPoint replacement As a client, you probably understand the value of a professionally designed presentation, and the impact it has on your clients, managers, and viewers of every variety. A professional presentation amplifies your message
