Outlet:

I have known so many times that I was walking around the mall and people approach me with flyers and I’ve walked away or declined them. It’s a distraction from my shopping time, I didn’t ask for it and I don’t desire to be given something I don’t want. I bet most of you think the same way.

When distributing flyers, it is really important to use the right channel. Example, a hair color is best sold at a salon or a gym membership is best sold in a night club or a concert. It’s about reaching the right audience at the right place to gain maximum bounce back.

Coupons:

A flyer is more likely to be given a second look or be taken home when it has a benefit attached to it. A discount coupon or a voucher that promises a saving, will encourage the customer to try the product and will instantly add value to the other wise “junk” mail.

Action:

Directing your customer to do something that encourages them to act instantly – CALL NOW or ORDER NOW and we will give you…so and so. If the flier has an action attached to it, it won’t be put on the back burner or forgotten, instead immediately result in response.

Quality:

A good paper and great pics are essential to stand out in the crowd. I have fliers in my office drawer ONLY because they look pretty. While this implies to any business, I can’t stress enough that restaurants specially take care of the quality of pictures they put on their takeaway menus. If the food you are selling doesn’t look good, no one wants to order it!

Stand out:

Use of bright bold colors makes you stand out in the crowd and keeps you a step ahead of your competitor. Use illustrations that depict your brand and the message. It’s easier and more fun to look at simple pictures than read a whole lot of text. And finally unconventional shapes. These create curiosity in the reader to find out more about the product and what it has to offer.

I’ve been designing for over 10 years now. I haven’t met a single client who wanted to make a flier so good, that the reader would want to stick it up on his desk board or save it in his Filofax. It’s as though each flier was destined to be binned. There’s never much thought put in, there’s never any passion and most of all – people refrain from using a designer!! All that effort without the right tools is like putting our money in the toilet.

If you have thought about promoting your business and going the Flyer route, then it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg to get there. Just some design tools and needless to say… a Designer!!

1. Logo – The purpose of a flier is to promote a brand or a service. The first and the most important thing is to make that visible in first glance. This can be teamed up with a slogan that explains what you are about.

2. Legibility – Don’t get over excited and try to put everything in that one piece of paper. Limit what you have to say and make it worth the read. The idea is not to give your entire history in that flier, but to make it to that second glance.

3. Type: That having said, limit the use of fonts to two or three. Work within the font families for thickness or size. Too many fonts can cause clutter and tired the eyes of the reader.

4. Let it shine: Bright bold colors are the best way to stand out in a crowd. This applies for anything really, A product in the supermarket, a T-shirt in the retail store or a car in the traffic! Use of bright color ensures that the flier will get a second look. Use of company colors can further enhance the brand recall value.

5. Quality v/s quantity: Good paper enhances colors, sense of touch and makes your brand look good. A great design printed on cheap paper can and does speak volumes about you, as a brand.

6. Stock it right: 7 out of 10 take away menus that I get in mail are dumped in the bin even before I give the food a try, simply because their pictures look so unappetizing. As amazing as the iphone is – it’s not the right tool for food photography.

Stock photography is a huge market and there are pictures available online for practically any type of business. They are easy to search and cheap to buy – If hiring a professional photographer is not for your pocket, go online and get the right image.. It will add so much value to that flier, and your brand.

Hope this article can inspire you and give you ideas to make your brand better. Have a good one!!

In this rat race of who to ”follow” and new versions of iPhone ( I gave up after 4s), I figured that there were some basic practices that keep you in the game. Real people with Real work don’t sit through 15 different social websites to look for you! If you have used the right tools to spread the web over the internet – you can put your feet up and watch your inbox go berserk!

iPad:

Now this is a trend you cannot miss! Ipad has sold over 100 million units since it first launched in 2010 – It’s a revolution that caters to people with disposable income. The usage of the iPad is when someone is waiting around, travelling or before going to bed – all of which is most likely to be random browsing or research.

Hence, making your website or marketing media, iPad friendly is the most important marketing tool today! It hugely increases the visibility of your brand and doesn’t cost all that much.

Mobilize:

It’s almost a social offence to not own a smartphone these days. You are looked down upon and even disengaged from a conversation if you are carrying one of those DOS phones. Hell, I wouldn’t be caught dead with one of those either!! My iPhone is my external heart.. I can’t live without it. And more so, the 3G on it!

A mobile is the quickest reference tool. One click for a definition, a gas station, the closest restaurant or your next vacation. Having your site mobile isn’t even an option anymore. The corporate world is fast moving and on the go and to keep up – you gotta go mobile!

• Making websites that are made for smartphones or are mobile friendly.
• Making E-mailers with larger text to be legible for phones
• Linking your logo to your website through mail signatures
• Creating smartphone applications
• Promoting your services or offers through SMS

Socialize:

There’s no hiding from these social medias. If you don’t join them – you loose! I don’t believe in jumping on the “ the next big thing”.. But these medias are so important for promoting any business.

First of all – they are all interlinked now.. So what you type on your website, goes to facebook, twitter and linkedin simultaneously – like with this blog entry. This already increased my audience by 50% if not more. And I’m only using the “old school” media.

The point is:

• That these social medias help spread the word and gains visibility
• Enhance your SEO rating in search engines
• Helps you reach the right audience
• Is interactive and lets you talk to your customer directly – ask questions, take polls and send offers
• Costs nothing
• Is a no- brainer!

Viral Marketing:

Back in the days when internet was just starting to happen – a typical marketing plan would include a newspaper ads, snail mail, networking, recommendations.. blah blah – SSNoorree!!!

Wake up and smell the coffee guys!!.. No one has the time or the patience and at that pace your competitors would be sky high!

Make your brand clickable:

• Newsletters ensure that the reader doesn’t forget you
• Ad banners on related websites create recall value•
• Online product catalogue takes you steps ahead of your competitors
• List of services on the web is a quick reference point and is available 24/7
• Contact details that are clickable, saves the reader’s time and is more likely to be used than those that are not clickable

Hope this article gives you inspiration and ideas to promote your business to it’s fullest at the right places. Altough the social media can be overwhelming, it only takes a few hours a week to KEEP UP WITH THE TRENDS!

I find it fascinating to walk into a new restaurant to see what they have to offer to my 2 year old. Every restaurant has amazing ideas to keep the child busy and enjoy the experience as much as we should. Here’s a list of some or the things I spotted and enjoyed with my daughter:

Balloons:
A cheap and probably the most effective way to market your restaurant. This sort of a promotion creates a recall value and keeps throwing the name / logo of your restaurant in people’s face forcing them to finally walk in.

Kids Menu:
I don’t know a single restaurant in India that does kids menu.. Other than Mc D.. and so it’s super popular! Any restaurant can and should have a kids menu. Not only does it drives families in but you can promote it with practically any excuse.

Toys:
Little merchandised toys with your brand identity on it is another great way to add recall value. It doesn’t have to be expensive or fancy but something that the kids would love to collect or want more of. I found these stirrers to be a very effective tool. It’s for a restaurant called Giraffe which we love and each one their drinks have these stirrers.. We’ve been collecting for a while now!

Happy Meals
A powerful tool started by Mc D is a no brainer when it comes to promoting. Cute take away packaging, meals in small portions and your logo being carried around! Children are a genre of customers that might be too underestimated in India and can increase business by at least 20% if not more! The right marketing and promotional tools can really help increase a restaurant’s fall ins.

Kids EAT FREE!
Many many restaurant attract crazy amount of families with this poster on their windows.. Of course it has a few conditions but everyone seems to overlook those when something like this comes up every now and then!

The ideas are numerous but hope that these opened some thoughts to help you promote your restaurant business.. For more ideas - get in touch!

Ruby’s is now rolling and has launched over a dozen restaurants in prime locations of South Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. With choices in Indian, Continental and Tex Mex, no one has any excuses. Go check out Ruby’s 

P.S. Sorry about the messy pics.. I was in a crowd of people and clicking pics was not the best idea!

Amour was another project I did earlier this year. Though the logo was out and about much earlier, the restaurant only launched recently. It’s international cuisine and  great location has already made it one of Delhi’s favourite hot spot. Forest views, outdoor seating and wood fire oven pizzas.. There’s nothing more divine than that in Delhi winters. Go check out Amour 

z

I come back home and sit on my computer to search for this weird pair – I didn’t even know what to type! I tried my luck and searched for Nike toe shoes.. and fair enough I found em!

Now aren’t these weird.. ? But they’ve got something about them that makes you want to own a pair.. They sell for $70 – 100 – which might make you think otherwise – specially for feeling barefoot!! The Vibram barefoot five finger shoes are meant for softer sport activities like Pilates,  yoga, canoeing and running.. though I can’t imagine running in these to be comfortable  but then again I haven’t tried them..

What I like is the design and the use of colour. The vibrams come in various colours for men and women and have variants for different levels of sports – though I like the design of the classics the most.

While I educated myself with the barefooters I found some really interesting pairs that proved to be great design pieces along with being great shoes…

The nike heels for example…VERY sexy. Beautiful design, amazing colour choices and will make any outfit look trendy.. A great fashion statement. I’m sure to buy one of these..

Or the Gladiators..I mean who would’ve thought that the Gladiators could be comfortable!? Shoot me for saying that I want a pair of these too! The colours and the design make it so hard to decide which colour is the  best for you – I’d want to have one of each color for each day of the week – love them!

Have you seen a weird shoe lately!?

  FREE DOWNLOAD HERE

 FREE DOWNLOAD HERE

Graphic Design has become a huge part of the F’n'B industry today. From branding to promotions and marketing. Plain text and pictures don’t do it anymore. Smart use of fonts and graphics can set you apart, even if your food doesn’t

A killer way to use the name and the product on offer to make a funny logo.

Simple name – Simple solution. Great logo!

This logo is really lovely.. though it’s very Greek to me.. the blues and the dome like appearance makes me think it’s a Medditerranean Lounge. I like it anyway!

Though it’s hard to say what they are selling – The logo is a nice take on the otherwise cursed potion.

Love the depth on this logo. Fiery, bold, colorful.

No brainer to make the doughnut look like the G from Glaze.. Something that’s so obvious that you wouldn’t even think of it.

LOVE LOVE LOVE!

Great use of negative space and colours matched with the right font. Simple yet effective. Will work great in black and white too.

I absolutely love this one. I have done logos for cafés too.. Coffee Quotient being one of them – where the logo was similar. Using the top of the cup. But here to use the froth in the coffee to make the moon is sheer genius!

Hope you enjoyed these logos as much as i did..