How to print a bookmark?

How to print a bookmark?

There is no better feeling than laying under the covers with a cup of coffee, tea or hot chocolate and a book in hand. Although e-books are amazing, it truly feels great to actually flip through paper and have the emotional connection with a book. 

Every book goes together with an incredible bookmark. It’s all part of the reading experience and we are going to explain why it’s also an amazing way to advertise your business. First of all, how do you create bookmarks:

A step-by-step guide

1.Ideas for an eye-catching design

  • Stick out – create a bookmark with an unusual shape. Take this incredibly smart bookmark as an example:
Source: ThePrintBlog
  • Make use of a hilarious quote. For instance, you can have the words “I like big” at the top of the bookmark and then when you open the book it reads “I like big books and I cannot lie”. 
  • Relate it to your brand. If you plan on advertising with your bookmark, make sure you connect it to your company image
  • Don’t overdo it. Bookmarks have a small space to work with, make the most of it, but don’t overwhelm the viewer. 

2. Print specifications

  • Bleed (3mm)

A bleed is a space, which is meant to give leeway for the movement of the cutting machine. Due to the fact that its blade can deviate by a millimeter or less, if you don’t leave a bleed you might end up with a tiny white line at the edge of your design. For bookmarks, we recommend leaving a 3 mm bleed.

  • Safety margin (4mm)

A safety margin ensures that part of your design won’t be cut off. We suggest leaving a 4 mm safety margin on all edges of your design. Essentially, this means that you have to keep all your text and imagery 4 mm away from the edge of you finished bookmark design.

  • CMYK

To ensure that the colours of your printed design will look exactly the way they look on screen, you have to switch your colour mode to CMYK before starting your design process. The reason for this is that RGB colour mode, which is usually used for digital designs has colours that cannot be printed, because printers work only with CMYK colour mode. To avoid any inconvenience, make sure you set your design to CMYK. 

  • Resolution at least 300 dpi

To really impress customers with quality bookmarks, you should really have high resolution designs of at least 300 dpi. If you are not really sure what 300 dpi means, you can check out this video

  • Convert fonts to outlines or embed fonts 

We are sure that your design is highly intricate with an incredible font, so if you want to keep the font make sure you embed it in your design, so that it doesn’t change, no matter what program is used to open it.

3. Procedure

  • Create your design
  • Choose between single and double sided bookmarks, We recommend always sticking to double sided bookmarks, because they provide you with more space for branding and users believe that double sided print items are of higher quality.
  • Choose a quantity. Think of your budget and distribution strategy when deciding on the quantity. 
  • Choose a turnaround
  • Done!

Why you should use bookmarks for advertising and how to do it?

1.Miniature print ads

Think of your bookmarks as miniature ads, you can also use flyer distribution techniques. Try leaving stacks of your bookmarks in book shops, libraries, waiting areas, etc. You can also stand in the front of high traffic book stores and give them out to passersby.  

2. Distribution is key

Bookmarks can have a big impact, due to the fact that they ensure targeted distribution, so quality over quantity. You can partner up with a writer of your choice, whose content seems in line with your brand image and you can offer free bookmarks with your brand design to be given free with each book bought. 

3. Again and again and again

The best thing about bookmarks is that they are unlikely to be thrown away. People keep them, use them and reuse them, so they actually have quite an impact. Bookmarks are one of those things where you would like to have on hand, but you rarely buy. By giving them away for free, you’ll be sure that people will keep them and they’ll actually have a purpose. 

More creative marketing ideas 

  1. Make an impression that sticks

Stickers are a very underrated marketing tool. They can be very engaging and they do leave quite an impact. In fact, when Reddit was just a tiny startup, they had a very small marketing budget and they spent most of it on stickers, which the employees would carry around everywhere they went and stick them in all possible places. It proved to be quite successful. 

Another cool example is Unicef’s campaign. They placed camouflaged stickers with the sticky part facing up so that it can stick to passersby. Once they would go to remove the sticker, on the other side of it would be an image of a bomb with the names of the countries, in which this could have been an actual landmine. An incredibly impressive campaign.

Source: alexanders

2. What day is it today?

If there is one thing that everybody needs, it’s a calendar. If you take this opportunity to create an amazing calendar design that can also serve as an advertisement for your clients, then you are golden, that’s a full year of cheap advertising space, sitting right there on your customers’ desks. 

The best way to do it is to create a design that is not just branding, it should be intricate and creative and it should be created with your target customers’ personality in mind. You can use calendars to thank your customers at the end of the year. A great idea is to send out calendars as Christmas gifts to clients, you can even include a handwritten postcard. 

Project Link: https://www.behance.net/gallery/48449167/Zodiacish-Calendar

There are numerous creative ways you can use print for marketing, you just have to think outside of the box. What are some ideas you have? Share them with us in the comments below.