I was laid off as a graphic designer at a mega church in our community. I loved that job. My plan was to stay there for 5 years, then retire as a full time designer in the world and continue to freelance and travel. Then Covid-19 hit and with the reorganizing of our church to reduce overhead, I was laid off along with others. Dang. So what to do now as an out of work graphic designer in these times of Covid where NO ONE IS MARKETING OR ADVERTISING to save costs? You improve on you. You improve your websites. You create websites. My company goal is to be that contact that can design your logo, brand your business, produce your advertising and create your simple website with templates. Everything an agency can do without the agency overhead.

I’ve worked in agencies. I am that same person that a company pays an agency a $3,000 a month retainer to but my fees are so much cheaper and I do the same work. That is my business plan for the rest of 2020 and 2021.

Below are samples of my current websites. The first one is WordPress which is the one your are on and the second WIX. My next site builder will be GoDaddy because a real estate friend wants me to build her site and it has an MLS button built in. Also, I don’t like the theme anymore so I will change that up. AND, with WordPress, I can have a second site for FREE! So you can have two websites for two different reasons on one platform. Genius!

Then, I blog. Like this one. I blog on what is relevant to now and how I can coach people on what they will need when starting a business. Explain what graphic design is. You would be shocked on what people don’t get that when you hire a graphic designer, you get a strategist, marketer, advertiser on print, outdoor and digital and a branding specialist. You also get a web designer, social media designer, pin and app designer, the whole shabang! For one price. Genius!

Check out my current websites as well as my first website ever built for La Casita Restaurant. Also an ad I recently did for a local casino. Any questions? Email me. Jodiadamsdzine@gmail.com.

Doing God’s work through my design is my biggest blessing. I hope to continue to do this in my current business. Freelance graphic design for the Lord! I was the Discipleship designer which was every event that came into the church to better entertain or educate the parishioners. If you have any graphic needs for your church, ministry or bible study, let me know how I can help.

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Marketing is what happens after the logo or brand is created. Then marketing is thought out of how do we promote the brand? How do we go about advertising? Which mediums do we use? Web, social media, banner ads, radio, podcasts, newspaper/magazines? Trade or public. Do we offer a brochure for more information on our website? Is there an option to have information mailed to the inquirer?

My speciality is campaign design and that is all involved in marketing. Coming up with a brand, deciding before we take pen to paper how this brand will appear. How will we advertise. How it will look on screen as well as print. How can we most creatively promote this concept?

This is a package for a new community in Rancho Mirage. We started off as the client wanted the logo to look like an orange crate label. The name was Tangerine Lane Estates being there were only about 25 homes in the community these were 4 different floorplans and elevation plans to choose from. This location in Rancho Mirage has amazing mount Eisenhower mountain range views that turn pink then purple during the sunrise. So I hired a photographer who set up a tripod on the site and took these pictures for the presentation cover of this total package you receive when you are a hot lead. In other words, truly interested in looking at a lot and floorplan. There is a letter from the developer which states his concept of the high end community. It was a midmod elevation look, Then 4 elevation drawings on one side of the card and floorplans on the other. The presentation folder was washed in tangerine pms color on a smooth sundance cover stock with an embossed square where a colorful label would be placed inside the embossed box. There was a matching envelope for out of town investors. This entire marketing campaign started with the desire to have an orange crate logo. That drove the entire marketing plan. We advertised in the local newspaper and magazine insert as well as Palm Springs Life magazine.

Brochure design is the final step in the print realm of your design. The nice thing is once you design your brochure, whether that’s a full size brochure, mini brochure or trifold, you can take those graphics and use them to create your website and facebook page. Everything you design must coordinate in color, look and font. And never use more than 3 fonts. One for headlines, one for subheads and usually the book version of the subhead for copy. And if you use serif for headline, use it everywhere. Same for san-serif. Don’t combine serif and san-serif because they are two different thoughts. You will create a scitzophrenic feeling for your readers. And script is ok with both serif and san serif but just be sensible. A san-serif acceptable script would be freehand, brush script where serif could be nuptual, zapfino. My logo for example is Cezanne script with avant guard san-serif. Meaning I used a hand drawn script font with a san-serif font.

You are probably thinking, ‘why go to the expense of designing and printing a brochure in this time of websites and pdf’s that allow your readers to print your pdf brochure off their $40 ink jet printer?’ Just that. Here you spent the money to have a designer create a brochure for your company to only have it printed on a $40 ink jet on crappy paper? The colors go to hell and there are no bleeds and food, flesh and, well anything looks like crap. If this is your mentality then don’t bother paying a designer. If you do hire a designer, put in a hyperlink on your website that allows them to order a brochure to be mailed to them at your expense that will include a personal letter on your letterhead, a business card and a few more for referrals and that gorgeous, professionally printed brochure. And printers at quick printers these days all have amazing machines that digitally print better than a 4 color press of 10 years ago at a fraction of cost. And web printing works brilliantly. Brochures.com you can print 500 tri-folds for just about $100 and they will come out shiny and perfect. Vistaprint.com too with their discounts they give you on their homepage, you can get business cards, envelopes, letterhead and a trifold or brochures for a fraction of the cost if you do them all together. And the brilliant thing about a trifold is it fits in a regular, #10 basic letter envelope at no extra postage. And tri-folds can sell your product or business just as well as a full brochure and they can come in 4 folds too if you need that extra panel. They can also be self mailers to save on envelopes. Also panel cards which is a 4″ x 9″, double sided card which gives your clients an at-a-glance of your company, leading them to your website.I charge $300 to design a double sided trifold and an extra $100 to print 500. I charge $150 for a double sided panel card. And I give you the artwork so you can build a website on godaddy.com or any other templated websites and facebook page look and feel, or I can do that for you. Ask me about my packages that are all conclusive so all you need to worry about is your business. Let me market you. Think smarter not harder. You want to sell your product, so make it sellable! Make it beautiful. Invest in the final, end product. Your brochure. It’s all tax deductable as a marketing or advertising expense. All of it! The design fees, the printing cost and the postage. Also your website fee’s and maintenance fees. Keep all your receipts because it will pay for itself come tax time.

Also, think about not just a brochure but a presentation folder, leave behinds (tri-folds and panel cards which are 4″ x 9″ instant information at a glance) envelopes and stamps or labels for your envelopes. Think of everything going together in a coordinated package. Look at my brochures with matching items that surround the brochure like presentation folders, envelopes, site maps, business card slots with your cards which, by the way, are the #1 marketing piece you can carry in your pocket or purse. Make it easy for your future client to get what you are all about.

Advertising comes after you create a logo/logotype or brand. Advertising can be print and mixed media meaning outdoor or billboards, signage, digital meaning on the web or social media. Whatever means you want to persue you still need a professional to design your advertising. DO NOT get tempted by ‘free design’ from your paper or magazine (which are usually one in the same). It sounds enticing but they don’t have graphic designers on staff. They have production artist, most without any education. Your advertising is the single most draw to your company, product or business. It must be smart, conceptual which means have thought behind it and it must be beautiful to look at.

The first example is for Reserve Realty which is the in-house real estate company for The Reserve private golf community in Indian Wells. We have a package through gannett publishing which produces the daily newspaper, Retreats which is a real estate book within the paper and Desert Magazine, which is produced once a month and inserted within the paper. They tried the ‘free design’ for a year and called me back and begged for my services again. Gladly!

SunWorld is a produce company in Coachella that wanted a concept driven ad campaign for their trade publication. I was working at Kiner/Goodsell at the time and we had a brilliant thinker for a Creative Director. Together we came up with this concept of clever wording to mimic the negative space left after chopping the produce in half. We hired the photographer who was a professional who shoots food and still lifes. Took the shots into photoshop and did some retouching and color correction. These ads ran very large in the oversized publication Produce News.

Desert Entertainer is a free publication to the public that offers a valley wide entertainment variety for locals and visitors alike. They also provide ‘free design’ as part of their package but I designed these ads for this book for 5 seasons with The Desert Symphony. They had 5 shows a season and I designed both the Gala ad and the monthly performers ads. I also produced their billboard that features their conductor which is a ‘traveling billboard’. It’s a cheaper option as long as you don’t change the board and they move it to places that have a vacancy. This is great because it means sometimes you are on the 10 Fwy and other times on the city streets.

I freelanced for Cahuilla Casino in Anza California for a short time. Their ‘theme’ is cowboy/western. I did their promotional advertising and their lightbox menus, as well as their billboard campaigns that changed out monthly. The berma shave, which is the series of billboards are for when there was no entertainment provided.

I was advertising director for Fantasy Springs Casino and did all the advertising both print and media (web) for every promotion and enterainment event. This meant constant billboards which I designed, produced and made arrangements with Lamar to put up and where. Timing is critical with billboards especially when acts either sell out or already performed. I also did their newsletter, their promotion invitations and extra promotional items like a cookbook when Chef Freddy first arrived.

A logo is the most important part of your companies identity no matter the size. There are two types of logos. A logo is like Tangerine Lane. Inclosed within a shape with image and copy in the image. A logotype is made up of type (font) and a bug that usually represents what your company does, like Rancho Mirage Pain Management. My logos are concept driven which means they are thought out. Not just stuff on a page which is what you see a lot these days. If you pay Vista Print $50 for a generic logo, good for you. But chances are you will see that logo on somebody else’s signage someday. And does it say what you do? How could it. For instance, Shadow Air is a private jet charter out of Palm Springs International Airport. So I illustrated the mountain range in Palm Springs in black because it’s in shadow. The script was picked to mimic the mountains as well as flowing air from the jet stream. I chose only black for this reason. His material is mostly blue sky, mountain range with his jet flying up so this logo can be black or white. Your logo needs to work in black and white as well as color. Forms for instance are black and white so you logo needs to translate. Also, if you hire a designer do not expect to only pay their hourly rate. Like a lawyer, you pay for their education and experience. Also, ask for a package if you want to have business cards, letterhead, envelope etc. I have a package that for $1500 you get your logo in color and black and white in pdf, jpeg and png for your online needs. Business cards printed at 500 in stock of your choice. Your letterhead built into a word doc and labels for your envelopes (500). If you need just a logo, that’s never less than $500. That gives your 3 concepts, widdling down to one in color and black and white. You pay any less than that, beware. You may find your logo with someone else’s name on it. My logos comes with individual rights. No one else will come close. Just look at the uniqueness of all my logos.

Thanks for joining me!

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

This blog is a creative teaching tool to share with you my concept and how I produced the work I’ve done. My biggest strength is the diversity of my work. That’s because I’ve worked for advertising agencies, graphic boutiques, casino’s, and years of freelancing. I am a ‘one-woman-show’ which means it’s me who answers the phone, meets with customers, do all the creative, researches the vendors to produce your work, delivers the work and bills for the work. I’m also, unfortunately, the collection agency when you are 14 days late in payment…It happens.

I am a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, which is the Harvard of Design schools in the world. I also spent 2 years at Pasadena City College getting my AA degree in Art, and a year at Cal State Long Beach on a wait list for their wait list for graphic design which was 2 years away. So I transferred to Art Center and got my BFA in Graphic Design/Package Design.

My first job was at Max Factor designing unisex perfume bottles and Christmas ornaments. I also had a 3 month internship at J.Walter Thompson in Century City, LA. as assistant to the Creative Director, Denny Kuhr. Then there is a long list of promotion agencies, PR agencies, Advertising agencies, graphic design boutiques, casino’s and freelance in between, filling in the gaps while raising 2 children.

Let’s dive into my latest creation that is still a work in progress…..