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Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in News & Trends, Tips & Tricks
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Learn How to Maximize the Digital Workspace with Digital Art Creation Magazine

Magazine for digital art, printing and paintingProsperity Publishing Group, North Platte, Neb., is launching a new free virtual magazine, optimized for the iPad, called Digital Art Creation.

The new magazine is dedicated to educating and inspiring artists and photographers that utilize a part or whole digital workspace. Digital Art Creation will be published monthly and is expected to be available at the Apple newsstand later this month.

“Digital photographers, painters and even traditional image makers utilizing digital negatives will find useful information and inspiration in the magazine”, says Tim O’Neill, owner of Prosperity Publishing. “We will focus on blending traditional art with new techniques available in the digital realm,” he adds.

Digital Art Creation magazine is essentially a re-branding and an expansion of the content found in Digital Paint Magazine. While Digital Paint Magazine was primarily a magazine dedicated to digital painters, as the title of the magazine implies, Digital Art Creation expands the focus and includes photography techniques, post capture software and techniques, printing and post-printing ideas, and an exploration of a variety of other techniques and platforms.

Sections of the magazine include: Capture, Image Processing, Marketing Buzz, Great Output, Post Print and a Marketplace. A Reader’s Gallery will be added in the second issue.

“We are not abandoning our love and dedication to digital painting; Digital Art Creation encompasses many different arenas in image capture and processing and distills that information with a focus on fine art,” says O’Neill.

The Digital Art Creation app is free, the iPad magazine download is $3.95 and the Web version download is $4.95. A free read-only text version will also be available from the website. For more information, go to www.digitalartcreation.com. Back issues of Digital Paint Magazine can be found at www.digitalpaintmagazine.com. June 2012 was the last issue.

Posted on by Regan Dickinson Posted in News & Trends
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The Path to Purchase and Large Format Printing

Branding, point of purchase and the path to purchase at the Shopper Marekting ExpoThe “path to purchase,” which was the theme of this year’s Shopper Marketing Expo in Chicago this past week, has become a lot more complicated in recent years with the proliferation of social media sites of all stripes, further fragmenting and already-fragmented media market.

Attendees at this year’s expo – primarily corporate branding and marketing managers – spent the better part of the show learning about the methods and the madness of the path to purchase, 21st Century version, at the expo’s slate of seminars.

Plus, many of the vendors on hand were showcasing online coupon, shopping and branding sites to lure shoppers in at the very beginning of the path to purchase. Mywebgrocer (MWG), for instance, hosts on-line shopping sites for chains like Publix and ShopRite. I was told that about 85 percent of browsers to these sites use it to plan their shopping trip, while the other 15 percent actually shop online.

Another company I ran into at the show, MobiTen, builds software that helps retailers connect with their customers at home, through iPads and cell phones, and continue to interact through an in-store retail touchpad. MobiTen develops interactive catalogs, magazines and sales tools that also collect analytics to help marketers determine trends and product strategy.

Basically, these Web integration companies are attempting to connect the buyer as early in the buying process as possible. What kind of luck they’ll have doing that and connecting those purchase decisions from the Web to the retail location remains to be seen.

What we do know, and how this relates to large-format printing for retail (and really any other application for that matter, from special events to trade shows) is the importance of brand consistency and promotional integration.

As a print shop or sign shop, it’s increasingly important to become part of the entire marketing process. By doing so, you show that you have an interest in the client beyond simply producing graphics, and you create additional opportunity as a value-added partner and consultant.