For the Graphic Designer, prepress means the procedure to prepare digital graphic design files for printers and vendors. These steps of preparation can include proofreading, revisions, checking size, fonts and color, and output of the file in correct format. Prepress at a printer can include making separations, platemaking, creating blue lines and color proofs. The steps stay basically the same on each job and when you do them professionally for several years you may notice signs of how they affect your life. Below are the top ten signs you may be a prepress pro:

1. Double spacing after periods in body copy REALLY bothers you.

2. While driving home after a long day using Illustrator – you imagine creating bezier curves with your car on the highway.

3. You get called nicknames like Genius, Design Darlin’, Design Dumplin’, Graphics Guru or Speedy Spice (from way back – Spice Girls).

4. You really wish you could do a “Command Z” on some actions in life.

5. You are fatigued explaining “Bleed” has nothing to do with losing precious bodily fluids.

6. Continuous tone is not about the car alarm that went on for hours in the neighborhood last night.

7. You feel nausea when you see the font Comic Sans or any True Type font or encounter a Microsoft Word file or Illustrator file used as desktop publishing software.

8. Dummy means an example of design work. You have a lot of other words for stupid people and dingbat is not one of them either.

9. Acid free paper is not about being completely bummed at a Rave.

10.Eating a meal is a major distraction. When you do get out to a restaurant and look at the menu, you recognize the fonts, typos and double spaces after periods instead of the food. Besides, fonts are considered a food group.

What signs have you noticed?

Last week we toured our new office space. Come November we’ll hopefully be making ourselves at home on the fourth floor of a building in Little Italy. A lot of renovations still need to be made. The ceiling will be extended up to make it look less law firm-ish. And many of the center walls will be torn down to create more shared space.

Just a few months away before we starting testing the endurance of the gelato machines at this fine establishment. The countdown begins.

Sometimes you just need a good laugh – especially when it’s a mistake you could have easily made yourself. Well, maybe you wouldn’t write some of these hilarious mistakes in grammar, editing and just bone-headed lack of proof reading – but it’s damned funny to laugh at whoever did:

And my personal fav:

With all due respect to the San Diego Addys, the most prestigious advertising awards show is going on as I type. Taking place on the French Riviera, the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival celebrates the best creative work in all forms of media.

Work in different categories are being awarded throughout the week. Here are a few highlights.

In Poland, car manufacturer Skoda wanted to tout the remote-controlled trunk of one of their cars. Two commercials were run simultaneously on two major TV channels. One with the trunk opened and the other with it closed. Viewers toggled between channels 1 and 2 to open and close the trunk.

In Argentina, beer maker Andes put Teletransporters in bars and clubs to give guys the perfect excuse when calling angry wives and girlfriends.

And from the land of the rising sun, we have this ambient outdoor ad for Supor Non-stick pans. Behind the facade of a pan was a half-pipe where rollerbladers dressed as food skated back and forth, creating the illusion of being tossed.

All of the above work is brilliant. Creative. And, sadly, not from San Diego.

Why is that? Do we not have the talent and desire to do so, or are we content with local award shows? Hopefully it’s a matter of simply stepping up our game. Big time.

If you happened to open the San Diego Union-Tribune over the past week you probably know that Seaport Village’s Spring Busker Festival happened this weekend. This year, I inherited the job of finding, organizing, and communicating with our buskers (aka street performers) and, with this being my first festival, I learned a lot about event planning.

Here are 5 lessons I learned from working with street performers

1. Phone > Email - While most people rely on email for the majority of their professional communication, that doesn’t hold true for everyone.  Some people just work better on the phone (some of our buskers couldn’t even open attachments) and if you need information or an answer quickly; just call. Make sure you’re prepared to leave a short, but detailed message. This may seem like common sense but if people know what you want when you call, they can be prepared when they call you back.

2. Not Everyone Reads Documents – We had a performer who was letting people staple their tips to his body with an industrial strength stapler. That would have been cool and all, except we had already told him in one of our documents, that he had to split his tips with the other acts.  Clearly he didn’t read everything we sent him.

Even if you think you’re being redundant, ALWAYS emphasize important directions verbally, especially when it comes to money. He probably wouldn’t have let people staple 20’s to his forehead if he had known he was going to split them three ways. (To note, we didn’t know he was going to do this ahead of time.)

3. You Can’t Anticipate Every Need – We tried. We took into account the size of our pitches (a.k.a. performance areas), how long certain acts were there, and what their expectations might be. We moved acts around the day of if they couldn’t perform, to the best of our ability, and asked for feedback. This year, a couple buskers suggested we provide water for our performers. I mean, they are only juggling fire and knives, standing on top of six to ten chairs, swallowing balloons, and riding 6-foot unicycles in the sun for hours at a time. Definitely noted for next year!

4. “Business” hours aren’t the same for everyone – Technically, I work 8:30 a.m. – 5:30 p.m. If you’re a street performer, you don’t and you’ll probably call me anytime. The same can be said for many journalists, media members, freelancers, and performers. While most of the world operates on a certain time schedule, there are many important people who don’t and it’s important to answer their phone calls too.

5. Have Fun! – Not that I’m about to leave my job for circus school, but you have to love what you do to excel at it. Most of our buskers travel the country, if not world, performing everywhere they go; it’s not a conventional lifestyle, but they would never do anything else.

So we’re in new business mode, diligently working on an RFP for a client we’d all give up our firstborn/left leg/dog to win. That means a lot of late nights. (Keurig, thank you for existing.)

While burning the midnight candle at BG may not be as scandalous as some agencies, taking a short break here and there does afford profound moments of reflection.

Here are three things that caught my attention. What do you think, should I flip the switch?

While companies around the country are learning how to engage in social media, we really appreciate the ones that can have fun with the fact that they may not know everything about it.  And Big Bear Mountain Resort’s new radio spot illustrates this perfectly.  Not to mention, this spot really is AWESOME-SAUCE!

(click the link below to hear radio spot)

BBMRRadioSpot

So our holiday caroling video was a bit of a hit. Feedback has been good for our purposely “bad” execution.

When I first presented the idea of all of us butchering a song, there was a lot of nervous laughter in the room. Everyone at Bailey Gardiner seemed to think it was funny. But an important question remained. Would we all be willing to make asses out of ourselves? Well… clearly that was well within our skill set.

Nothing teaches like the act of doing. And in the course of filming, I learned a few things. I learned that…

- Sticking a camcorder in front of someone can severely limit motor skills.

- Some of us can actually sing (Katy and Jason). Yo, Susan Boyle- watch your back.

- Exiting a bathroom stall – while singing and eating a candy cane – wasn’t nearly as cool as I thought it would be. Perhaps bathroom humor is best left to the experts.

Without much further ado, here’s a short clip of outtakes and bloopers, as well as the original, just in case you missed it. Enjoy.

With the latest news about Tiger Woods being dropped by huge brands like Gatorade and Accenture, it begs the question… are celebrity advertising endorsements just too big of a financial risk?

Current advertising trends would suggest the answer is “yes.”

In the past, there has been a lot of money made on celebrity advertising endorsements. But along with the successes, there have been an equal number of heartbreaks.

One such heartbreak was Michael Vick. After being convicted on dog fighting charges, not only did Reebok stop production of his jersey, Nike pulled his contract and had to cancel the release of his shoe, “Air Zoom Vick V” which was already in production.

Another celebrity endorsement gone wrong was between Celine Dion and Chrysler. After signing a three year, $14 million dollar deal with the singer (which their ad agency BBDO advised against), Chrysler dumped Celine from their ad campaign. Turns out the only sales that increased were for the singer and not for the Chrysler Pacifica she was endorsing.

On the other hand, sometimes, despite a scandal, a celebrity endorsement can still be lucrative. Take Michael Jordan as an example. His partnership with Nike and production of “Air Jordans” brought in millions of dollars for the company despite his many indiscretions including both adultery and gambling.

So, you ask, what will happen to Tiger Woods? Is he too big of a risk to keep as a brand ambassador? According to a poll by Bloomberg, since the fall-out, Tiger Woods has dropped from 6th to 24th in popularity among consumers. Along with Gatorade and Accenture, both AT&T and Gillette have distanced themselves from the famous golfer.

However, Nike is sticking with Woods (for the moment). In the words of Nike Chairman and co-founder Phil Knight, “I think [Tiger]’s been really great. When his career is over, you’ll look back on these indiscretions as a minor blip.”

Perhaps they recognize that the only thing better than a good celebrity endorsement is a great comeback story.

Captain Morgan Rum launched their new campaign, Calling All Captains, in May. This campaign is primarily aimed at reaching young adult males. Well, I’m a 26 year-old female and this campaign has definitely reached me as well. It’s fun, humorous and catches your attention.

In yesterday’s MediaPost Marketing Daily article by Karlene Lukovitz, I learned about the second phase of this campaign. All I can say is, I love it!

They have incorporated a “crazy nights begin and end with a good call” portion where people can select a prankster character, customize a voice message and then send it to a friend’s phone. People can choose from being an angry bartender that yells at you for stiffing him on a tab, a cute girl in a bar or an angry boyfriend.

This is a great way to get people to directly interact with your brand. I especially love how you can customize your message by including your friend’s name, what that person was wearing in the bar that night and your name. This does make it a lot more believable. And, this message automatically goes into a person’s voicemail, so you are guaranteed it gets there. Don’t worry, the message informs the recipient that this is a joke at the end of the message. We don’t want any angry boyfriends beating some guy up for no reason.

You know what this marketing campaign reminds me of? The “reject number” phase that was huge about 5 years ago. We’ve all had that uncomfortable experience when someone asks you for your number and you really don’t want to give it to them, but you just can’t say no. Well, they invented the rejection line for these instances. There are phone numbers for all the major US cities. When a poor person receives this phone number and calls it, they hear something along the following:

Hi, the person who gave you this number, does not wish to speak to you ever again. You have been rejected. To order business cards with this phone number press 1. To hear a cheer-up reject poem press 2.

The list goes on and on, but you get the point.

I know Captain Morgan’s campaign has a great strategy behind it and has helped their Facebook fan page reach about 111,000 fans. The reject line was just something fun that probably some high school kid came up with as a joke. I do wonder how much money he/she has made off reject business cards and swag though.

I love seeing how companies are constantly directly involving their consumers more and more. It’s the way the world is going. People don’t want to sit back and watch. They want to partake in what’s going on.