The beauty of the graphic design industry lies in its ever-evolving nature. People’s preferences change; since graphic design has close ties with advertising and marketing, it’s only natural that the industry transforms in response to shifts in tastes and attitudes.

This year, experts weigh in on what they think will be the trends in graphic designing. The predictions are quite interesting.

Handmade Look Will Be In

In an interview with LogoLounge, expert graphic designer Bill Gardner says logos evoking a handmade feel will be taking the stage in 2016. This means that companies, particularly SMEs, will take on a more personal appearance with their company logos. These handmade logos will make use of cursive font to emulate handwriting, and two-dimensional graphics that insinuates intimacy and simplicity.

Google’s Material Design

On the other hand, Janie Kliever of Canva’s Design School blog writes that the Material Design scheme first introduced by Google will also rise up as one of the popular graphic design templates in 2016. With this design language expected to be a trend, one can expect more companies, specifically in the technology and service vector, to implement the tenets of Material Design: blocky elements, lots of white space, and three-dimensional aesthetics for depth and contrast.

Pixel Graphics Will Be In Too!

The rise of “voxel games” like Minecraft, Roblox and many similar titles seem to have influenced corporate graphic design as well. Kliever also noted in the same Design School blog that Coca-Cola have come up with limited edition pixel graphics for their products, featuring elements from the 1978 arcade game “Space Invaders.”

Kliever also added that the use of pixel graphics leans towards a resurgence of retro graphic design elements from 20-30 years ago implemented with today’s modern graphic design techniques.

Minimalism Will Be On the Rise

The World Wildlife Fund features one of the simplest logos ever sported by reputable companies and organizations. The logo features black letters and a single panda, devoid of any other elements including the organization’s full name itself, set against a pure white background. Gardner predicts that such a simple yet thought-provoking design scheme will continue to influence the industry, banking on the technique’s ability to communicate to the audience with minimal design elements.

Mobile Will Drive Graphic Design

Last but not the least, the rise of mobile technology will influence many of the graphic designs in 2016 and onwards. Medium predicts that more graphic designers will implement mobile-inspired work even though the project is not geared towards a mobile audience.

Design and your custom Smartbag

Designing for your custom Smartbag can be a challenge!
By using these design trends tips you should be well on your way to creating an effective marketing tool that creates great exposure for your business.

Contact Smartbag if you need to discuss your design or print requirements at: sean@sge.net.au or visit us at http://www.smartbag.com.au

Now who would have thought to do this in the first place, right?!
Cheap Christmas decorations for the office perhaps…

Check it out… IT ACTUALLY WORKS!

Not sure about the backing track though, bit dark!

If you want to buy some bags to get started go to:

https://www.smartbag.com.au/

Marketing a small business is, by theory, a lot simpler because, for starters, an SME is often focused on a local market and does not have to worry about, at least in the beginning, establishing a nationwide or global presence. That’s the theoretical part—the actual application can be very difficult, especially for inexperienced entrepreneurs.

To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of 7 ingenious marketing techniques that are both inexpensive and effective. Try them out when you can!

1.       Take Advantage of Social Media Sites

By now, you’re probably already posting updates about your business on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn. But if you want an extra punch for building visibility—especially for really new business—use the paid advertising solutions on these sites, such as Sponsored Ads on Facebook. These paid options help you market your business faster by targeting an audience by demographic, as well as city/region.

2.       Attend Trade Shows

The value of trade shows might be overshadowed by social media, but events still offer one of the best ways to build networks with influencers and, in a sense, “spy” on your competitors. Event networking on trade shows also gives you a chance to meet people who might be interested in entering into a business partnership with you. The possibilities are endless.

3.       Think About Participating in Local Organizations

Corporate responsibility is still an effective part of any corporate communications strategy, showing your audience that you support a particular cause. First, think of what advocacy is closest to you—it may or may not be relevant to your business and its product. You can then highlight this cause by publishing the occasional press release about a sponsorship, or by holding promotions, with a certain percentage of each sale going to your supported organization. It’ll seem like a small thing, but it’s a good way of building

4.       Organize Your Own Events

You can promote yourself better by setting small events of your own. For new businesses, events are one of the best ways to generate interest at the local level. Of course, your event has to be relevant to your brand or industry. For example, food and beverage SMEs can benefit from music and entertainment.

Use the event to give away gifts to attendees, giving them a taste of what you offer them as a business.

5.       Give Your Target Market Some Freebies to Think About

Generosity knows no bounds. Organize a giveaway in which your customers can get freebies, like free Eco bags in which to put their purchases from your shop. Some giveaway schemes are literally so cheap that you can run such promos for a sustained period of time.

6.       Think About Content Marketing

People consume information on an astronomical basis especially via the Internet. Get a solid content marketing plan made up and implemented. Articles can be written by you, or by others at reasonable rates; you can even re-purpose existing articles into new ones.

7.       Develop an Affiliate Program for your Customers

This does not work for all businesses, but if your model is one that can work with creating a rewards program for your customers, then by all means, do so. This encourages your clientele to refer others in return for something, and initiates a viral marketing campaign for you by themselves.

For stuff that you can use for your free giveaways like custom bags for shoppers, check us out at Smartbag.com.au. Call us now at 1300 874 559, and we can discuss how we can help you out.

Climate change and rapid overall environmental degradation are truths only few have the guts to deny. We’re dumping so much garbage into – without any solution for taking garbage out of – landfills. The Great Barrier Reef has just recently been declared dead. Every year, we reach new temperature peaks, with the heat becoming so unbearable that asphalt roads and public trash bins are melting in some parts of the world.

No single event catalysed this dystopia. Rather, it’s the culmination of several, seemingly small actions, habits, and shortcomings that lead to the sad reality we live in today. If you’re guilty of any of the following, it may be time to rethink some of your choices.

1. Using traditional light bulbs

A quick look at the data would tell you that if you aren’t using LED light bulbs, you’re leaving money on the table. To start, the average expected lifespan of an LED bulb is 5 times longer than a CFL bulb, and almost 50 times that of an incandescent bulb. An LED bulb takes about 10 watts for a total of 500 kwh over 50,000 hours – that’s 200 less than CFL and 2,500 less than incandescent. Incandescent and fluorescent bulbs aren’t only far behind in terms of energy efficiency, they also wind up costlier in the long run.

• Paying for non-renewable energy

Several energy companies – especially those in developed nations – have already began a steady pivot to sourcing energy from renewables like solar, wind, and geothermal. Those that haven’t contribute to the gaping hole in our ozone layer and the unprecedented multiplication of asthma cases. How so?

Non-renewable energy plants burn coal, oil, or use nuclear energy to heat water to a boil and produce steam, resulting in the release of huge amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. Whether your utility provider is running on renewable energy tends to be readily available information you could gather from either your utility bill or from phoning the company.

• Substandard design

How a building or space is designed largely contributes to its eco-friendliness rating. For example, having too many untinted or unobscured windows in a warm climate results expending more electricity just to manage the temperature. Likewise, a space with poor air circulation and low ceilings lined with high-conduction materials would also be quite warm. Architects and interior designers have developed techniques and design standards to match ecological demands. Failing to comply with these would be more than an inconvenience – it would be a failure.

• Using K-Cups

With the world and our lifestyles accelerating to new speeds, it’s no surprise that K-Cups became a hit just as quickly as they wind up as waste in trash bins. Their impact on both the market and the environment is so remarkable that, every year, enough k-cups are sold to circle the planet 10.5 times. Just in case it isn’t clear yet: that’s a lot of K-Cups. To top it off, they’re made of the kind of plastic that doesn’t end up being recycled. They’re a huge waste despite their petite size.

• Single-use items

The K-Cup is only one of many of its kind – single-use items. Despite the growing presence of reusables in the market, single-use items like plastic bags, paper cups, tissues, and the like continue to be the go-to for most. Whether it’s because of a culture that emphasises convenience, lack of foresight (like, yes, a reusable bag is a bit more expensive than plastic, but you’ll end up using it hundreds of times more), single-use has got to go. In their place, there are wiser alternatives like coffee tumblers, reusable eco bags, and mobile tablet – all of which you have way more creative freedom over.

• Impulsive purchases

Let’s run through the life cycle of a buzz item. A trend starts, people catch on, millions of it are produced, millions of it are bought, the trend dies, millions of it don’t get bought, then practically every one of them winds up in either the discount or rubbish bin. Such is the case with the rubber band bracelet and, soon, the fidget spinner.

The purchases you make that you won’t end up having use for or fun with in a month or so become an extra couple hundred tonnes of waste – resources that could have gone to the production of more important and sustainably relevant things. Your unthought-of purchases are as much a bane to the environment as they are to your wallet.

• Sticking to paper

The Earth is balding faster than a man past his prime with our forests and woodlands are steadily running out. Where are our trees going? They wind up as books, piles of documents, magazines, newspapers, flyers, posters, and photographs. Agreeably, these things can’t be classified into the items in number 6 of this article as these are all, in one way or another, significant. However important, their existence in the print format is decidedly not so.

Most new books are published in both the digital and print formats (the former tending to be a lot less expensive than the latter), periodicals now cater to digital subscriptions (again – cheaper than print), flyers and posters can be “handed out for free” as pictures on social media, and digital copies of pictures costly literally nothing to keep.

Long story short: paper doesn’t have much use beyond wiping out our trees and taking up space.

Deceivingly insignificant habits and small acts are ravaging our environment, and that’s a great thing. That means that the changes necessary to reverse the damage and recover are likewise minute. At the end of the day, it’s an accumulation of little things – choices, habits, fidget spinners – that make the world we live in.

News flash. You produce a lot more trash in a day than you would expect. Over 1.5 to 2 kilograms a day is no joke – that’s about the weight of a full-grown adult human every month. A quick look at the rate at which our landfills are nearing their brims, among other things, will tell you that we have a waste problem, and it needs fixing.

Reducing your waste output and living a green lifestyle sound like daunting tasks, but really are as simple as little changes in your everyday behaviors. Living with zero waste isn’t as drastic like running off into the wild. There are quick, easy, and convenient ways for you to save the planet, and that includes:

1. Going for Reusables

We collectively produce as much as 9 billion kilograms (and rising!) of garbage in a year. When the goal is to reduce that amount as much as you can, the most obvious way to go is to make sure you put out less garbage.

To do this, opt for things that you don’t throw away – reusables.

You’ll find that introducing more and more reusables into your life is as easy to do as it is to say. There are reusable shopping bags available everywhere – a whole myriad of online sellers has begun to offer the product, and even your local grocery may have them ready for sale by the counter. Aluminium (therefore reusable) drinking straws are a growing trend, and come in straight and bent variants.

• Planning your purchases

No one is unfamiliar with impulsive purchases – from the unexpected candy bar to the extra notebook you just “had to” buy. But not only are these purchases unnecessary, they also generate a lot of unnecessary trash in the long run.

To reduce your waste output, it pays to be more mindful and in control of the things you spend your money on. What you take in defines what you’ll end up putting back out into the world, so refrain from the unnecessary and wasteful.

• Go paperless

Every day, over hundreds of acres of trees are chopped down to produce lumber and paper. What’s great about modern technological advances is that your need for paper is now a lot less than ever before.

You can now fit thousands of books in a device smaller than a pocketbook in size. The daily paper and now even your weekly and monthly magazines can be delivered online instead of to your doorstep.

Not only are you saving paper, you’re also cutting down on all the electricity it takes to print at a press and the gasoline guzzled to have hard copies transported around.

• Upgrade your bulbs to LEDs

Your average halogen or fluorescent light bulb is obsolete in so many ways – bulb lifespan, brightness, temperature, and even electric output. It’s about time you go for an upgrade, and switch your regular bulb with an LED. While, yes, these do tend to be more expensive, you wind up saving a lot more than you initially spend. At the end of the day, it’s not just money you’re saving.

• Fix your leaky faucets

A couple of drops every other second doesn’t seem like a threat to the environment, but the truth is that these add up. If a leak fills up, say, a bucket after every 24 hours, that’s a bucket of water you could have used to brush your teeth, or wash your dishes or laundry. And, when the goal is to go for zero waste, every drop counts.

• Grow your food

A lot of oil by-products goes into growing and distributing ordinary food on our tables

• Pesticide goes into growing your fruits and vegetables
• Plastic is used to package them
• Even more gasoline is required to transport food from and  growers, to factories, to warehouses, to supemarkets, and then to your home.

However, as you have seen so far, there is always an eco-friendlier way to go about things. In this case, you can opt to grow your own food.

Seeds and other gardening materials are cheap and fairly accessible. If you don’t have any gardening specialty shops in your area (which is uncommon), many groceries tend to sell seed packs and the tools necessary to get you started.

The benefits of growing your own plants are hardly limited to the culinary. You could grow otherwise useful plants like mint, aloe vera (great for burns and moisturizing), citronella, spider plant, and so on. Additionally, if you’re growing enough to have some to spare, you could always sell or give some away to your neighbors.

• Cook your food at home

Brush up on your cooking skills. It turns out cooking your own food, as opposed to buying them pre-packed, can make a great impact on the environment.

The next time you order take-out or drive-through, get a good look at your order. Think of all the plastic, paper, and cardboard used to package your meal, and how much less you would have wasted if you had just decided to grill your own burger or fry your own chicken.

Think of it this way: not only are you cutting down on your waste output, you’ll also end up a better cook along the way. It’s a win-win.

• Start a compost pile

Growing and cooking your own food doesn’t get you all the way to zero waste. You still have to throw out – and waste – whatever’s left behind. Composting your leftovers bridges that gap between you and zero waste. There are several guides online with tips on how to start your compost pile, what goes in and what doesn’t, where to keep it, and so on.

Old habits die hard, and you can’t expect to make these changes overnight. There’s no trick or cheat here – all you’ll need is the creativity to come up with ways to be eco-friendly in your own ways and the persistence make those little changes leading up to a pivot in your lifestyle.

Minimising your carbon footprint, or the amount of carbon dioxide and other carbon compounds generated from the consumption of fossil fuels, has grown to become a major concern in recent years, what with the dangers of climate change looming over our planet.

More people are now conscious of their impact on the environment, both on a personal and societal level. It’s no surprise then why there’s a growing movement to find efficient and eco-friendly lifestyle changes that minimise humanity’s impact on Mother Nature.

And it’s not all that difficult too. When it comes to reducing your carbon footprint, even the smallest changes can have an exponential effect, especially when combined with the efforts of others.

Below are a few examples of what you can do to reduce your carbon footprint, starting today.

1. Unplug Your Gadgets and Electronic Devices When Not in Use

Many of us leave our gadgets plugged in at home all the time, even if they’re not in use. But even if your electronic devices are switched off, as long as they’re plugged into a power source, they’ll still use a little electricity.

While a single TV may not seem like a big deal, if you have more than 20 devices plugged in and on standby, you can bet the cumulative electricity consumption of these electronic devices will show on your next bill.

By making a conscious effort to unplug devices on standby, you can save at least a hundred dollars each year on your electricity bill. That’s not much, but when you and several thousand people do the same, you can cut carbon emissions by a significant percent.

• Carpool and Take Public Transport

Share a ride, save the world.

Cars and other petrol-powered vehicles are easily one of the biggest generators of carbon emissions. The simple solution? Have fewer cars on the streets. But actual implementation is a different story.

What you can do is start small. Take public transport instead of driving your own car, and try to come up with a carpool arrangement to share a ride with some friends regularly. You can even take things up a notch biking or working to work whenever possible. You’ll even get some exercise to boot.

• Switch to Energy Efficient Light Bulbs

How many people does it take to change a light bulb and save the environment?

If everyone were to change their light bulbs from old incandescent bulbs to newer, more energy efficient bulbs like light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), you can expect to see a dramatic drop in electricity consumption.

For one, the LED equivalent of a 100-watt incandescent light bulb uses a mere fraction of the energy to generate the same brightness of light—sometimes even more. By using less electricity, power stations won’t need to burn more fossil fuels to keep your home illuminated.

You can even kick things up a notch by combining your home LED lighting setup with solar panels to reduce your dependence on ‘grid electricity.’

• Filter Your Own Water

If you’re constantly buying bottled water, you’re not only increasing your carbon footprint, you’re also producing more plastic waste.

Fortunately, tap water is safe to drink in many developed countries. In Australia, water is in major cities has been filtered and made potable. According to Sydney Water, “We filter 100% of your water to ensure it’s safe to drink straight from the tap.”

“We clean our filters every two days,” the company adds on their site.

If you’re uncertain of the quality of your tap water, you can still save money and cut your plastic waste by installing your own water filtration system. This solution might have a high initial investment, but it’s one that ultimately pays for itself in the long run.

An even simpler, not to mention cheaper, solution is to buy multiple water filter pitchers to maintain a steady supply of safe drinking water.

• Use Reusable Bags

When was the last time you thought about plastic bags?

Most people never think about plastic, not knowing that each time they throw away a single-use plastic bag that came with their purchase at the supermarket, they’re contributing to the worsening landfill and ocean pollution crisis. In fact, the huge majority of garbage floating around in the ocean is composed of plastic, specifically, plastic bags and packaging

Furthermore, the production of plastic bags also requires the emission of carbon—after all, plastic is a by-product of crude oil.

The simplest and cheapest solution is to use reusable shopping bags. Made from sustainable materials like cotton, canvas, or jute, reusable bags can last well over a lifetime and can be reused over and over again. Use them when buying food, household supplies, going to the beach, going to the gym, as a carry bag in school—the possibilities are endless.

• Laptops over Desktops

There’s no doubt computers are a necessity in today’s world.

We need them for work, school, for business transactions, and of course, leisure. But unless your computer requires a powerful CPU and GPU, you should consider using a laptop instead of a desktop PC.

According to Energy Star, a notebook/laptop can be up to 80% more energy-efficient compared to a desktop. The reason is simple: most laptop computers have low-power components to ensure long battery life. They’re often equipped with energy-efficient screens, hard drives, and CPUs.

• Open or Close Your Windows and Curtains

If it’s hot, open a window instead of having the air-conditioner on full blast. If it’s too cold, close one. Don’t crank up your heater.

Simple adjustments like these can be enough to moderate your home’s indoor temperature. It also helps to use your HVAC system only when you need to. If you live in an area where it can get really hot or cold, insulating your home is one of the best ways to keep your home at a comfortable temperature. 

Curtains are also a big help in moderating your home’s indoor temperature. During summer, keep them closed at daytime to keep sunlight out. This ensures your airconditioner doesn’t have to work twice as hard to keep your home cool. At night, pull back your curtains to let the breeze in.

During winter, pull your curtains back to let as much natural sunlight at daytime—this way, you won’t have to switch on your lights. At night, pull them together to keep warm air inside.

• Choose Local and In Season Food

The amount of carbon produced to transport food and other edible goods around the world is something most people don’t think about. The ships, trucks, and even planes required to transport food from producers to warehouses around the world can lead to tonnes of carbon emissions each year. And that’s all so people can have watermelons and other out of season fruits and vegetables in the middle of winter.

The more sustainable option? Support local growers instead, even if that means waiting for your favourite produce to be in season. This not only reduces your personal carbon footprint, you’re also putting money in local farmers’ pockets, giving them a reason to invest in fresh, locally grown, and organic food.

• Plant a Tree or Two

Give back to the environment and cut your carbon footprint by planting a tree. Trees don’t just provide shade, they produce oxygen through a process that absorbs and converts carbon dioxide into the air we breathe. And the older a tree becomes, the more carbon dioxide it absorbs to generate oxygen. In fact, a single 10-year old tree can release enough oxygen to support two people.

These are just a few simple ways to help you cut down your carbon footprint. Remember, it’s never too late or too early to start caring about the environment. We only have one planet we call home and if we intend to make it livable for the next generation, we need to act now.