If you’re not getting enough of Lauren and I here, you can now check us out at our new blog for our company Raised Eyebrow. (And if you are getting enough of us, you should check it out anyway as our very talented staff are also contributing to the blog).

Some samplings of our first posts (some of which may be quite relevant to y’all):

• Why you may want to consider using YouTube for video hosting.
• How Drupal (the Content Management System we work in for most of our projects at Raised Eyebrow) can help with Search Engine Optimization on your website.
• Keeping your email inbox under control with a colour coding system.
• And my rather meta post about setting up a business blog, the hows, whys and whats of it all.

A few weeks ago I was in a planning and strategy meeting for a non-profit client that is undergoing a bit of a re-branding process. As a part of the meeting the various communications folks at the table were discussing with the client what types of marketing materials they’d like to apply the new identity to, things like: “how will we apply it to the website?”, “how many new business cards do you need?” and “did you want us to take care of ordering the letterhead?” were the questions on the table. As the client listed out the various applications for the new logo they’d need taken care of, the Executive Director piped up and said “Oh! Can we get some thank you cards again? Those were so useful.” She went on to talk about how often they used the cards to thank donors, volunteers, speakers who came in for fundraising events, etc. In fact, by the time she was done talking about the thank you cards, she decided to cut her order for business cards in half in order to assign more budget to thank you cards.

As you’d know if you’ve read the book, we’re big fans of thinking outside the basic stationery package when it comes to thinking about your marketing materials. Things like thank you cards (or a simple postcard you can write a message on the back of) that use your logo or that identify your business in some way can actually be a great way to stay top of mind and create a connection with your customers and clients - particularly if being “high touch” and personal is a part of your business’s personality. We have one client who often sends along her cheques with a lovely little card (she introduced me to Sweet Beet whose letterpress card is shown here), and while she doesn’t send out “branded” cards, her attention to detail and thoughtfulness make her someone that I’m always happy to boast about or recommend to another colleague without hesitation.

I was reminded of this conversation this afternoon when I checked my mailbox to find a thank you card/postcard from the spa where I had some waxing services a few weeks ago. My experience at the spa was memorable on all fronts (for all the right reasons) and this postcard was an excellent extension of the service I received. The spa is located at the back of a fabulous jewelry and clothing store tucked into lower Yates Street in Victoria. I had made an appointment there to coincide with a trip we were taking to Victoria to visit my family, recalling that my mom had mentioned how lovely the woman, Christine, who ran the spa was. Christine was in fact adorably lovely, remembered my mom and put together that I was her daughter, gave me excellent service and sent me off on my way efficiently without making me feel rushed. Her postcard was personalized and noted that next time I was in town she’d love to see me again. I happen to know this woman’s business is doing very well, and that she’s in no desperate need of clients, and if she continues to offer this level of service and little personalized touches like that I can’t imagine she ever will be. While I wouldn’t ever urge her to forgo business cards, I can tell you that the lovely postcard (which is now up on my fridge) will probably get her more referrals than a business card I lost in the bottom of my purse ever would have.

Just a quick note: We have had to reschedule our Chapters book signing to Friday, September 19th. (It was previously posted for this Friday, the 5th.) Sorry for the short notice, and we hope to see some of you there!

Yesterday I posted about one of the fabulous women we featured in our book, and today I want to talk about two more: Madeleine and Suzanne from Lunapads, makers of alternative menstrual products, wildly inspiring businesswomen, and dear friends of ours. Their most recent venture is producing a booklet for teens about menstruation, called “Happier Periods, Naturally!” — it’s a very cool little publication that they’ve put out in print and PDF formats, discussing periods from an educational, relaxed, friendly, and environmentally-conscious standpoint.

I can’t think of anyone better equipped to introduce young women to their menstrual cycles in a down-to-earth, approachable way than these two, and the all-star cast of contributors (Emira among them) who helped create the booklet.

Of course, there’s a business-savvy aspect to the booklet — it does talk about Lunapads products, but not in a gacky way where it’s one product placement after another. They make sure to keep it mostly branding-free and focused on education and (overused word alert!) empowerment; but the bottom line is that the better informed women are about their options, the more likely they are to be open to the idea of alternative menstrual products. After all, it’s hard not to give them some serious thought once you learn that over 12 billion pads and 7 million tampons are being dumped in landfills every year.

The Lunapads teen booklet is a great example of sharing your knowledge with your prospective customers to bring them into the fold with an ultra-soft sell. They’re taking the opposite tactic to what the big tampon & pad manufacturers have done in the past, preying on teen girls’ insecurity and menstrual taboos to convince them that bleached equals “sanitary” and so on. I hope they’re able to distribute the booklet far and wide; wouldn’t it be great to see this kind of thing in high school health classes?

We’ve received some great press for The Boss of You lately, and I want to share a few highlights. But before we get to that, let’s take a quick swerve back in time…

Some of you may remember that back in May we got a chance to meet four-time world champion figure skater Kurt Browning when we were interviewed on Breakfast Television. Kurt (yeah, I’m going first-name-only here, on account of having spent an hour in the green room with him, and ‘cause he’s very down to earth so I don’t think he’d mind) charmed the socks off us with his smarts and wit and total lack of egomaniacal behaviour (which we would have forgiven him, really — dude has a LOT of medals and stuff), but here’s where he really made us (okay, me) squeal like a schoolgirl:

Yeah, that was awesome. I’d love to post a clip of the interview but the DVD came with dire warnings about only viewing it in private between consenting adults with no recording devices within a 200-foot radius. But I think the Kurt thumbs-up is really the highlight. (U.S. readers, you need to understand that for Canadians, Kurt Browning is up there with, um, Michael Jordan maybe. We’re weird and geeky about our ice sports, OK? Deal with it.)

All right, on to the current events. We are very excited to have been allotted a full page in the September issue of Curve magazine — they have the honour of asking us one of our favourite questions, which is “How can you make money and still live by feminist values?” If you ever have an hour or so to spare, ask one of us that question and watch us ramble endlessly about wage gaps, money as tool for engineering progressive change, and overcoming our personal psychological hangups about money. Of course, in this case we had one paragraph to respond, but trust me, there’s a lot more where that came from.

In other news, we made an appearance in Women for Hire magazine this summer, under the intriguing title, “Can You Turn a Hula Hoop Into Cash?” I bet you’re dying to know the answer to that question, and if so, here’s the article.

Next up, we were featured in Complete Woman magazine, this time sandwiched between “10 Minutes with Fergie” (wherein the Black Eyed Peas chanteuse tells all about her new line of handbags) and “5 Wealthiest Female Celebs” (did you know Oprah earned thirteen times what Angelina Jolie did last year?). Needless to say, we’re honoured to be among such esteemed company.

Bay Area Businesswoman, which seems like quite a great publication from the little bit we’ve seen, gave us a lovely review. It appeared back in June but we only got the clipping recently, so a belated thank you to reviewer Julia Dodge for taking the time to read our book and share her kind thoughts about it.

I don’t know whether we’ve mentioned lately just how much we love the women we profiled in our book. They are a group of truly inspiring, rockin’ gals who not only shared the details of their entrepreneurial journeys with us, but also affirmed our belief that there were other women out there like us, who were passionate about fostering small, unique businesses that reflected their values and creative spirits.

One of the business owners we included was Valérie Parizeault, a Montréal-based designer with a line of jewelry and accessories crafted primarily from recycled materials. Well, Valérie is also a graphic designer who specializes in branding and web design for women-owned businesses — and she has just launched a new website along with a menu of turnkey design services that can help you develop a unique look and feel at a very reasonable price.

Her studio name is Rose Flash Studio, and her portfolio speaks for itself. If you’re in need of a logo, and/or a new website, check her out — you’ll be supporting another woman entrepreneur and getting a wicked-looking product in the process.

It’s been a while since we did an event in Vancouver, but we’re about to make up for that. We’re delighted to announce that we will be making an appearance at the downtown Vancouver Chapters store (at Robson and Howe) next Friday, September 5 19, between noon and 2pm. We’ll be signing books and we would love to meet you, so come on down, bring a friend, and ask us questions!

They will have plenty of copies in stock if you haven’t already got one, but if you want to bring your copy from home you are of course more than welcome to do that as well.

(Edited Sep. 3 -  please note the change of date.)

A couple of people have emailed us lately to ask for details on the de-lovely script font we use on this here website*, and that got me thinking that perhaps it would be helpful to some of you if I shared a few of my favourite resources for researching and test-driving typefaces. I use these for my clients as well as personal projects, but for those of you considering designing your own logo, it’s well worth looking into a tried-but-true staple of DIY logo design: Purchase a fabulous font, and set your company name in said typeface. It’s simple, but if you choose the right font, you can’t go far wrong.

So: Let’s begin with type shops. Here are my faves:

• Veer has one of the best type collections around, and their Flont tool (accessible from any typeface page on their website, once you sign up for a free account) lets you try before you buy. Don’t miss the Veer exclusives, especially Umbrella Type.
• MyFonts is a near-encyclopedic site that’s simply amazing for finding type by keyword. They do sell fonts, but they also provide tons of information on fonts they don’t sell. There’s great cross-referencing here, so if for example you’re just discovering the genius of Zuzana Licko, you can follow the links to all her beautiful font designs. Like Veer, MyFonts offers a “try before you buy” feature that shows up as soon as you’re on a font’s page. But perhaps one of the most incredible tools they’ve got is “WhatTheFont”, an uncannily accurate tool that can decipher a font from a graphic you upload.
• FontShop has an unbelievably stunning collection of fonts for sale. I subscribe to their newsletter, and every time it arrives in my inbox I sigh with delight. Case in point: Parisine, especially Parisine Plus Italic. See what I mean? [Sigh… So pretty.]

I’m leaving out a ton of my favourite type foundries here, because a) most of their fonts are sold through one of the above-listed sites, and b) I don’t want to overwhelm you. Believe you me, I could fill a book with this stuff.

Now that you’ve got your font in hand, what do you do with it? Well, first of all, it’s possible you may need to install a free piece of software in order to install your font. If, after downloading and opening your new font files, you don’t see the font in your font menu, you’d do well to install Adobe Type Manager, a nifty little utility that’ll help you organize and manage your fonts.

Got your font installed properly? Let’s proceed.

1. The first step is to choose the right software. If you’ve got a copy of Illustrator, Fireworks, CorelDraw, or other vector graphics software, that’s perfect. I just heard about a free program called Inkscape that should work in theory, but I’ve never used it. Next in line would be something like Photoshop, but it’s less than ideal. If you don’t have the right software, ask around — chances are someone you know does, and can let you use their computer for this. Worst case scenario: Hie thee to Kinko’s — they usually have Illustrator on their computers, and you can pay a nominal hourly fee for use of their computers.
2. Create a new document, select the Type tool, and type in your company name. Adjust the relative sizing, etc. as needed. (For example, in our corporate logo, “Raised Eyebrow” is big, and “Web Studio, Inc.” is smaller.)
3. I recommend leaving colour out of this for the time being. Your logo will probably be reproduced in black and white in certain cases (faxes, for example, or B&W printouts of documents), and you want to make sure it looks good in those contexts. You can always add colour in later.
4. You may want to experiment with a few different options. Print them out so you can see how they look in print, not just on a screen.
5. Save the file(s), ideally as an EPS file — and while you’re at it, create yourself a PDF as well. Sometimes multiple formats come in handy.

Now that you’ve got your logo file, you can play with colour, and import it into whatever programs you need it for. Dead easy, and I guarantee that a simple logotype (that’s designer speak for a type-only logo) created with a well-designed typeface will put you ahead of 80% of your competition.

Questions? Leave ‘em in the comments. And if you find yourself the perfect typeface, I’d love to hear about it.

(*Are you one of those people who loves the script font we used for the graphics here? It’s Miss Fitzpatrick, designed by the incredibly talented young Argentinean designer Alejandro Paul; you can buy it through Veer.)

We had such a truly fantastic time at The Lab last month in Seattle. Velocity does an incredible job of putting on a great event, attracting smart and talented business/arty folks, and creating an inquisitive environment where folks feel safe sharing challenges and swapping stories. Velocity is putting up podcasts of their events and the podcast from ours is now available for your listening pleasure. For just over an hour of Q&A goodness, check out the Velocity website here.

(Thanks to the super lovely Uncle Beefy for the photo).

Bring Your Own Bag (AKA BYOB) is one of the women-owned business profiled in The Boss of You; they make gorgeous, natural cotton reusable totes (as well as their new produce bag & super-cute vintage satchel lines) right here in Vancouver. Well, they’ve got a wicked sale on right now and I thought I would share: It’s a buy one, get one free deal on any of their natural cotton totes. Of course, my personal favourite is the one they call “Cheeky” (see photo), but there are seven beautiful designs to choose from.