Recently we shared a couple of articles on colour in print design; how to use colour symbolism and colour combinations for more effective print marketing.

‘Print marketing is dead’ – that’s the general consensus amongst marketing pundits and commentators.

Choosing the Right Colours for Your Print Marketing – Part 2: Colour Schemes and Combinations

Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign; what’s the difference? If you’re creating print assets for your business for the first time, it can be tricky to work out which program you should be using to create your artwork. Let’s clear up some of the confusion…

Did you know the word ‘cliché’ itself actually comes from the printing industry?

Nor did we until fairly recently! Apparently the word refers to the metal plate used by early printers to economically reproduce identical copies of the same text (which was also known as a ‘stereotype’ – that’s where that word comes from, too!)

Why was this plate called a ‘cliché’? One method of manufacturing these plates was to press wooden type blocks into molten metal – this would make a distinctive sound which gained the onomatopoeic name ‘cliché’. (Just in case you’re unfamiliar, an onomatopoeic word is a word which sounds like the thing it’s describing – like ‘meow’ for a cat’s call, or ‘fizz’ for the bubbles of a soft drink.)

This daft factoid got us thinking about clichés in general – particularly the ones we see from time to time in the designs we print. Here are our top 3 design clichés – and how to avoid them in your own print artwork!