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Hi all
Just thought I'd post a bit of work I did recently in xxp. This is for a marketing mailer announcing training sessions in Front Office Etiquette. As you can see the poor receptionist really needs it ;)
Ok I hope attaching the image works...
Best wishes
Manoj
Very Nice Manoj. Look forward to seeing more examples of your work.:)
Hi Manoy, welcome.
Very nice work!
I would be interested in knowing the grahic applications you used before Xara.
And what lead you to Xara and WHY you decided to take the plunge to learn/use it.
Also, can you compare what you like and dislike about Xara in comparison to your other applications.
Regards, John
I think I have spoken to that receptionist ;)
Well done Manoj. Thanks for sharing.
Nice work! reminds me of a job interview I once had. The poor receptionist was left in a corridoor and there was a huge blast of cold air whenever the outside door opened, meanwhile the managers were in a nice warm office well away from that corridor..
Hi Manoj -- The graphic is great! I'm less sure about the marketing approach. In my neck of the woods, in all but the largest offices it is the front office people who open the mail. I'd suggest your approach is a little insulting to them and might just get tossed in the garbage with the junk mail. Instead, if it were marketed in a way that made front office people actually want to take the course then they might request the training.
Since front office staff are important, your marketing materials could acknowledge that in a way that is respectful of the jobs they do. In my experience most people want to do their jobs better, do them with less stress, more fun, and more professionalism. These are 'buttons' that could be pushed. -- Something to think about.
Regards, Ross
Thanks all for your kind comments! :)
Ross--I agree with you and this point did occur to me in hindsight. I think in the heat of discussions we lost sight of how it's just good sense to be a bit careful about pointing out people's failings if you're trying to get their business. Yes my client was rather appalled at the generally poor level of front desk response she encounters here, and I'm sure she wanted to highlight that, but still, more flies with honey and all that! :rolleyes:
Here's the next cartoon in that series (not in Xara but drawn by hand, scanned and coloured in Photoshop--hope that's okay). As you can see, this time around I kept it non-hurtful!! This mailer was to announce the arrival/availability of a business trainer (he specializes on Outbound Training--hence the Tarzan gag tying into the Business is a Jungle theme).
Best wishes
Manoj
John--before Xara I learnt Photoshop and Corel Draw (at the time I had never heard about Xara). Corel Draw was adequate but not really fun to use for drawing...especially being the bloated memory hog it was back then.
Then somehow told me that Illustrator was the industry standard and I started trying to learn that...getting quite confused and frustrated with it I must say...around about that time I found Xara on the net and downloaded and installed it out of curiousity...wow!!! It was amazing...fast, nimble and so intuitive...in no time I was churning out better work than I did in Corel Draw (primarily because I LIKED working--or should I say playing--with Xara). I hardly noticed any learning curve! ;)
As far as other applications go I don't use anything other than Xara these days in addition to Photoshop for bitmap and photo editing so I can't really say...just that for me Xara rocks!! :cool:
Best wishes
Manoj
Hey Manoj - Good to see you here.
That is my former secretary, I'm sure. :)
Gary
Nice work Manoj
Manoj,
Thanks.
I would hope Xara Ltd (Majix) will soon be contacting you soon to use this as testimonial for their web page. :)
John
I'm sure they have a long list already John :)
Actually, it's only the Bitmap Tracer function I was never too happy about--in spite of the very nice tutorials some Xara aficionados have put together. But I have recently discovered the amazing vector magic site and my bitmap tracing woes are no more! :D
Best
Manoj
Manoj, great drawings. You are very talented.
I'm surprised no-one else has mentioned this before, but your avatar, if not also your real self, bears a striking resemblance to Clark Kent, aka, Superman! Are you the man of steel? :eek:
The vectormagic site works well, although I can't import the resulting eps files directly into xara. I had to bring them into AI CS3 first, then dump as an older version AI file and then imported them into xara. Do you have any tricks or tips to avoid having to use AI as the world's most expensive file converter?!Quote:
Originally Posted by Manoj
Stan
Hi Stan,
please do a search for "vectormagic" with the forum search. You'll find two other threads with tips about the EPS problem.Quote:
Originally Posted by standay
@Manoj: Great work. Welcome to talkgraphics! :)
Regards,
Remi
OK, I did that and it looks like you still have to use *something* in between the vectormagic file output and xara. I tried to download the "portable" version of inkscape but it would not install so I downloaded the regular version. It didn't like the vectormagic EPS either, but it did open the SVG and dumped to PDF which xara liked.Quote:
Originally Posted by remi
I found AI to be about as good for this as inkscape, but if you needed a no-cost solution, inkscape is the one.
I use Ghostscript/Ghostview for the middle step. Open EPS, export pdf. Open pdf in Xara.
Ghostscript & Ghostview (the GUI for Ghostscript) are also free.
Hi Bob,
I definitely feel like I have superpowers when I'm using xara ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by -=Drifter=-
Thanks for the kind comments everyone...I do get inspired seeing some of the excellent work on talkgraphics.
Best
Manoj
[quote=Manoj . . . [/quote]
Thanks for the Post & Link to Vector Magic - Appreciated - Tom