Our latest Retweet Competition closed on Monday April 18th – thanks to everyone who entered. The competition was kindly sponsored by MyTrainingManager- a fantastic organisation based here in the South East that provides a range of support services for businesses, including people management, development and training advice.
We had LOTS of entries – all of whom are now following MyTrainingManager on Twitter – so watch out for regular tweets from Jen Tarjanyi!
The competition prize was a free place on any of our courses up to 2 days in length, a selection which included our Management Training, Indesign Training andExcel Training courses (among many others!)
Stephen is a Brighton based web editor and designer, and has chosen to attend our Illustrator Training course on 28/29 July
He told us: “I was really surprised but excited to have won – I chose Adobe Illustrator as it’s something I always wanted to do but as the majority of my work is as a web editor/marketer it’s not something that I could readily justify budget for.”
The competition has really helped in raising awareness of the services that MyTrainingManager provides, and Stephen was impressed with the services they offer – he added:
“I think helping business in listening to and developing their most valuable asset (people) can only be a good thing. Often I think employees may have a mistrust of traditional HR which they may feel supports the company first. I also feel that employees may fear repercussions if they are too open. So I can really see the value of a specialised mediator that has the expertise to listen and help in finding the balance of interests.”
You have finalised your design and it needs to go to print, you may be experienced in print design or you may be new to it all. Either way, can you guarantee that the design you see on your computer screen is going to come out like that at the printers?
Most of the time, what you see on the screen is what comes out of the printer, but every now and again it just doesn’t look quite as good as it did on the screen. So here is a list of things to check before you send your design to the printers –
Your images, at their actual size, should be at least 300dpi (dots per inch) and, preferably, saved as tiff or eps files. When you enlarge in image in Photoshop, you are decreasing the image resolution, but if you enlarge a vector image in an Illustrator file the image will not deteriorate as the files are resolution independent.
When printing in colour, check and double check that your files are in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) format as RGB (Red, Green, Blue) and other colour systems can be misleading and not print the same as they appeared on the screen.
Avoid small text at all costs, especially if they are thin or elaborate fonts.
If you are going to have pages of small text then stick to black or choose a spot colour, it can just turn out messy otherwise.
Be aware that if you publication has a large amount of reflex blue (pantone colour) then when it is printed and it has dried, it will appear more red.
When very thin parts of an image or text are printed on uncoated stock, it can spread, so it would be best to steer clear of that. Uncoated stock is very absorbent, that’s why it can run.
If you have high percentage tints in your publication, these can also spread on uncoated stock, this is because the printer has to put more pressure on and it can result in spreading and a loss of detail.
When you publication has high percentage tints and they are combined with solids, this can be a difficult job for the printers. They will have to bump up the colour otherwise it won’t look very good. In turn this will affect the tints and makes the whole process more difficult.
And the simplest of all tips – Spell check! Spelling mistakes are the most common problems in printing and can ruin a great publication and cost your business a lot of money. Most printer companies will check your publication but in the end, it’s not their responsibility if you have typed something wrong.
If you think about these little pointers the next time you are creating your publication then your printer will thank you for it! It will make the whole procedure much smoother and should allow for a smooth printing process without the need for re-prints or an overall product you aren’t happy with. Most skilled printers should be able to resolve the problems I have listed here but if you follow these simple tips it will only help you to produce a great publication.
Thanks to everyone who entered our “My Home Town” photography competition, in the end we had around 220 entries and a really high standard. The time has come to announce the winning photograph, with a free Silicon Beach Training course here in Brighton for the photographer: the winner will be able to choose any one or two day course with Social Media Training, Photoshop Training,WordPress Training or Advanced Excel Training in Brighton, Sussex, being just a few of the training courses on offer.
There’s only one winner, but entries were so impressive that we’ve also featured the six shortlisted runners up. Thanks to our fantastic photographer judges Miss Aniela and Pete Barr Watson who kindly took the time to pick a winner, based on Originality, Interpretation of the Theme and Composition.
For those who missed out last time, see our current “Colour” photography competition with an amazing Freelance Photography Course from Brighton Journalist Works for the winner.
Image by Heather Buckley - http://www.heatherbuckley.co.uk
The winning entries will be announced on our blog, Twitter and Facebook as well as other social media platforms – an excellent way to generate online exposure and increase traffic to your website! So if you’re an aspiring freelance photographer looking for a foot up into the industry, what are you waiting for?
This is the second of our regular bi-monthly photography competitions, and the theme this time is “Colour” (thanks Ashley for the suggestion); interpret it however you like!
To follow competition updates head to Flickr, Twitter or our Facebook page and hear about updates on our blog.
Read on to find out more about the free training and canvas print prizes, our high profile photographer judges, and how you can enter.
They may not be as snazzy as Adobe’s Photoshop CS5, but here’s our list of free photo-editing software that make great substitutes to Photoshop if you’re not yet ready to splash out. They can also be a great choice for those who photograph or blog on the go and need a quick and easy way to edit images.
Check out our newly updated, hands-on SEO Training in Brighton, Sussex.
If you have a website then search engine optimisation is a crucial step to ensure that you gain relevant traffic and the subsequent sales conversion. The web is highly competitive and without good SEO you could be missing out on the business you deserve!
Our intensive one-day training course will demonstrate how to optimise for the web whilst avoiding dodgy Black Hat SEO techniques such as spamming or buying links, which could cause a Google penalty, or worse – damage the reputation of your business.
Ultimately good SEO means putting your customer first and thinking about what they may search for on the web. Whether that means offering good quality content or carefully choosing keywords, our SEO training course will show you how to do just this.
Successful SEO shouldn’t be a headache but rather an implementation of basic principles across all your web activity. These include talking to your niche market, using specific long-tail keywords, regularly updating your website with relevant material, keeping current and monitoring your progress.
From learning about how search engines crawl the web to discovering how to build links and use Webmaster tools, our SEO Training course will provide you with all the basics for you to go ahead and implement your own SEO action plan.
Our new public SEO course runs for one day and costs just £225 + vat per delegate. SEO Training is run by experienced SEOs with real-life experience of implementing SEO strategies. The next course will be 11th June 2010 and courses will continue regularly at our Brighton Training Centre in the North Laine area.
Google Analytics is the tool of choice if you’re serious about online marketing. If you’ve been working on your SEO (we run Search Engine Optimisation Training) or have been running a Social Media campaign, Google Analytics should be your first port of call in assessing its effectiveness. Used correctly, Google Analytics will provide you with in-depth data about how your users are finding you, where they are entering and leaving your site, and everything they do in between!
What’s more, you can also set up pay-per-click AdWords campaigns so that your site appears in the sponsored links as well as (hopefully) the natural search results.
Regular public Google Analytics courses here at our training centre in Brighton, 45 minutes from London, are now available to book.
We’re expecting these to be popular! For more information and bookings please call us on 01273 622272 or e-mail info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk
Our latest Retweet Competition closed on Monday April 18th – thanks to everyone who entered. The competition was kindly sponsored by MyTrainingManager - a fantastic organisation based here in the South East that provides a range of support services for businesses, including people management, development and training advice.
Stephen is a Brighton based web editor and designer, and has chosen to attend our Illustrator Training course on 28/29 July
The competition has really helped in raising awareness of the services that MyTrainingManager provides, and Stephen was impressed with the services they offer – he added:
