Daddy Desktop will show you a little trick that makes many awful photos useful and exciting, and it has nothing to do with Photoshop.

You can learn how in a few minutes. Yes you can. Got the guts?

Most newsletters and company publications depend on photos to get people to actually read the stuff. Bad photos are not your ally. When your photos look good, you look good. And viewers continue to look.

Side benefit: The more good photos you use, and the bigger you can use them, the less copy you have to write, proof, edit, and rewrite.

Select the right creative vendor.
Daddy Desktop will guide you on selection of
art: illustrators, stock art, clip-art —
photo: photographers, stock—
production: printers, prepress vendors.

Of course nothing is better than your own file of talent whose work you know, and whom you can call on.

Daddy Desktop will help you negotiate prices based on usage, style, content, rights and payments. Help, but you do the negotiating.

We'll help you deal with "artistic temperament" in a productive way. (For example: what if the illustrator has stayed up all night to meet a tough deadline. He brings it in at 08:30 sharp. And you hate it. Not good! We can help.) (Probably.)

Our files are extensive, local and national, including digital artists and files, stock photographs, and samples on paper.

Including hundreds of samples of paper stock.

This requires time for judgment, calls to vendors, waiting for callbacks, judgment, your approvals, waiting for callbacks, judgment, and patience. So please don't ask for this function at the last minute. Thank you.

To chat, 704 542 3375.

We create you produce.
Or you create we produce.
We create you produce. Your layout is good but you need a better idea, a better headline, a better pitch. Our Daddy Desktop service will respect what you have done that is still working, and develop a communication concept — words and visuals — that ties in as much as possible with your existing work, but steps outside it to produce a more powerful piece.

Then you will finish the project.

Or:

You create we produce. Your idea is good but you need stronger layout. Ask Daddy Desktop to polish and finish the ad. We'll take your file, if technically possible, and rework it. If you are local, come here and watch and kibitz (if you are not allergic to the cats gainfully employed here). Bring a book.

Then Daddy Desktop will finish the project.

ER deadline service for deadly ads.
The courier is en route in an hour to get your ad CD to the publication or printer. Or your email deadline is ticking. Or already on extension.

It's the ad's Last Chance Saloon.

You suddenly find your ad is wanting. Your gut says:

The headline is wrong.
Or the mood is wrong.
Or the layout.
Or the body copy.
Or the photo or art.
Or the pitch.
Or the offer.
Or something.

Daddy Desktop will drop everything to make your ad work better (on tight deadline extension). It may take a few hours or all night. You will end up with a much more effective ad. It ain't cheap because it is superrush/drop everything/give up dinner and evening plans and work the red-eye shift.

$275/hour, 3–hour minimum = $825,

if one person can do it. If creative plus technical people are needed, the cost will reflect that.

Trust our gut. Over the years, we've learned to.

Includes maybe working on some of your pre-existing project files as an exercise.

Click the "You study design" link at left for details.

Create a Web site that works.
Not one that looks like a phone book page. Ugh!
View our radical approach.

Be forewarned. We hate Web pages:
that are busy and complicated,
that are busy and overstuffed,
that are busy and unfocused.

Many Web sites make three gynormous mistakes.

1
Unlike most products,
unlike most ads,
unlike most package design,
unlike most everything commercial,
many Web sites look alike.
They are not differentiated visually.
They could be for you or anybody.

You. Or. Anybody. 'zat what you want?

They lack visual brand equity.

Many Web sites jam dozens of items on a home page like flies on flypaper. What does the publisher want you to see first? To read first? To act on right now? — Anybody's guess! Why?

Read our article on branding.

2
They throw everything at you at once, a blizzard of ugliness, a hailstorm of visual debris and confusion. Pictures in various sizes. Blue type. Black type. Three or four columns of "stuff." They fear that if dozens of choices are not right there right now, you'll flee. They believe that everyone is comfortable reading tiny type on a computer monitor which chews it up. Worst of all, they believe that clicks are bad, that white space is bad, that greed will force users to find something in this mess. (Are people that patient?) They make it hard for you to find something you might want to buy from them. It's amateurish. It's expensive.

Which is why so many fail.

3
They have bought in to the nonsense of "Web architects," to the idea that invisible technology behind an ugly, self-serving, confounding, techie-driven Web page, without real writers and designers, will make it wonderful.

What they really need is terrific graphic design by a designer / planner whose main passion is:

Effective communication. And creative collaboration with their technical confreres.

704.542.3375. Chat with us.

Help upgrade your type layout via PDF or fax.
Inexpensively. To 704.542.3375.

Refine actual typesetting to three levels:
1. Good. We provide written specs you use to make your own stuff better. Our hourly rate.
2. Better. We do the work to upgrade your actual typesetting. Our hourly rate plus 15 percent but more hours.
3. Best. We work with the best outside type shops. Expensive.

Click the "Refine your typography" link at left for details.

Daddy Desktop Design Doctor.
A special service of Listen, Write, Design, for the top corporate executive or top marketing executive.
For the company with too many creative suppliers, both inside and outside, too many departments, too many styles of marketing communication. The facts are here: