A great way to make high end, yet lower up front cost promo pieces is to do it yourself as one-off pieces from your own printer. When you do something high end and get it outsourced you usually have to do a minimum run of 250 for boutique printers and usually 1000 for normal printers. Alternatively us photogs can usually do something right off our own printers. If you have not already you should invest in a good printer or at least one that will make great promo prints. I have the Epson Photo R2400 (now the R2880) which uses K3 archival inks and I also have the very affordable Epson Stylus Photo R260 (now the R280) which uses Claria High Definition Inks. The R280 is perfect for promo pieces because they will most likely be thrown away rather than framed (the R2400 and R2880 are for printing fine art to be framed.)
Here is what I do: I print out a six page booklet using 8.5 x 11 inch paper folded in half (3 sheets which gives you 6 pages and 12 sides.)
Page 01 is the cover
Page 02 is a collage of some of my imagery
Page 03 is a personal note from me
Page 04 is my profile (Name, location, style of photography, years in business, along with more imagery.)
Page 05 are some frequently asked questions with my answers
Page 06 and 07 is the middle spread that opens to my packages and a la carte pricing
Page 08 is a sample time line to help my brides figure out theirs
Page 09 is some pertinent fill in the blank information about their big day that they will need to give me
Page 10 is a photography checklist
Page 11 is an ending photograph
Page 12 is the back of the booklet with another photograph with my website and phone number at the bottom
Every page has my website on it and sprinkled throughout are some of my favorite images.
What is great about this format is I can switch out imagery as I wish making it the most up to day promo piece I have. I can also customize the booklet by typing in my clients info on Page 09 so it is truly “their” promo.
Each promo takes about 5 minutes to print and saddle stitch using my trusty Bostitch Booklet Stapler.
The above photo is what they looked like before I changed my studio name. If you would like a copy of my updated one, please let me know.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jen O’Sullivan http://www.jenosullivan.com