Happy Holidays

It’s a holiday tradition at Affinity Express to recreate a well-known piece of art using embroidery digitizing. This year, the pressure was heightened since last year’s design just won us two awards: the Stitches Golden Needle awards for Design of the Year, Technical, Corporate and Design of the Year, Artistic, Corporate.

The subject we chose this year was a Renoir painting. And regardless of whether we win an award, I think we can be proud of this year’s design as well! What do you think?

It’s Summer!

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. And as usual, we celebrate it on the Affinity Express blog by sharing a few summer-themed designs from our team.

What are you doing this summer? (Actually, I’m going away this weekend, to a cottage in a forest–glad you asked!)

Going on a vacation? Going camping, maybe? You’ll need a tent.

Happy Geek Pride Day

Star Wars may have passed me by, but I’m a self-professed geek. (In school, I had thick glasses and reading was my favorite past-time, unlike my more cool friends.) 

So let’s wave our geek flags high today and catch a Hitchhiker’s movie tonight (or get in bed with your favorite Terry Pratchett, whatever grabs you.)

And of course, check out these embroidery digitizing and vector artwork designs from our team.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Here are some Mexican-themed embroidery digitizing and vector artwork designs created by our team for various restaurants.

Happy World Graphic Design Day!

We live and breathe graphic design at Affinity Express, so today is something to celebrate! 

We wanted to take this occasion to share some of our best designs and design expertise from the past year.

Designs Created by Our Teams

Here are some of our best designs from 2010 and from 2011 so far. And some print ads and online ads we created, and some holiday cards created in embroidery.

Tips on Design

Promotional Marketing and Brand Marketing: It All Starts With a Logo

We work in a multi-billion-dollar industry with many acronyms of what our industry is and does. Some of us refer to our profession as “advertising specialty distributors” or “suppliers.” Few categorize our business as “promotional marketing”: and even fewer call what we do “brand marketing.” Further convoluting our identity are the industry associations to which we belong: the Advertising Specialty Institute and the Promotional Products Association International. Our educational paths are a mismatch of everything from Certified Advertising Specialist (CAS) to Master Advertising Specialist (MAS) and the new educational entries BASI and MASI certifications. There are no formal degree programs for the advertising specialty/promotional product industry. 

In contrast, most of the companies we sell to and the people we assist all have direct monikers relating to what they do in their industries, such as CPA (Certified Public Accountant), M.D. (medical doctor), D.D.S. (doctor of dental science), CFP (certified financial planner) and many more. 

We all love what we do every day. Suppliers try to pinpoint what the distributor is trying to accomplish with their end users for sales or marketing success, such as placing ad specialties and/or apparel to build brand recognition and establish quantifiable returns on investments for marketing. Distributors are committed to identifying and meeting needs customers have to increase sales, launch new products or services, incent sales teams, increase trade show booth traffic or provide missing pieces in the puzzle for successful marketing plans. 

Designs of the Quarter: Q1 2011

This year’s first Designs of the Quarter are here! The categories this time around were pre-media, online ads and embroidery digitizing.

Pre-Media

I love this first design. The clean grey-on-white text, the pop of red, those luscious-looking strawberries . . . It just holds your attention and makes you want to read it.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Erin go Bragh and happy St. Patrick’s Day. As we enjoy some corned beef and cabbage and exchange our favorite recipes for Irish soda bread, we wanted to share some designs in the spirit of the holiday. What is the craziest green food or drink you’ve had on this occasion—green beer, green cookies, green bagels?

(And here are some designs from our embroidery digitizing, vector artwork and print advertising teams.)

Artwork and Digitizing Client Spotlight: Heritage Print Solutions

For Bob Patterson, High Volumes Caused New Problems

Vector Design Created by Affinity Express for Heritage Print Solutions

Robert Patterson of Heritage Print Solutions has only been in the industry for about a year and a half. When he started with the company, he took a new approach and led sales with promotional products and apparel versus printing; providing value-added services in response to customer demand. Because of this approach, the volume of layouts and imprints increased significantly.

With only one person on the internal team who could work on these files, the company began to experience a backlog that slowed down revenue. Capacity was exceeded and it became labor-intensive to create vector files and/or request them from clients, who often had only jpgs.

On top of that, customers sometimes balked at the cost of having the files created. Heritage Print Solutions accounts expected their provider to do the art and absorb the extra cost.

Happy Presidents’ Day

Today, George Washington’s birthday, is a federal holiday in the U.S. It is celebrated in honor of not just Washington but other American Presidents as well.

(Which gives rise to the question: do you spell it “Presidents’ Day” or “Presidents Day” or “President’s Day”? Even Wikipedia isn’t sure. “Presidents’ Day makes most sense to me, so I’m going with that: but if you prefer an alternate spelling, do comment below and tell me why.)

Happy Valentine’s Day

What are you doing today? Making your partner an elaborate dinner, going out on a blind date, going to the pub with your friends, or sitting at home reading a book? Whatever it is, make sure you have fun!

I’m on vacation with my husband and my mom. Not exactly romantic, but we’ll be at a wildlife park tonight and will go out to ogle rhinos in the morning. (Also, elephant ride!)

Here are a couple of more designs from the artwork and digitizing team in honor of this holiday.

Designs of the Year: 2010

We asked our designers to submit their best work this year and awarded the winning entries.  Let me tell you, the judges did not have an easy job!

Embroidery Digitizing

Happy Holidays!

Our designers created this piece of embroidery for this season, based on the painting Toronto Street, Winter Morning by Lawren S. Harris. For previous years’ designs, see here.

Joanna Grant One of Industry’s Most Powerful People

I am very happy to announce that my colleague Joanna Grant, VP of Graphic Production and Support Services, has been included in Stitches magazine’s Power List. This makes her one of the most powerful people in the decorating industry, “influencing the direction the industry will take in 2011 and beyond”.

According to Stitches, she’s on the list because:

Summing Up 2010

As we enter the last month of 2010, I have been thinking about what we have achieved this year and how we can do better next year. 2010 was particularly good for Affinity Express. I’d like to share with you some of what we have accomplished.

1. We celebrated our ten-year anniversary. We have grown from a 125-person embroidery digitizing company to an 800-person advertising and marketing production company. This year, we celebrated our success, but also set our sights on what we want to achieve next.
2. We added several of the largest clients in our history in the category of multi-media publishers and on-boarded them in record time.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

America Recycles Day

Affinity Express believes strongly in recycling and promotes respect for the environment in all our company locations.  For example, at our Elgin Headquarters, we have bins for plastics and paper and have even donated collected cans and bottles to local charities as part of their fund-raising drives.

Recently, we conducted a contest to design a reusable tote bag to reduce the use of paper and plastic grocery bags.  The winning design was selected, the bags were produced and are now on their way to our India and Philippines offices to be distributed to employees.

Previously, we had a similar contest to design tumblers so fewer disposable coffee cups would be used by our employees.  There has been a positive impact and we have ordered 30% fewer cups to date.

Happy Boss’s Day

… to all of you who are bosses.

And all who are fortunate enough (like I am–and I’m not just saying this because Kelly’s gonna read it) to have a great boss–today is when we’ll find a way to say thank you. Graciously, like this:

Holiday Card Designs (in Embroidery)

Did you see the holiday card in the last post? Did you exclaim over it and wish you could see more works of art in embroidery?

You are in luck, my friend. Today, I present:  Affinity Express holiday cards from past years. I pulled these out of my files because we are currently working on this year’s card. And I tell you, it’s hard to match up to the standards set before! Take a look and  you’ll see what I mean.

Let’s start with Da Vinci, and probably the most famous painting in the world. The background is printed, not embroidered, because–as K.T. told me–it was much too heavy with all embroidery.

Affinity Express Completes Ten Years

That’s right. Affinity Express was incorporated in 2000, which makes this our tenth anniversary year. There’s no doubt about it, this is an incredibly exciting time to be at Affinity Express.  

Affinity Express Pune Office: in Embroidery

Let me take you down memory lane.  

Take off Your Shoes  

Way back in 2000, Affinity Express had around 125 people. We had one production location in an apartment complex in a residential suburb of Pune: a less-than-ideal spot for high-volume, fast production work. To avoid using unreliable landlines, a radio modem was installed on top of the building. Power outages were frequent, so the company bought a genset. To appease other occupants of the building for the noise of the genset, we provided reliable power to the building. Plus, all the employees took off their shoes to go up and down the stairs during shift changes.  

However, things improved quickly. Later in the year, the company took space at our current location in Pune (yes, that lovely building in the image on the right that our designers have digitized) and grew to 237 employees. Over time we have gone from 400 to 1,400 to 14,000 square feet.