The three simplest methods are to save your logo as either a JPEG, GIF or PNG file. GIF and PNG files can be saved without a background colour, but a GIF file is limited to only 256 colours, so logos with gradients or soft shadows may appear with bands rather than smooth gradients or shadows.

JPEG files do not have such a low limit on the number of colours they can contain, hence why they are the format of choice for photographs, but JPEGs cannot be saved with a transparent background.

Recent versions of PowerPoint, 2000 and newer, have a picture editing tool to allow you to set a single colour in an image to be transparent, so you can use this tool to remove the background colour of your logo. However it does not always produce satisfactory results with complex logos and you should also be aware that if the selected colour appears as part of your logo’s design it will be made transparent along with the background.

A little used format is WMF (Windows Meta File), unlike JPEG, GIF and PNG which are raster files (i.e. the files contain information about individual pixels), WMF is a vector file (stores information about objects e.g. circles, squares etc). When it comes to logos the WMF file three big advantages over the other formats:

1. Logos imported into PowerPoint as WMF can be resized without any loss in quality.
2. They have transparent backgrounds.
3. WMF files tend to be smaller than JPEG and PNG files.

Saving your logo as a Windows Meta File (WMF)

You cannot convert a JPEG, GIF or PNG into a WMF file, so you will need to go back to the original source file of your logo, provided that it was created in a package such as Adobe Illustrator or Freehand, you or your designer should be able to resave your logo as a Windows Meta File.

When saving your logo as a Windows Meta File, make sure you use the option to “save text as curves”, this will avoid any problems with non-standard system fonts that were used as part of your logo’s design.

Give it ago, having your logo in PowerPoint as a Windows Meta File (WMF) makes it much easier to use and gives you more flexibility when designing your presentations.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, Designer at Create Design Studio

I have been attending MBG networking meetings for about 18 months, they are really friendly and a good introduction to business networking. The next meeting is on Tues June 16th from 7.30am-9am.

Usually there is a guest speaker and June is no different, MBG will be hearing from Peter Czapp from The WOW Company presenting his tips on beating the recession.

If you would like to join us take a look at the group website where you can contact the membership secretary, or drop me a message using our contact page and come as a guest.

The group has it’s own blog here.

Gordon Bull

Posted by David Woodroofe, Managing Director

On Friday 12th June 2009 at The Barcelo Basingstoke Country Hotel, on the A30 just west of Hook, Gordon Bull will be sharing his secrets to selling to bigger businesses.

Gordon is regarded as a pioneer in learning and development and has held a number of senior roles, including Vice President Training for American Express and Director of Global Learning Management for Vodafone. These provided an invaluable insight into how smaller businesses can provide core skills, products and services for large corporates.

His presentation forms part of the business breakfast networking group, BRX Hart’s, 5th anniversary celebrations.

Create Design Studio have been members of BRX (Business Referral Exchange) for almost 5 years and saw Gordon speaker some 3 years ago at one of their weekly breakfast meetings. During that presentation he gave us very practical advice on how to approach big businesses, from sending in our promotional material to how bigger businesses view smaller local suppliers.

It was all really useful stuff.

For more information either download the PDF invite or give me a call on 01962 737989 or drop me an email at david@createdesignstudio.co.uk to book your place, numbers are limited.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb, Designer

I’m not talking about a certain brand of paint usually represented by a large, hairy dog. No, I’m taking about how hard it can be to choose colours for your next project, especially if you don’t have a corporate colour scheme. There are a few tools online that can help and as I have tweeted these links and received quite a bit of feedback I thought I would also post them here.

I have used OKI’s colour scheme generator for a while now. It will produce classic complementary, triadic and quadratic schemes when you enter a colour value or pull the spokes around the colour wheel.

This link to the ColorLovers site was tweeted to me by LushGardens and it’s brilliant. It includes user generated schemes and has a variety of forums, palettes, patterns and even a blog about colour.

Provided the name is not already registered by someone else you can pretty well use whatever you like and you can have a number of different names pointing to the one website.

The most popular domain names for businesses end with either .com or a .co.uk. So which do you choose?

A co.uk clearly shows to people that you are a UK based company, is this important to your customers?

A .com is associated with a non geographic international businesses, that is to say ones that are looking for customers in many countries or wish to appear as an international organisation.

So you have decided between co.uk and .com, how do you choose the rest of the name.

There are 2 routes that you can take to choose the rest of the name, you can simply use your company’s name, which is fine. Or you can choose a name that reflects what you sell or the services you offer.

Whatever you choose you need to remember that your domain will also form your email address, the name needs to be as short as possible and you should avoid the use of hyphens etc, to make it as simple as possible for your customers to remember.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb

The headline was told to me this morning in our monthly Create Design Studio committee meeting. It’s not that surprising when you think about the sad effect of recession is that people are often made redundant and opt to start up their own business afterwards.

The surprising thing is that businesses started during recessions are thought to have a better chance of success than those started when times are good.

There are so many ways that modern technology can make things easier too. Blogs and social networking tools like Twitter can help you make contacts in your local area. (See previous posts for links to social networking websites and business networking websites) Get business advice without having to leave your desk on the Business Link website and book your place on their informational business seminars. Getting your printer materials is easier too because digital printing techniques have made getting your cards and letterheads cheaper and quicker.

Get in touch on 01962 737989 if you are thinking of starting up a new business, we are putting together a special package of logo, business card, letterhead and website. We can also put you in touch with other business experts who can smooth the path of starting up.

There will be a business expo in Andover on Tuesday 17th March. It’s free admission from 10am to 6pm and there will be all sorts of local companies and free talks on aspects of business throughout the day.

David and I will be there early as we will be networking with MBG in the morning at the same venue: The Lights Theatre in Andover.

Here is the website with all the details of place and times: click here.

Hope to see some of you there, do come over and say hello!

Posted by Charlotte Lamb.

I was asked by a friend to give him some information about networking clubs and it seemed like a good idea to share it with the rest of you:

Andover: http://www.andovermbg.com/

Hook: http://www.brx-hart.co.uk/home.asp

Salisbury and Andover:  http://www.bishopslaw.co.uk/site/legalnews/breakfast_club_introducing_andover_article.html

Salisbury: http://www.southwilts.com/site/Ambassadors/index.htm

Alton: http://www.alton4business.org.uk/

Guildford: http://www.ecademy.com/module.php?mod=club&c=435

Ecademy  is an online networking site that is worth signing up to because basic membership is free.

Fareham: http://fbgfareham.blogspot.com/

4Networking: http://www.4networking.biz/

 Reading: http://duffnuts.net/

 Businesslink run courses and seminars (I went to one in Andover last night)

So if you fancy coming to any of these the chances are you will bump into David, or myself. Don’t be shy, come over and say hello!

Posted by Charlotte Lamb

Those of you with acute powers of observation will have noticed that I to Eye has ben transformed into Create Design Studio. Over the last few days the website and blog have been redesigned and relaunched, soon the email newsletter will also have a redesign.

Making it absolutely clear what we do to our customers was a priority of our rebranding. Please do let us know what you think of our new look through the comments facility.

I am preparing a newsletter on the rebranding process, if you would like to receive it please use the sign-up box on the left hand side of the home page.

Posted by Charlotte Lamb

Following my own advice, I have joined twitter. If you would like to follow my musings on design then follow me by clicking here: http://twitter.com/charlotte_lamb.