Category: News

Accessibility in Design: Color Choice

Posted on by Sonya Dalton

Previously, I held a job for a large tech company working in quality assurance. I tested software from an end-user perspective to make sure things worked as intended when the code was changed. One of the most important and often overlooked aspects I tested was software accessibility. Accessibility can range from ensuring screen-readers pick up all text on the screen to checking that keyboard commands work. However, it also covers how your software and its graphics appear visually. Drawing from what I learned, I’d like to extend some tips to help make your designs widely accessible. The first design element I’ll be covering is color choice. 

Color Contrast

One of the first things I learned to test for when considering accessibility was contrast. Like many programs, our software even had a “high contrast” mode.  The point of high contrast is to make it easier for people with weaker or strained eyes to distinguish things like text or icons from the background. While it may be jarring at first, easily distinguishable colors put less stress on your eyes long-term. The minimum accepted ratio for high contrast colors is 4.5:1 between the foreground and background, according to WebAIM’s accessibility guide. However, there are different levels of contrast that correspond to different levels of accessibility. For instance, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines says that a 7:1 ratio is necessary for a AAA level of contrast. Note that neither of these are legal guidelines for the private sector, but rather a best practice.

There are tools out there that make finding this ratio easy. I recommend using WebAIM or Colorable if you’d like an easy, browser-based tool.

Color Choice and Accessible Design for Colorblindness

Did you know that around 8.5% of the world’s total population is color-blind? It’s important to take this large group into consideration, especially when trying to communicate essential information to your audience. Since the most common type of colorblindness is the red/green varietal, avoid using green and red in conjunction with one another. Layering red text atop a green background might be difficult for a lot of people to read.

However, as there are several types of colorblindness, some designers suggest that using color alone to differentiate crucial elements is bad practice. For example, a clothing website might want to list the color options by name instead of swatches alone. A website that uses status notifications should make their icons different shapes as well as different colors. Using both patterns and color to distinguish segments on a map would make it easier to tell the sections apart. There’s a lot of ways to combine color with other design elements to make it accessible to that 8.5%!

When designing something with colorblind users in mind, it can help to simulate what colorblind people will see when looking at your work. Sim Daltonism is a great option for Apple users, while VisCheck offers a program that PC users can download.

A lot of these guidelines were made with web and software design in mind. However, it can’t hurt to keep some of these suggestions in mind when designing graphics for social media. When trying to build a brand, you need to send a clear message about yourself. People should be able to tell what that message is without struggling. If they can’t read the text or understand the graphics they’re presented, they’ll never be able to do that. It’s a small step you can take towards making the web friendlier and more accessible!  

If you’d like to see more about graphic design, please check out the graphic design tag for our blog feed.

Get Ready to Promote Your Fall 2021 Book

Posted on by Claire McKinney

The glory of working in retail  is that you always need to think six months ahead of when your product is going to be ready.  Books are products and you want to have an opportunity to make noise leading up to the holiday shopping season.  Here is a list of things you should be doing right now to promote your Fall 2021 book.

Digital Platform

Is your social media strategy and online profile up to date?  To promote your Fall 2021 release,  you should have a plan to market yourself and your work on your social channels.   Create or polish a content calendar, and make sure you have a clear schedule of how you are going to market your content and when, leading up to the publication.

If you are not subscribed to a scheduling platform like Hootsuite, now would be a good time to set that up.  On Hootsuite you can schedule content in advance so you can make sure you are keeping to your calendar.

Review Copies for Publicity

Are you going to use digital galleys or print review copies, or both?  I recommend printing some review copies for people who still like to have a physical book.  Physical copies of the book are great for Instagram influencers.  They will often take a picture of your book when they receive it and tag you in the post.  Now you have a new, original image to use on your own digital platforms.

Lead-Time to Publicize your Fall 2021 Book

If you want reviewers and other media entities to cover your book, you need to allow four to six weeks for pitching and follow up.  When you are asked for a review copy, you need to prepare to be patient.  It can take up to three months for the book to be read and reviewed.  Sometimes you can get faster results, but in general the lead time for books is three to four months at minimum.

Interviews for online publications, radio, podcasts, and television can be pitched with a shorter amount of lead time.  But if you want to feel confident about the amount of coverage you are going to get, it is still a good idea to allow up to two months to get responses and schedule interviews.

For more information on when to publish check out our blog including this infographic on when to publish your book:

When should you publish your book? An Infographic

 

 

Are You Still On-brand?

Posted on by Liz Bachmann

Branding is a vital part of developing loyalty and trust around your products and services. But straying away from your preset branding standards is also very easy to do. This is especially true if they don’t represent you or your brand in a way that interests you. 

How do you check your branding?

I suggest starting simple and looking at your visual identity and tone to see if you applied them consistently over the last six months. As a social media strategist, I will be focusing primarily on branding on social media. 

Does your brand have a style guide?

A style guide will make creating content faster and more consistent. The goal of producing consistent — but not dull — visual content on a platform like Instagram is having people recognize your content as yours without seeing your name or logo. 

A basic style guide should include your fonts, color scheme, and a mood board that encompasses the style you want for your brand.

Your style guide should come from competitor research and acknowledge the psychology behind the colors you choose and the styles of type to be truly effective. You feel different when you see something written with a script font as opposed to a display font, right?

Do you have a set tone?

Some brands are funny and light-hearted while others are serious. For example, Moon Pie on Twitter has a hilarious persona. It would be jarring if they suddenly started tweeting as if they were a more serious brand like Politico.

In that same sense, if you switch between wildly different tones and do not have a strong reason for doing so (i.e. commenting on something serious and values-based as a comedic account) it can disarm your audience and make them distrust your voice. 

Are you keeping your content relevant to your goals?

You may be catching a theme here which is that consistency is key for maintaining your brand. Similarly, your content needs to help promote your social media goals (and business goals) consistently. 

This means you need to talk about things that are relevant to your brand. As an example, we are a digital public relations firm that has a sister publishing company. Therefore, we talk about social media, publicity and branding tips for authors that are published by small publishers or independently publish. 

In addition to the tips, we also share content that jumps on trends that relates to books and the reading community. (Check out our blog about bookstagrammers to see how we leverage Instagram to create digital publicity for authors.)

 

 

 

Book Review: The Prince and the Dressmaker

Posted on by Sonya Dalton

If you’re in need of something cozy and indulgent of your childhood sense of wonder, I cannot recommend reading The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang (First Second, $14.50) enough. This feel-good story is a perfect way to kick off Pride Month with some positive representation. 

The Plot:

The Prince and The Dressmaker is a heartwarming coming-of-age story. It follows the relationship between Frances, a young woman who works as a seamstress, and Prince Sebastian, the heir to the royal throne of Belgium. Frances is a creative dressmaker with an eye for avant-garde fashion. This earns her little respect from her traditional boss but catches the eye of the prince immediately. Sebastian hires Frances as the royal seamstress and together they secretly run the underground fashion scene in their city- Frances as the anonymous seamstress and Sebastian as his alter ego, Lady Crystallia.

Despite their success in the fashion world, everything must remain secret. Sebastian fears his dual identity puts his family’s reputation and his place on the throne in jeopardy. Pretending to be someone you’re not isn’t easy, though. It’s a simple story with fairytale like tones and drama that simultaneously never feels too dark but keeps the stakes high for our main characters. 

The Art: The Prince and the Dressmaker

I cannot stress how much I am continuously charmed by Wang’s art. It’s got fluidity to it in the way the panels tend to flow and float at will. The smooth, rounded strokes of the linework give the characters bounce. Wang’s style is cartoonish and pliable, which makes the characters easily relatable because their expressions are always so clear and exaggerated. Wang doesn’t shy away from color, and the gowns designed for Lady Crystallia take full advantage of this. Her dresses often fill up entire page spreads in place of plot development, and I have no qualms with this sacrifice. Lady Crystallia’s outfits are stunning and purposefully contrast Sebastian’s plain, regal uniforms. The life Wang breathes into the narrative with her art perfectly elevates the storybook quality of the plot.

Final Thoughts:

I could read this book over and over, a hundred times. It’s comforting. Quick and simple on the surface, it tells an important story about coming to terms with your identity. It’s a story that a lot of LGBTQ+ folks can relate to, either as something they’re actively going through or something they’ve already passed. When Sebastian sees himself in the mirror, it’s not always himself that he sees, and this book gently takes the reader’s hand and says, “that’s okay.” It doesn’t promise that the journey will be easy, but it does promise that things will work out in the end. That’s a message a lot of LGBTQ+ people need more of.

How to Work with a Publicist

Posted on by Claire McKinney

I was scrolling through some searches today, looking for different topics I might cover in this week’s blog.  I decided not to write about digital pr and marketing today.  Instead, I am going to talk about relationships.  Specifically, how to work with a publicist.

Don Hires a Publicist

Don is a first time author whose novel is being published by a small press.  He hires a publicist because he wants to make a name for himself and sell books.  He has a modest following on social media and he has contributed a few pieces to some small blogs.  He has a day job that takes most of his time, and writing the book was challenging.  Now that he knows he has a professional on his side, he is looking forward to making some money and hopefully signing a big publishing contract for the next book.

The Publicist understands that Don wants to get coverage for himself and his new book.  He thinks the book is terrific and has had really good success getting blog reviews and some small publications to cover a first time author.  Don agrees to a short contract for a review and interview campaign and The Publicist starts getting the word out.

Three months later, The Publicist has secured about a dozen hits on moderate level blogs and a review in an independent magazine.  He also got a brief Q&A on Don’s college alma mater’s website.  The Publicist was happy with the job, but Don was not.

Why Is Don Unhappy?

If I look back at the reasons why Don hired a publicist, it is clear why he is unhappy.  He hired a publicist to “make a name for himself and sell books.”  The Publicist heard that, and filed it away under “this is what every author wants, but everyone knows how this works”.  Each entity went into this relationship blind, with notions about the process that were not based in reality.

To ensure that this doesn’t happen to you, here are some questions to ask a publicist that should help make your campaign a good experience.

10 Questions to Ask a Publicist

  1. In an ideal world, what kind of results can I expect?  What are some samples of coverage author like me receive?
  2. What will I need to do to help you succeed at your job?
  3. Will I make my money back?
  4. How many books will I sell, approximately?
  5. What services do you think I need?
  6. What services will you be providing?
  7. How long will it take?
  8. Can we schedule a phone call a month from now to go over how my campaign is going?
  9. Can I get my money back if I am not happy with the way things are going?
  10. Do you complete any tasks that are open at the end of the contract?

10 Answers You Should Hear From a Publicist

These are some answers you might hear to questions you ask a publicist.

  1. This answer is going to be book and author specific.  The kind of coverage you get will vary based on what the book is about, your background and experience, where you live, who you know, etc.
  2. This answer is also a bit specific, but at the very least the publicist will need a picture, a bio, a book jacket, a contact list from you if you have people who can help, and a copy of the manuscript or book for the publicist to read.
  3.  I can’t say for certain, but most authors do not earn back their marketing expenses on their first books.
  4. Publicists do not sell books.  Our job is to raise awareness of you and your book so that there are increasing opportunities for you to sell copies.
  5. This answer is going to be based on the job itself.
  6. This is going to be based on your budget and what the book needs
  7. Whichever contract term you select should be ample time to meet the deliverables outlined by the publicist.
  8. Yes, of course we like to have status meetings with our clients
  9. There is a cancellation clause in the agreement.  We can’t guarantee results, but we do not sell services that we do not feel we can provide effectively.
  10. If there are any leads that require additional follow up, we will make sure to follow through.

For more information on hiring publicists check out our blogs, How Much Does a Publicist Cost? and Do You Know What a Book Publicist Does? (previously printed in Publishers Weekly magazine)