Designing a printed mug

Designing a promotional mug can be as difficult or as easy as you and the marketing department choose to make it. A promotional mug can be something as simple as the company logo printed on a standard stock ceramic mug, or as complicated as a very intricate graphic airbrushed onto a nonstandard mugs shape. No matter what direction you're going for it is important to have clear design goals in your mind before embarking on the process of creating a promotional mug, and then surrounding yourself by people who are qualified to make material and design decisions; and at the end of the day being capable of effectively choosing between cost, production time and design.

When beginning the process of designing your promotional printed mugs you're going to want to first look towards your company's current product or service inventory for inspiration. Clearly because these are printed mugs you are going to want to design something that adequately reflects your company.

Now not every company has a product that they want to display on a printed mugs, however some do, and for these companies they are going to want to tie in both their company's name and logo as well as some representation of their products. This can be done in any number of ways, however the easiest is to eventually slice up the promotional mug and then design each quadrant with a goal in mind. For instance you could design the upper portion of the promotional mug to hold your companies name or slogan, and then one side of the bottom with your company's logo, and then the other side of the bottom with the company's product.

You do not necessarily need to follow this guide, however keep this in mind. It is important to showcase your company name around to the entire promotional mug rather than just one side so that a person can see the company name looking from any side of the promotional mug. Beyond this feel free to slice up the design process in any way that you choose.

For a company that is not interested in displaying both the Company information as well as product information on the same mug the design process is similar though quite a bit easier. For instance rather than worrying about how to slice up the promotional mug into quadrants that accommodate three or four different fields you really only have to worry about a text and a graphic field. Moreover you do not have to worry about 360° views of the company name because it is adequate to put a company logo on one side and the name on the other and thus making sure that the company presence is shown on both sides of the promotional mug.

Lastly you're going to want to consider using established company logos and colors when designing a promotional mug. This is important for creating a unified look across all of your marketing materials thus establishing a solid presence in the marketplace that customers can relate to.

Gareth Parkin is the co-founder of Ideasbynet, the UK's largest online source of printed mugs & other promotional items. He has taken UK gift market of products like printed mugs by storm through modern business thinking & latest search engine marketing techniques. For more details visit www.ideasbynet.com