Author: Patty

MagCloud for Graduation Memories

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Congratulations class of 2012! Now that you’re graduated, what’s next? Graduation parties? Summer travels? Job hunting? If it’s any and/or all of the above, then we’ve got you covered.

From party invitations to summer travel itineraries to professional portfolios to thank you cards, we’ve put together some ways that MagCloud can help prepare you for the next step in your life.

 

 

Graduation Parties

Hosting a graduation party? MagCloud’s new square product is perfect for invitations and party programs. After the party is over, create a one-of-a-kind scrapbook with photos and memories so you’ll never forget the special day.

 

Summer Travels

Traveling this summer? Whether you are traveling alone or with friends, keep track of flights, train schedules, hostels, and global destinations before you leave – our flyers are perfect for travel notes and itineraries!  After your trip, compile all of your pictures and memories into a Square photo book or scrapbook to share with your friends and family!  Need a little help designing that photo book then try out our partner Poyomi’s on-line templates.

 

Job Hunting

Looking for the perfect job? Show off your work by creating a portfolio with MagCloud’s new 8×8 square product, or make your resume stand out with our Flyer or Pamphlet products.

 

Thank You Cards

A simple ‘thank you’ note goes a long way. Use our smaller flyer products to create unique thank you cards for your family and friends for their support – and even your potential employer after you nail that interview.

 

Have you used MagCloud in planning or celebrating a graduation, or other special event? We would love to hear how – please share in the comments below!

 

Congrats again, graduates and good luck!

MagCloud Goes to the Head of the Class

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MagCloud has been a friend of teachers, trainers and curriculum designers for some time.

Offering an easy way to bring lesson plans to life and engage students, MagCloud is being used as an educational tool both in and out of the classroom.

 

 

 

 

Curriculum Resource Planning and Teacher’s Aids

A number of educators and researchers are using MagCloud to share curriculum ideas and best practices. Whether using our Standard product to create a best practices magazine or simply a short curriculum synopsis with our Pamphlet product, MagCloud makes it easy for teachers to collaborate on current curriculum initiatives.

Example Publications:

Class Projects

Self-publishing provides students with a creative way to showcase their understanding of a topic, their personal perspectives and their own artistic work.  Publications like Bulldog Press and FIT have allowed high school and college students to express themselves and demonstrate their evolving skills.

Example Publications:

Workbooks, Study Guides, Training Materials and More

Teachers, instructors and trainers have used MagCloud to print field guides, camp workbooks, how-to guides, study-guides, training manuals, and educational workbooks to complement a variety of educational needs. In some cases these are printed ahead of time for use during a workshop or class, while other times they are simply made available online for attendees to purchase as supplementary or stand-alone training materials or as samples for other teachers.

Example Publications:

The Lorax Storytelling Tool

MagCloud has also developed a Storybook tool for creating custom books using templates, characters and backgrounds from the movie The Lorax. Used in conjunction with Scholastic’s custom Lorax curriculum, students can write a story that describes one creative new idea for how they, their family, or their community could live more sustainably.

Share in the comments section how you’ve used MagCloud for your teaching needs or read about some additional ideas from Jim Vanides, a member of the HP Office of Global Social Innovation.

Be Square and Standout

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We are excited to introduce a new form factor that will help your publications standout from the crowd. At 8” x 8”, Square product is compact, portable, eye-catching; and available in sleek saddle stitch or professional perfect binding.

Ideal for portfolios, look books, small catalogs, handbooks and more, Square publications can be anywhere from 4 to 384 pages. The new Square product will be available for the same $.20 per page ($.15 per page for orders of 20 copies or more).

MagCloud Square Design Specifications:

  • PDF Size with Bleed:         8.25 x 8.25″
  • Trim Size (Final Size):       8 x 8″
  • Bleed Settings:                   0” inside edge, 0.25″ outside edge; 0.125″ top and bottom
  • Half-Fold Binding:             4 Pages
  • Saddle-Stitch Binding:      8 – 100 Pages
  • Perfect Binding:                  20 – 384 Pages

Start publishing with Square today and let us know how you envision using this new product in the comments below.

Adding MagCloud Touches to Your Wedding

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Planning a wedding can be stressful, but MagCloud is here to help. We recently posted ways to use MagCloud when planning a wedding, as a helpful resource for both professional wedding planners and those brides and grooms to be who are choosing to go with a more DIY approach. Today we want to share some additional ways MagCloud can make sure the perfect day goes off without a hitch.

Invitations

For those who want to design their own wedding invitations and give them a personal touch, we recently upgraded our Flyer and Pamphlet products to 80# Cover Stock, so your invitations will have a heavier weight, giving them a premium look and feel. Here’s a great example of a wedding booklet, which includes information for guests about directions, places to stay, things to do etc. MagCloud also offers a wide variety of templates so you can pick and choose which is right for you and your event.

‘The Story of Us’ Booklet

Everyone enjoys a good love story. Share the bride and groom’s story in a beautiful MagCloud booklet, and distribute it as part of the wedding gift. Here’s a creative example featured on our Pinterest board for inspiration.

Wedding Planning Survival Guide

Member of the wedding party? Help out the happy couple by creating a wedding survival guide. Organize the run-of-show, tips, funny bride/groom stories and/or any last minute advice into a beautifully-designed and personalized booklet for the bride and groom to be.

Magazine Guest Scrapbooks

Create a unique one-of-a-kind scrapbook about the best day of your lives using Flickr! All you need to do is gather your photos into an online photo album (take a peek at this post for tips!), then choose the photo set. From there, your photos will automatically be organized into a beautiful magazine format. You can even use Poyomi to create a personal wedding collage book.

Now that you’ve heard ours, we’d love to hear your wedding planning ideas, and/or how you’ve used MagCloud for wedding planning-please share in the comments below!

Publishers in Their Own Words: Mike Lesnick Photography

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My name is Mike Lesnick, I am the owner and photographer of Mike Lesnick Photography. I use MagCloud to make my brochure/portfolio available to all past and future clients. It’s a great way for me to have my information readily available to everyone.

I created my brochure so that anyone could see a sample of my work, pricing and little snippets about myself and the weddings I have photographed. With my brochure I have made an impact on brides and grooms with my neatly presented work, pictures and lay out. My latest brochure was updated to include all pictures from this past wedding season (2011) as well as full-page spreads of previous weddings I have photographed.

MagCloud has provided me with the most cost-effective way to  distribute and manage my brochures; as well as providing the print quality that as a wedding photographer I expect and need to present my work in a manner that I feel is professional. Thanks so much MagCloud, keep up the good work!

Mike Lesnick, Owner/Photographer, Mike Lesnick Photography

Visit Mike’s website to learn more about his work or preview his work on MagCloud.

April’s Monthly Giveaway is Here

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A new month means a new giveaway! Starting today, we’re launching our monthly giveaway for three $25 PayPal MagCloud gift cards. You can enter to win by answering the question below in the blog comments section, or tweeting @MagCloud your answer using the #MagCloudQ hashtag. The questions and prizes will change each month so if you don’t win this round, check back in May for another chance.

Photographers! This month’s question is for you. As you may have noticed, we here at MagCloud love photography.  From advancements in camera technology, to the explosion in photo apps across devices, to the astonishing growth in social photo sharing  (uh hello Facebook’s recent purchase of Instagram or the Pinterest phenomenon), photography is top of mind with both professional photographers and consumers alike.  So this month we would love to know, from DSLRs to point and shoots to smartphones, what’s your go-to camera when you want to capture that perfect shot?

The details:

  • Post your answer to the above question in the comments section below or tweet @MagCloud with the #MagCloudQ hashtag
  • Responses must be posted by Monday, April 30, 2012 at 5:00pm PST
  • Winners will be announced via Twitter, Facebook, and our blog on Thursday, May 3, 2012 by 12:00pm PST
  • Questions? Post in the comments below or tweet us @MagCloud
  • And don’t forget to follow @MagCloud on Twitter and/or ‘Like’ us on Facebook for the latest MagCloud news and future contest details

The contest opens at 12:00 pm PST on Friday, April 13, 2012. Entries must be submitted by 5:00 p.m. PST, Monday, April 30, 2012 and the winner will be announced via Twitter, Facebook, and our blog on Wednesday, May 3, 2012. The prize will be one $25 MagCloud gift card. Three unique winners will be selected at random. All entrants agree to be contacted by Hewlett Packard for prize fulfillment. The drawings are open to MagCloud blog readers, Twitter followers and Facebook fans that reside in the United States and are at least 18 years of age at time of entry. No purchase necessary to enter or win. Limit two entries (one on Twitter and one blog comment) per person, per month. Anyone found to be in violation of any of our rules or third party networks will be ineligible. Entries in this contest will not be carried over into subsequent giveaways or drawings.

New Premium Paper and Shipping Options

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We are always looking for ways to make our products (and our customers) feel extra special so we recently upgraded the paper we use for our Flyer and 4-Page Pamphlet products to 80# Cover Stock at no additional cost to you. The heavier weight gives these products a more premium look and feel.

And speaking of premium feel, we’ve also upgraded our packaging for all FedEx orders for increased protection during shipping and delivery.

Let us know what you think of our new paper and packaging options in the comments section below.

Publishers In Their Own Words: Merritt Design Photo

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I love when January comes and I can take a moment to dream up new strategies for my small business in the coming year.  For 2012, I made a decision to crank things up a notch with a new creative marketing strategy for my wedding photography business, which had previously been promoted solely “word of mouth.”  I had used MagCloud before and knew that it offered an excellent solution to get started with a custom-designed, high impact product that I could print affordably enough to leave after meetings with wedding coordinators, and even send to begin a dialogue and make a lasting impression with potential clients.

For my first Weddings issue, MagCloud’s format, quality and great price-point give me ample space to share insights into my personal approach to wedding photography; what clients can expect from the experience of working together; some information about packages; and finally, plenty of space for rich color photographs to jump off the pages. Because I can design the whole issue myself, it is the perfect product to give a sense of my personality and style — hopefully enough to inspire people to want to learn more!

I am proud to share this gorgeous, stand-out marketing piece with potential clients; in the first few showings alone, the response has been overwhelming! I’m so excited to be working with MagCloud and I already can’t wait to create my next magazines!

Jennifer Koskinen, Owner/Photographer, Merritt Design Photo

Visit Jennifer’s website to learn more about here work or preview her work on MagCloud.

Using MagCloud to Market Your Real Estate Business

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Today we want to speak to the real estate agents and agencies of the world. If you’re spending time and money printing up fact sheets, flyers, listing catalogs and brochures every month or even once a week, our service can help make the process easier. We know in the world of real estate, things are constantly changing. You sell a house and have to remove it from your list catalog. A new unit goes on the market and you’re turning around a new fact sheet in a few hours.

Just browse our site and you’ll see that MagCloud is already a popular tool for real estate agents. MagClouders are branching out beyond property listings; they’re including tips for first-time homeowners, agent profiles and ads for local businesses that home buyers might find useful. Photographers are in on the real estate market too as they sell annuity, using MagCloud to show how hiring a professional photographer can make your properties stand out as an agent. (And we couldn’t agree more!) MagCloud’s Flyer product is popular for any prints that don’t require binding. Full-color fliers with images of your listings will make your sales sheets pop and your competitors green with envy.

MagCloud’s services can also help you be more nimble as a business, keeping you a step ahead of that other agency or agent. Think about it. We offer a print-on-demand service which means no more bulk orders of brochures. With MagCloud, you order what you need as you need it and you’ll receive your prints in as little as three days. Go further with your publication by offering an iPad or PDF-friendly version as well. Your clients will appreciate a paperless version when they’re juggling fact sheets and flyers for so many different properties.

Beyond its true cost-saving and waste-reducing advantages, HP’s top-notch print quality is the No. 1 reason MagCloud customers keep coming back. Don’t just take our word for it, hear from a satisfied real estate agent who’s been using MagCloud to promote his realty business with 4-page flyers and community Buyers Guides. Also, check out other resources on our site like the Product Spotlight: Flyer for Business and tips on how to attract an audience with great content.

Now we want to hear from you. As a real estate agent, how have you incorporated MagCloud as a tool to promote your business? Feel free to share your tips and success stories with us in the comments section below.