When I started Glerin in 1996, many "experts" were already prediciting the death of print collaterals. While it's true that many print items aren't needed any more, the internet has actually been good for the print industry - but only for quality printers who have adapted to new markets. There's just something about holding an item in your hand that can never be replaced.

Due to advances in color printing, you're now able to use print materials in a more discerning way while using your website to present content that is apt to change. Being able to take advantage of short print runs lets you create unique, high quality pieces in small numbers and when you're ready to make a change you don't have thousands of copies to throw away.

Here are 12 tips to help you get the most out of your print marketing budget:

Did you know Instagram is the fastest growing social site globally?

And there's a great reason for that: as of now, it's still basically pure social. You can easily find posts by using hashtags, which means it's easy to find photos of things you're interested in (from kittens to skydiving, music to tattoos). It's so easy to scan a list of photos to see what you like. 180º different from Facebook, where it's practically impossible to search for something, but I digress.

In the spirit of Throwback Thursday, thought I'd share a design from back in 2006.

Did you know we've been doing this since 1996?!?

James Dietz is an award-winning military and aviation artist whose work is collected worldwide, and even hangs in the White House. Back in 2006, our Ballowax small business division was actually a separate company (owned by Glerin and a couple of partners) that provided e-commerce order fulfillment services. We were contracted to develop a site to sell collectibles that featured Dietz's art; the new online store offered full-featured e-commerce including live interaction with USPS.com for shipping, live chat customer support, and the ability for customers to manage their existing orders.

We actually developed our very first e-commerce site in 1997 and had to code everything from scratch!

With over 100 entrées on the menu and delicious house specialties, these restaurants will make your tummy happy!

The Mi Carreta family of Mexican restaurants was founded in South Boston, Virginia in 2003 and has grown to 8 locations in Virginia, North Carolina, and New Hampshire.

This is the kind of project we love.

A client that's important to the community, is fun to work with and welcomes creativity, and has ideas of their own so is able to give good feedback and guidance but knows when to turn things over to the pros.

We just recently launched the new website for Halifax County Tourism, including creating a custom illustrated animated map that displays tourism sector information and provides visual site navigation.

For as long as we've been working with the tourism office, director Linda Shepperd has wished for some type of animation that would let visitors "drive" around the county to discover things. Cost, not wishing to use Flash, practicality of the feature, and several other factors always kept us from creating it.

On this site redesign, though, illustrator Erin Kipps Brown came up with a concept to treat the project like a theme park map.