Improve Your Design on Web and in Print – Review of Tweak

Elegance is usually expensive. Getting elegant design for an affordable price once seemed next to impossible–but many of today’s Web-based design services and shops make it possible, fast and easy. Tweak achieves this and is a helpful service for small business marketers to consider for both print and digital marketing materials.

Tweak shared a gift coupon so we could test their digital service and order a physical sample to see the print quality. It is an impressive service from the Web perspective, and I’m waiting to check out the print quality on some samples I ordered. But I saw print results reviews on other sites during my research that proved Tweak can deliver excellent quality.

I spent a bunch of time on their site playing with different designs, looking at the product variety. There are hundreds of pages of possibilities. For those of you who often wonder if something “canned” (as in prepackaged) can fit with your brand, you will want to take a look at this service. Their design tools allow you to change almost every aspect and customize it quickly, creating something that is unique and professionally designed.

This screenshot below shows the “breadcrumbs” of where I am in the simple design process. Even after I approved a sample postcard design, the system allows me to go back in and change it, re-save, approve, and leave it in a section called “My Designs” or place it in the shopping cart until I’m ready to check out. Often in the design process at other sites, I have found that it is not easy to change your design, but Tweak did a great job in this area. The small business owner who procrastinates might find it easy to save drafts and never make a decision, though.

What I like:

• Free Logo Creator. This tool is awesome. Really. If you have a new product that you’re testing, you could use this service to pull together a simple font logotype that looks better than something you might mock up in an word processing or presentation program.

• Indoor Banners. Many Web-to-print shops offer paper-based products, but Tweak has products you can use at a trade show or at your retail store.

• Clear Pricing. On the home page you see their main products and cost per thousand.

• High Res Option. You can download a higher resolution image for a small fee. You could then use this higher res image in your offline design efforts (when you’re creating your own design, but simply need some of the parts like logo or images).

What I think could be better:

Occasionally, the template selection tool gets stuck. You can select by industry, then by specialty, for example, Creative, then Web Design. All of the templates will appear that fit that market audience. However, when I switched to Food & Beverage, I remained a Web designer until I closed the browser and started over.  Thankfully, you can save your designs.

Overall, if you’re trying to create an affordable, but elegant (in that people will want to pick it up) brochure or business card or flyer, you can do it with Tweak. If you’re looking to create a newsletter or indoor banner display, you can do it.  The site lets you drill down rapidly into your specialty so you can see the most relevant materials.

Learn more about Tweak.com.

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