Clip Art Press

Clip Art for the Masses

Clip art can help so many people in so many ways. Downloading clip art from www.graphicsfactory.com is the first step. It seems that we live by our planners, and PDA. For those of us that still use a calendar here is a way to spice things up.

There are always activities that we repeat on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Use clip art to choose a happy image even for the worst of chores. Cut out the image and use a pushpin to attach it to the day it should happen.

Here is a list to get you started:
Shopping
Gym
Doctor or Dentist appointment
Teacher Conference
House Cleaning
Guests coming
Children’s activities
Work related events
Church or bible study

Clip Art Is a Crafter’s Best Friend

There’s a host of clip art available on the web, which could be one of the reasons crafting has exploded over the past decade. Homemade items such as greeting cards, aprons, and websites are all the rage. Ten years ago, who would have thought we’d ever have entire stores dedicated to scrapbooking or building bears?

The at-home crafter is inundated with websites that purport to have the exact piece of clip art she needs to complete her project. Before you spend hours scouring these sites, however, it’s important to search specifically for what you want. Making a festive apron for the Fourth of July? Try keying in all those words and see what pops up, as opposed to just typing in “apron clip art.”

Perusing clip art sites is also helpful to crafters who need a little inspiration. You can search by keywords, actions, or browse clip art categories.

I went looking for some great designs to use for my embroidery addiction (er, hobby). These clip art designs work well for embroidery, painting, scrapbooking, screen-printing and more.

You’ll find a mix of paid and free designs online. Don’t be afraid to buy a batch of designs. The prices are usually very reasonable, and you’ll have a mound of really neat options to work with.

In summary, there’s a plenty of inspiration waiting for clip art crafters online. Just remember to make your search as focused as possible. Not only will you save time, you’ll likely stumble across interesting new sites that cater to your subject matter.

Popular Places to Use Clip Art

 You have the words. You have the photos. But your project is lacking something you can’t quite put your finger on. Why not try clip art? The selection of clip art you can find online these days has come a long way.Back in the early days of the Internet, it was difficult to find quality clip art.

My, how things have changed. Thanks to companies like GraphicsFactory.com, who pioneered the online clip art industry, there are millions upon millions of images to choose from, on a staggering variety of topics.

Here are a few excellent places to use clip art :

• Family newsletters: So the Christmas card evolved into the Christmas letter, which then spawned the yearly family newsletter designed to tell everyone in your family tree all you accomplished this year. Run out of things to write but still have space to fill? Insert a piece of clip art and voila.

• Flyers: Flyers are easy to produce – so easy, in fact that everyone can and will do it. All the time. Then they have to post them so that others can see them. Which means that your flyer is competing for eyeballs with dozens of others, hawking apartments, pets, aromatherapy, whatever. A good way to make yours stand out from the pack is, you guessed it, clip art.

• Business cards: You business card is your portable billboard. It’s your one-second commercial. Your miniature PowerPoint presentation. A few lines of copy aren’t going to cut it. You need to differentiate yourself from the rest of the stack. And don’t try to do it by making your card a different size. Research shows seasoned networkers find that annoying. An easy and effective way to grab attention? Clip Art Images.

• T-shirts: Your high school doesn’t have a uniform policy, but you feel like it might as well. After all, everyone walking up and down the hall is wearing the exact same T-shirt bought at the exact same store. Who can blame them? T-shirts are comfortable and cheap. So why not step out on a limb and create a custom T-shirt that’s all about you? Easy enough with printable clip art.

• PowerPoint presentation: The subject of your speech to the rest of the department might be a little dry, but the actual presentation doesn’t have to be. Jazz up important key phrases of your talk with interesting bullets, clever animations and other varieties of clip art.

• Greeting cards: Sure your homemade greeting card won’t play a song every time you open it, but it will also free up some extra cash that can then go toward a quality present. Greeting cards adorned with clip art are infinitely more customizable, and therefore more personal than store-bought.

• CD covers: With the advent of mp3s, people are downloading and customizing their own CDs more than ever before. But the recordable CDs you can buy in packs at the store are blah. Why not use clip art to create one-of-a-kind covers that pop out from the rest? You can experiment with different themes that go with the vibe of the album you created yourself.

In summary, there are many places to use clip art, both at home and in the workplace. These are only a few ideas please post your own as a comment to this post.

Top Ten Reasons to use clip art

10. Hallmark is overrated and not available 24 hours

9. Clip art makes you look more creative than you really are

8. You don’t have to be able to read to use clip art

7. Clip art won’t do dishes but it won’t argue with you either

6. You will always look like you colored inside the lines

5. Clip art projects will keep the kids busy for hours

4. Clip art is a great way to drop hints about the gifts that you want

3. If you don’t get the gifts that you want you can use clip art to give pictures of the gifts they want

2. Clip art never laughs at you because you are too cheap to buy a Hallmark

1. With Clip art you can promise your kid a pony and not be a liar

Why You Should Incorporate Clip Art Images and Animations in Your Project

 There are gazillions of websites on the Internet that focus on every topic under the sun. What do 99.92 percent of them have in common? They use images and animations to help convey what they’re trying to say.

Think about it. When was the last time you picked up a newspaper or magazine that consisted of page after page of copy? I’ll bet never. Both media use illustrations, photos, and clip art to break up the text and make it more appealing to read.

Same goes for the family newsletter that your Aunt Bertha sends out every Christmas. Right before the update on her bunion and right after she chronicles the latest accomplishment of Chester the cat, she probably inserted an image of one or the other. Hopefully the cat.

The web opens up a whole new world of what you can do with images. Take the said image, code it to move and you’ve got an animation. Everyone was using animations for their personal web pages. Copy blinked, pictures danced…it was all very wacky.

These days, animations are mostly used in ads – banner ads that stretch across the top of the page, embedded ads in the middle of an article, or pop up ads that appear when you click into a page.

Hard on the heels of the Internet explosion came community web forums, where people can chat about diets, religion, politics, or the current contestants on “Project Runway.” At first these chat participant used clever screen handles. Eventually, those were accompanied by avatars, or icons. These days many people use animated avatars. Some are funny, some are annoying, but they’re all guaranteed to draw the eye faster than the non-animated versions.

The images and animations you choose for your own project depends on the purpose of said project. A banker looking for a business card logo for a business card would probably stay away from dousing it with not-so-subtle”$” signs. Especially when a card in a conservative color, that lists his name and contact information in elegant script will do nicely.

However, if you’re a local car dealership and need a website designed to move cars off the lot fast, then go crazy with the animated dancing chickens or whatever your gimmick is this week.

The December issue of the company newsletter could get away with images of a candy cane here or a sprig of holly there, but probably not much else. However, your MySpace page is a perfect place for a multitude of blinking, sparkling images of animated holiday cheer.

Remember, images and animations can add a lot to your project. But only if they’re used appropriately. And, in the case of animations, sparingly. After all, you’re using images and animations to draw the eye to your text, so people will read what you’ve written. Once they get to the actual copy, you don’t want them continually distracted by the rotating photo you’ve embedded in the upper left hand corner.

How to Find Just the Right Clip Art and Graphics for Your Project

So you have a project that requires art, and you barely have enough artistic skill to complete a game of Hangman. Well, you’re in luck, because there’s a plethora of ready-made clip art and graphics just waiting for you on the web at graphicsfactory.com. These clip art images are copyright-safe and created by professional artists and can be downloaded and embedded in any project.

What kind of projects?

Family newsletters, homemade greeting cards, community bulletins – you name it. They’re categorized in a variety of ways, such as by “keyword” or “holiday.” These databases are easily searchable so you can quickly locate just the right piece of clip art you need.

Usually a thumbnail version of the clip art you want will pop up first. Then you can click on it and it will expand to a larger preview. This way you’ll get a better idea of how it will look on the page. The enlarged images will probably have a “watermark” on them, which will disappear after they’re purchased.

Holidays Keyword Ideas

Looking to dress something up for the holidays? There’s already a host of clip art and graphics available, and more is being created all the time. Here are just a few ways to illustrate your holiday-themed projects:

• New Year’s : Party hats and streamer clip art


• Valentine’s Day : Candy, hearts, “XOXO” images


• St. Patrick’s Day : Mugs of green beer, leprechauns, four-leaf clover clip art


• Easter : The Christian cross, decorated eggs clip art


• Fourth of July : Flags, fireworks clip art


• Halloween : Ghosts, pumpkins, witches, black cats, candy clip art


• Thanksgiving : Turkey (live), turkey (cooked), pilgrims, Indians, table laden with food clip art


• Christmas : Baby in a manger, angels, three wise men, Christmas tree, holly, carolers

Other Ideas

You can also use clip art and graphics to enhance your PowerPoint presentations, business cards and personal letterhead. There’s a variety of styles available, ranging from classic to contemporary to the truly comical.

For example, if you own a bakery, you should search graphicsfactory.com for bakery-themed images, such as a chef, baker, cook, rolling pin, baked bread, oven, etc. It’s important that the clip art you choose conveys who you are and what you do at once. So a person flicking through his Rolodex will be able to identify you immediately.

When searching for clip art it’s important to use common search terms like “kitten,” not “feline” or to be more specific “kitten and ball of string.” Once a list of potential clip art is pulled up, you should consider if the image fits your needs. Is it scalable? That is, if you need to enlarge it, will it become blurry and grainy? If you have to make it smaller, will you still be able to see all the detail?
Once you locate and purchase the clip art you want, it’s yours to use however and wherever you want, for as many times as you want, unless otherwise specified in the usage rights.

Thanks to the abundance of quality clip art and graphics available at graphicsfactory.com, even the most artistically-challenged person can now produce a stellar-looking project.