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    Price Point: $38.34- $63.34


    Production Time: 7 to 10 Business Days from Artwork Approval


    Available Colors: Surprise Colors


    Perfect For: Employee Giveaways/Client Gifts/Corporate Swag Store Items/ Swag Store Real Estate /Room Drop Presents/ Mailer Item/ Kit Ideas/Travel Bags/Raffle Prizes



    Get your confetti poppers and cameras ready…the best surprise is coming your way in the form of POPPIN’ colors and unique travel companions! It’s the brand Cotopaxi! If you asked us here at NorthPoint, we would all agree that some of the best things in life come as a surprise, especially when it comes to adding a little razzle dazzle of color to your style! Cotopaxi offers a variety of bags for wherever your adventures take you. They are perfect for students, commuters, hikers, travelers, and adventurers that want to take a step away from the conventional black bag. The bolder the better, right?! Every pack that you receive from Cotopaxi comes in a ONE-OF-A-KIND color combination to scratch your fashion forward itch and make your travel bags TRULY unique! 

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    Typography is one of the greatest and most effective elements of a design when it comes to conveying your message with impact.  Just like color, it has the ability to create a mood, but it also sets a sense of style and can bring an immense amount of character to your work.  By using a serifed font, you can have a more classical look, whereas a sans-serif font can convey a modern and clean aesthetic. Scripted fonts bring about a sense of lightheartedness, and bold fonts convey strength, just to name a few. Some logos or designs can even consist of solely typography, making it that much more powerful when the font is chosen well.  Speaking of fonts, the selection that we have access to is tremendous.  It can be difficult to choose the right one out of so many options, but when the font fits perfectly to what style and message you are trying to achieve, magic is made.  

    To help you out in your search for the perfect font, we have put together a list of 5 free font websites that we have found to be helpful to us:

    1) Google Fonts


    The massive library of Google Fonts features over 800 font families, from sans serif to handwriting fonts, monospaced fonts, and more.  The best part is that all fonts on Google Fonts are open-source, meaning that they can be used in any way you’d like – no licensing needed!

    2) DaFont


    Dafont.com is layed out in a category system, which lets you browse its font collection based on different themes like fancy, holiday, foreign, script, and more, making it much easier to quickly find a font that matches your theme! While most of the fonts on this site are only free for personal use, there are still quite a few that come with commercial licenses as well.

    3) Font Squirrel


    Similar to Dafont, Font Squirrel offers fonts with both personal and commercial licenses, but they make it very easy to check the license type before downloading them by including license icons below each font.

    Secret Tip: Font squirrel includes a font identifier tool that helps you to detect and find fonts based on images! 

     

    4) Behance

    Behance is mostly known as a social platform for designers to share designs with each other and create portfolios of their best work, but many people don’t know that it includes shared free fonts as well.  Type in ‘free font’ in the search bar, and an endless list of downloadable fonts will appear! 

    5) Font Space


    Font Space features a collection of over 32,000 free fonts from a wide range of designers! To filter down the list to commercial use options, all you have to do is check the little box.  You can also narrow down your search by looking through a list of styles to choose from or collections to browse!  

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    Price Point: $32.39 - $32.99

    Production Time: 10 Business Days 

    Available Colors: Clear bottle/Black Nozzle

    Perfect For: Employee Giveaways/Client Gifts/Corporate Swag Store Items/ Swag Store Real Estate/Protection Items /Room Drop Presents/ Donation Items/ Mailer Item/ Kit Ideas/ High-end Gifts/ Raffle Prizes


    We have been stuck inside for FAR too long, and we think it is time that you wiggle the dust of your legs and shake the cobwebs off your adventure pants! Take a step outside into the sun (or rain – whatever floats your boat!) and see what this world has to offer! BUT WAIT- Before you set off on your grand adventure, NorthPoint needs to remind you to bring a water bottle to hydrate - NO EXCEPTIONS! Now we know…we know…you don’t have a whole lot of room in that fanny pack of yours, but this isn’t your average water bottle! This is THE Matador Packable Water bottle, and it is designed specifically not to weigh you down. It even flattens when not in use to take up even less space so you can truly spread your wings and FLY! 


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    For most of us, color plays a very large role in our life without us even realizing.  Psychologists have long studied the effects that color can have on our mood and emotions, and because of this, designers and advertisers have really begun to take advantage of the power that color can have on their audience. Research has shown that people make subconscious judgments about a person, environment, or product within 90 seconds of initial viewing. Between 62% and 90% of that assessment is based on color alone. Therefore, when it comes to visual communication, color is probably the top factor in attracting attention and influencing feelings and perceptions, so it is used to ultimately help set a mood to your design. 

    Based off the common terminology of “feeling blue” that is used when we are feeling sad or “seeing red” when angry, you may guess that blue is associated with sadness and red with anger, and to some degree, you are right! Blue, green, purple and other cool tones are generally connected to sadness and aloofness, and warm hues to aggression and defiance. Cool tones are also known to create peaceful states of mind, while red, orange, yellow and other warm tones are associated with busyness and excitement. 

    BLUE

    In the business world, blue tends to represent productivity, stability and reliability. If you think about it, some of the most recognizable and trusted corporate symbols often are blue, such as Samsung, IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, or American Express. This is because the color blue brings out feelings of trust, dependability, and honesty.  It is often used in businesses related to technology, health, airlines, or medicine for this reason.  

     

     

    PURPLE

    The color purple is frequently associated with creativity and luxury.  Physiologically, it heightens people’s sense of beauty and their reaction to more creative ideas.  It is often used with high quality and luxurious companies or products, like cosmetic products or candy companies (Cadbury, Milka, etc.) to invoke feelings of luxury and excitement, or companies that want to come across as creative and imaginative, or sometimes even nostalgic.  


       



    GREEN

    Green represents growth, healing, and balance, so it often leaves people feeling fresh, relaxed and connected to nature and health.  It is also very often associated with money and wealth, so it can be used by financial companies to remind consumers of money.  You will see a lot of health-related and environmentally friendly brands using the color green in their branding and packaging as well because it leads people to feel healthy and fresh when buying their products or choosing their brand over others.
     

    RED

    The color red triggers opposing emotions. It is often associated with passion and love, but it also can be connected to feelings of anger and danger.  Either way, it increases the heartrate and creates excitement.  It is the color that draws attention to itself the quickest and calls for action to be taken.  Red is also known to stimulate the feeling of hunger, which is why it is very often used by restaurants and grocery stores in their advertisements.  Brands that use red tend to be perceived as powerful and high-energy as well, which is why it is suitable for high-profile organizations like the Red Cross or Target.

     

    ORANGE

    Orange is associated with playfulness and enthusiasm, which is why brands use this color to send the message that their company is friendly and cheerful.  The color physiologically inspires and creates excitement.  Similar to red, it draws attention and shows energy but is not as overpowering and is instead more inviting and friendly. It is a great color to use when trying to call customers to action.



    YELLOW

    As you may assume, because of it’s brightness in nature and common association with the sun, yellow is the most energetic of the warm colors and is connected to feelings of happiness, optimism, and spontaneity.  However, using too much yellow can overstimulate the eye and create irritation and annoyance, so while it is used to make people happy, keep in mind that a little can go a long way with this color!



    BLACK
     
    The color black is truly unique. It's one of the only colors that can evoke a high level of elegance, exclusiveness, and sophistication, while simultaneously conveying the seriousness often associated with the color.   It is bold, powerful, and can be used to evoke mystery as well. In design, black can be used to contrast with and put emphasis on accent colors, which can create a very powerful graphic.  Having just black and white designs can also give off the impression of a very sophisticated and high class brand.

     



    WHITE

    Last but not least, white often represents simplicity and minimalism.  Using white in design can create a fresh and clean look and is the perfect neutral color to add to any design. Designers who are looking to create something of modern and minimalistic aesthetic will frequently use a lot of white.  Just like the neutrality of black, white is also a great neutral to pair with a bold color to draw the attention even more so to that color. 







    While color is certainly very important in the creations of designs when it comes to invoking emotion, it is important to factor in that color is not completely agreed on throughout the world.  It is ultimately subjective to past experiences and cultural differences.  Even so, colors and emotions are linked nonetheless and can make a huge difference in the reaction and interpretation of a design on an audience.  Now that you have learned all about the real power of color, use these findings to carefully select the color scheme of your next project and receive a powerful response from your audience in turn!

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    Price Point: $8.95 - $9.95

    Production Time: 10 Business Days from Artwork Approval

    Available Colors: Clear

    Perfect For: Employee Giveaways/Client Gifts/Corporate Swag Store Items/ Swag Store Real Estate/Protection Items /Room Drop Presents/ Donation Items/ Mailer Item/ Kit Ideas/ High-end Gifts/ Raffle Prizes


    Here at NorthPoint, we carry a wide variety of name brand products…so many, in fact, that you could say our list is blossoming into a full-blown garden! We carry everything under the sun… and you know what loves sun?! Flowers! And you know what loves a beautifully blossomed flower?! Bees! OH speaking of bees – we have one more name brand to add to this list! That is right – we are happy to announce that NorthPoint has added the brand Burts Bees to our collection! Not only does Burts Bees help protect your lips from drying up, but this product also comes in a perfectly convenient key pouch that is biodegradable, helping to protect our environment. Let us help aid in the growth of your very own promotional product garden by providing you with a GORGEOUS logo and awesome products and/or brands! Now all you have to do is sit back and watch the seeds begin to sprout!


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    Masking text has been a powerful tool used by designers for quite some time now. Paired with bold typography, it can be really intriguing to add just the right image or graphic within text to bring it to life and make an immediate impact on its viewers. And even better, it only takes a few simple steps in either Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop to achieve this effect.

    In the process of text masking, a clipping mask is used to cut out an image or graphic into the shape of the text itself.  A clipping mask is a shape (called a clipping path) that masks any object below it, whether it’s a photo, vector drawing, etc. A clipping path, however, can only be text or a vector object, not a photo. 

    Below is an example of image masked text, as well as the steps to get there:


    ILLUSTRATOR

    1. When using Illustrator, first open an image or vector that you want to show up in your text.  Let’s take this image of the beach, for example.

     

     

    2. Next, place your text on top of the image.


     

    3. The third step can vary based on the amount of paths present in your text.  In the image above, the text is spaced in a way that will require each letter to be masked individually because they are separate paths. When this is the case,  you will need to convert the text to outline so each letter can be edited. To convert text to outlines, click on Type > Create Outlines or right click on the text and selecting Create Outlines. This creates individually editable objects out of the text, which can be distinguished by the anchor points that can now be found on each letter. Now, instead of having to go through the letters one by one to create a clipping mask on each, Illustrator allows us to combine several paths into one – a ‘compound path’. Select all of the text and go to Object > Compound Path > Make to complete this step.

     

    4. Once a compound path is created from your text, you can now create the clipping mask by selecting the text and image and going to Object > Clipping Mask > Make.  The result should be something like this below! (Once the mask is made, you can still edit it and move around the image by double clicking into isolation mode, or going to Object > Clipping Mask > Edit/Release!) 

    If your text is close enough to be one path, however, like this instance below, you can simply skip the outlining and compound path creating steps and go straight to the clipping mask. 


    PHOTOSHOP

    The steps to create a text mask in Photoshop are very similar to creating a mask in Illustrator.

    1. First, open your background image or create a document and paste the image in.

    2. Type out your text in a large bold font and move the text layer behind the image

    3. Finally, right click on the image layer and select ‘Create Clipping Mask’ for the image to be masked into your text! To edit or move the photo, select the photo layer and use the move tool to shift your image. 

    4. Export your newly created text as a .png file to be able to place on any colored background, and you’re good to go!


    It’s as easy as that! Text masking is a technique that leaves a big portion of the image behind unrevealed, which in turn helps achieve a mysterious and minimalist look. It can add the perfect pop of photography to a typographically heavy design, or can be used to add an enticing visual to a simple composition! Here are just a few examples of successfully implemented text masking:






    Now lets get out there and create some amazingly cool text, shall we?!

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    Price Point: $2.73 - $52.65

    Production Time:  Varies Depending on Product of Choice

    Available Colors: 
    Varies Depending on Product of Choice

    Perfect For: Employee Giveaways/Client Gifts/Corporate Swag Store Items/ Swag Store Real Estate/Protection Items /Room Drop Presents/ Donation Items/ Mailer Item/ Kit Ideas/ High-end Gifts/ Raffle Prizes


    STOP…do not even tell us…are you eating that warm salad with your hands? Are you choking on cold soup that has separated, and you are SPOON-LESS so you resort to sipping it out of the tin foil covered mug you brought it in? Toby Flenderson is eating your tuna sandwich because you both brought your lunch in a paper bag and he is the worst? (Hi all you office fans!) NorthPoint is enjoying warm soup and cold salads all with the appropriate utensils, and we want you to enjoy that too. Keep your food flaming hot and/or icy cold, and bring it wherever you go with these insulated food containers, packable/reusable utensils, and cooler lunch bags! We hear that branding these items with your logo makes your food taste THAT much better!

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    Have you ever printed or submitted a piece of work only to later notice that a sentence was cut off, an image printed much more blurry than expected, a link or font was missing, or an incorrect color setting was used by mistake? These types of mistakes happen much more often than one would like, and we can certainly say that we have all been there! 

    Now what if I told you that InDesign has a way to prevent these mistakes from happening in the first place, long before submission or printing.  The worry and hassle of remembering to double check these often-overlooked details can be completely taken away with the help of a special tool that is known as the preflight panel. 

    The preflight panel can essentially perform a quality check on your document while you are working on it to warn you of problems that can prevent you from printing or outputting as desired.  This would include things like missing files or fonts, low resolution images, overset text, and much more!

    If while working on a project a red light appears on the bottom left of your document, with “error” next to it (seen in example photo below), you know that there is a mistake in your document that you may not have caught.  This is InDesign preflighting your document in the background, searching for and informing you of errors.  If you double click on this red light, the preflight panel pops up with a list of the specific errors in your document.  As seen in this example below, 8 errors are listed in the preflight panel; one for an overset text error, which is shown in the textbox on the right page, and 7 for missing font files, which can be seen by the red highlighted text throughout the document.  


    Another great feature of the preflight panel is that if you click on the line with the error listed, the info area below will tell you exactly what is wrong (in this case the text is 54 characters overset) and a solution to fix it. If you click on the page number of where the error is located, it will also jump you straight to the page and area of where the error is so that you can make the fix more efficiently. 


    InDesign automatically sets the preflight profile to basic, which covers general errors like missing links and fonts and overset text, but there is also the option to create your own customized preflight profile to look for more specific errors that might be more applicable to your project.

    To open the Preflight Profile window, click on the preflight panel flyout menu, and select “Define Profiles”.  Here, you will see drop down lists of different areas within your document that can be checked for errors.  To create your own Preflight Profile, click the + button on the bottom left of the window, and check all of the boxes of specific things that you would want to check for errors. For example, you can add color errors, such as the use of registration instead of black, or even image errors, where you can set a specific minimum or maximum resolution and check for anything that might be outside of that range.


    The possibilities are truly endless with the preflight panel! And while proofreading and double checking your work is always encouraged, the preflight panel helps tremendously with the stress of the possibility of skipping over errors that could make or break your final document. If you aren’t already taking advantage of it, now is your chance to hop on the train of preflight perfection!

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    Price Point: $15.82 - $62.98

    Production Time:  Varies Depending on Product of Choice

    Available Colors: 
    Varies Depending on Product of Choice

    Perfect For: Employee Giveaways/Client Gifts/Corporate Swag Store Items/ Swag Store Real Estate/Protection Items /Room Drop Presents/ Donation Items/ Mailer Item/ Kit Ideas/ High-end Gifts/ Raffle Prizes


    Get off the aux cord hand-sanitizer and step off that stage bacteria wipes! NorthPoint has another talented contender up next and ready to enter the spot LIGHT on center stage. Drumroll please…introducing UV light sterilizing products that you can personalize SPECIFICALLY for your brand. These items are perfect for on-the-go for protection against germs. Bring your pocket of sunshine to your next 6-feet-apart gathering or even when you come home from a long day to help clean items like your smartphone, keys, toothbrushes, or any other highly touched item or surface around you. These products include the talented UVClean micro which plugs right into your smartphone and uses short wavelengths of Ultrviolet light to kill or inactivate microorganisms, the gorgeous UVClean Wand product that sterilizes surfaces such as door handles, cutlery, etc. with ultraviolet light and features a 400 mAh rechargeable battery (YAY!), and the fabulous UVClean Qi that sanitizes your phone (which can carry 25,127 bacteria per square inch) while giving it battery life. The UVClean Qi is also great for cleaning things such as your jewelry, keys, and other small items when needed as well. Especially now, we understand the importance of keeping your surfaces clean and your body healthy but who knew all you needed was a little promotional product branded sunshine?! 


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