What it cost For less than five figures, Brass Tacks brought world-class design to the Benton County Daily Record. The total cost for our service is based on a $1,500 day rate plus expenses for meals, transportation and lodging. This allows us to spend five full days with your staff and still keep your cost well under five figures. What we did for the Daily Record Our services included work performed in their offices and ours. From our offices we evaluated the existing products and competition, prepared for our sessions in Bentonville and followed up on work performed by the Daily Record staff. During two on-site visits lasting several days, we conducted hands-on workshops in design, page production and color correction to prepare the staff for the redesign. Here's a list of the services we performed: Led the staff in a session to identify goals and strategies for the redesign, emphasizing the importance of establishing means of measuring results Worked shoulder-to-shoulder with the design editor to improve his prototytpe Adjusted bodytype specifications to enhance legibility Conducted hands-on sessions to improve users' efficiency with QuarkXPress Recalibrated separation setup in Adobe Photoshop to improve color reproduction Conducted hands-on sessions to improve users' proficiency with Adobe Photoshop and improve color reproduction Helped the staff produce a punch list of tasks they needed to complete before launching their redesign.

“When we heard the publisher was going to bring in a design consultant, we all rolled our eyes. My not-so-gracious thoughts on the subject were that consultants are guys we pay out the nose for, only to ignore their advice – always what the publisher wanted to hear – the moment they board the plane home. When Alan came to our site, however, he blew all my consultant stereotypes out of the proverbial waters. The man knows newspapers, and he knows the pitfalls of the redesign process. He wasn't afraid to challenge our notions and ask the hard questions. He didn't just help us make our paper look great, but his pragmatic, hands-on guidance helped our paper read great. Alan knows that content is king and that great design is only great if it is packaging great content. Alan was a pleasant straight-shooter who defused egos and took a lot of the pain out of the redesign process. The bottom line for me is that our readers have a better paper because of Alan's efforts.” – Lucas Roebuck, Benton County Daily Record