Designing a Professional Brochure

Writing a successful brochure is one of the more difficult design tasks. Unlike billboards and signs, brochures have to span three attention lengths. 1. The "read me now" when a view chooses to pick it from a rack of brochures or open the mailer. 2. The "quick scan" as a viewer decides whether it was a mistake to pick up your brochure. 3. The "I'm interested give me value" when a viewer decides to actually read the brochure which could be sometime later than he/she picked it up. Whew. After all this, you still need to get them to do something.

Goal

Ok then, if you are still reading, let’s get your brochure right. First and foremost is understanding your objective. You know more about your business or subject than any rational human will ever care to know. Yes, your business is great, you have 50 great products, a great guarantee, a wonderful service department, a glossy coat, and fresh breath. None of these matter because they have nothing to do with the viewer. Create your ultimate objective around your viewer.
Bad Goal: Provide information about our downtown district.
Good Goal: Bring a visitor downtown to one of the eclectic restaurants.

Target Audience

Who will be viewing this brochure? When you decide on an audience get specific enough to personify an individual. What is his name? How many kids does he have? What kind of car does she drive? On the surface we are answering basic demographics such as age, income and education but we ultimately need to make the viewer feel and act. This is done by truly understanding the individuals that make up your audience.

Learning Objectives

One of the biggest trends in today's marketplace is customer education. Decide what you want to educate the viewer. Thank the customer by making your brochure worth their time. Make it interesting, unique and let it support your goal.

Emotional Objective

Learning leads the viewer to the next step. No matter what we like to think about ourselves, we take action because we feel. Why should they care? How do you want the view to emotionally respond?

Behavior Objective

You've fed them knowledge and you've made them care. Now tell them exactly what you want them to do with these pent up emotions. Name Step 1., Step 2.,. if you have to, but give them explicit directions as to how they should proceed.

Design

The article title is "Designing a Professional Brochure" and we have yet to talk about design. In architecture school professors always said, "Form follows function." Truly even the best-looking design is just graphics unless there is intent behind it. If you skipped the nonsense about goals and objectives, I urge you to take a u-turn towards the top of the page and read it. The bulk of my time as a designer is spent on objectives and target audience, not on graphics. Graphic design is a communication language, not art. (we do print beautiful postcards for art however). Goals and objectives in hand, we now move to graphics.

Theme and Structure

Maintain a consistent feel throughout your brochure. Using limited colors such as one or two background colors and a highlight color allows the user to easily distinguish the importance level of the information. Although the brochure is designed and printed flat, create a consistent grid for each panel, allowing enough margin space to avoid feeling cluttered. Feel free to break this grid with important elements, but the viewer needs the consistency to read the "off grid" or non-standard elements as important.

Text

Graphic software manufacturers should institute an alert when the third font is chosen, "The system has recovered from a serious error. The program will now revert to a previous font face." Using on font face for titles and headings and one for copy with italics and bold used sparingly increase the viewers comprehension of your brochure. San-serif fonts (like this one, Arial) are more readable at smaller font sizes. In general, trim your copy before reducing the font sizes, keeping font sizes large (min 12pt, dependent on viewer age).

Quick-read Text

Nothing makes text more readable than the lack of it. Enough blank space is critical and when it's missing it is usually due to too much text. Carefully choose your heading text and include bulleted lists or bold elements to allow a viewer to scan and understand your brochure within ten seconds.

Other Text Notes
• use power words such as new, easy, results, proven
• AVOID ALL CAPS, ITS DIFFICULT TO READ AND REDUCES RESPONSE RATES
• use bold and italics sparingly
• use image captions, they are one of the most read elements
• use short common speech, voluminous exposition and supercilious verbiage diminish recall
• avoid text over images unless you gradient or lighten the image 80-90% (far more than your fist glance estimate)
• narrow text columns increase readability
• call to action, step by step tell the viewer what they need to do after reading
• include brief company and contact information (its amazing how often this is overlooked)

Images

One great image is worth ten good ones. Keep you images few, but powerful. Not everyone will read your brochure, but they will see it. Images are so powerful that there is no faster way to reduce the read rate than poor images. I am not a photographer and I cringe at every check I write to one, but it is worth it. An inexpensive alternative is stock imagery. (Corbis.com is the leader in stock photography) Choose beautiful stock imagery over poor-quality snap-shots.

Cover

Your brochure will be fighting a sea of other marketing material and must scream "read me." Avoid text columns on the brochure cover. Get your point across in as few words as possible (2-10). Also remember if your brochure is sitting in a rack, only the top one-third will be visible at all. The cover is center-stage for your images; make sure they are vibrant and intriguing. The only job of the cover is to entice people to pick up your brochure. Above all else, keep the cover simple.

Persistent Value

Information alone is not enough. Give the viewer a reason to keep the brochure because it contains something they will use later. This can be a map, a useful list, contact information, coupons, or even a recipe. Marketing is about repetition, so give yourself your viewer one more opportunity to read your brochure.

Evaluation: how did you do?

The first question you should ask is "does the viewer no what to do once they have read the brochure?" A few informal opinions can answer this quickly. Many designers will test a few front cover designs or images to see which is the most effective.

Evaluation list:
• Is it Intriguing?
• Is there enough white space or breathing room?
• Can viewers understand the intent of the brochure in under ten seconds?
• Are images few and effective?
• Does the viewer have a reason to pick it up?
• Does it provide value to the viewer?
• Does it tell the viewer what to do next?

Creating a successful brochure is one of the more difficult design challenges, but it can result in one of your most effective marketing tools. There are many opinions concerning the graphical look of a brochure, but there are design fundamentals regardless of the look. Designing your brochure with these ideas in mind will shape the actual graphical layout. The design tips found here will hopefully provide you with a solid foundation for you to build your best brochure yet.

©2004 by Damion McDunn

Corporate Brochures: Are Yours Helping or Hurting Your Company

How Good Are Your Company's Brochures?

Desk Top Publishing software does not solve your copywriting and professional design/layout problems any more than owning a wrench makes you a qualified mechanic.

Do you find yourself reluctant or even a tad apologetic when you hand out your company's brochure? Are you unhappy with it, but not sure why? If so, chances are you need a new brochure. But before you leap into that project, consider some of the points that follow. A little thought and planning now will go a long way in the creation of a brochure which both projects your corporate identity and image positively and is a brochure of which you can be proud.

Why Do You Even Need a Brochure?

First and foremost, a brochure is just as important and basic a tool as your business card. However, where your business card simply introduces you as an individual, your company brochure introduces your entire company. It is like an executive summary of your operation and offerings. It is an important marketing and sales tool, one in which you can do a little bragging and shamelessly present your credentials in the most favourable light. It is your opportunity to create a lasting impression. Make sure that it is a good one.

A Good Brochure

is essential to the success of your business. It must be brief. It must effectively communicate the most important fundamentals about your business and your products or services. It must communicate with, reach and move a prospective customer who, you must assume, knows nothing about your company. That is a tall order.

A Good Brochure

must leave the reader with the impression that yours is a solid, reliable company and therefore its products must be equally as good, solid and reliable. It is a corner stone in building trust with your prospective customers. It must leave the reader wanting to learn more about your company, but not necessarily today.

A Good Brochure

will introduce your company and give the prospect a visual feel for who you are and what you do. It should function well as both a door opener before a sales call and a reminder afterwards to which prospective clients may refer. While your brochure will seldom actually get you a sale, it will make getting the order so much easier

Does Your Current Brochure Do All That?
No? Well, Change It.

A Bad Brochure Is Like Bad Breath.

No one will tell you what is wrong, but they will avoid you, or in this case, your company. Your brochure, along with your phone number, will simply go right to the trash.

When that happens, you will find you have done more than just waste your money and time. You have turned a prospect into a permanent no sale without even getting a chance to get in the door. If you saved a few hundred dollars on producing your brochure, was it worth it?

A badly done or cheap looking brochure reflects badly on you, your company and your products. Do not scrimp. A company which economizes on a brochure may also be seen as scrimping on its products.

Your Brochure Should Not

attempt to be a comprehensive technical manual detailing all your product specs. It should not be a price sheet listing special sales items and the like. These are sales sheets and have completely different requirements in look, design, and purpose.

When companies try to combine these functions in a one piece all things to all people brochure, they often end up with a confusing, disorganized mess. You can be absolutely certain that if your brochure is difficult to read, it won't be. This could reflect a confused company to a prospect. Remember K.I.S.S.?

An acceptable combination of both types is often seen in a presentation folder. One pocket holds your corporate brochure, the other pocket holds special deals, sales sheets, price lists and the like.

Brochures Are Usually Used In Three Ways:

• Initially: as an introductory mailer. You may mass mail the brochure to sales leads and follow up later by phone.
• Secondarily: Your brochure should always be used as a leave behind at initial sales calls. Even when you have mailed out a copy in advance of a meeting, it is always a good idea to leave another copy as you finish up your sales call. It serves as a reminder that there is a solid, respectable company behind the sales rep who just left. And it certainly never hurts to have several copies of your brochure circulating in your prospect's office(s).
• Thirdly: A corporate brochure is essential to fulfil requests from potential clients for literature, either in response to an ad or a phone enquiry.

Do NOT Do This....

A major Canadian Bank produced a series of "Advice to Small Business" booklets to hand out to prospects. Each branch manager was supplied with a quantity of these brochures. However under the bank's accounting system they were only charged if they actually gave out the brochures. The result? You guessed it. Many of these branch managers stashed the brochures in the vaults and refused to give them out to avoid being charged.

Brochures and advertising material are wasted sitting in your mail room. Get this material into your prospects' hands.

CHECK THE TRUNKS OF YOUR SALES REPS' CARS

More then once we have seen expensive sales material only get as far as the sales rep's car trunk and no further. Make sure they are giving it out as intended.

How Do You Develop a Good Brochure?

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You probably get dozens of brochures, flyers and general junk every week. Pay attention to what you do with them and why. Some you probably scan quickly and file for later reference. Others, you toss straight in the garbage. A very few you will actually read. Why? Take a second look and see what attracts and sells you . . . and what repels you.

1. Learn from your competition. Before you start to develop a brochure for your company, review all your competitions' brochures. You'll be surprised at what you learn. Pick out the points and techniques that attract and sell you. It is easier to point to a brochure with the type of image you like than to verbalize it in briefing a creative person.

   The best way to learn about your industry is from your competition. You do you have their brochures, price sheets, promotional material, samples of their products, don't you? This is the first step.

2. Involve your Creative person from the start. Bring in a creative services person for a preliminary chat. Show him your competitors' material. Give him an idea of what you are trying to accomplish and a little company background.

   A skilled, creative person should be able to elicit from you all he needs to develop an initial rough concept, copy and layout. Work together to develop the brochure you need.

   We usually (but not always) will develop a rough at no charge on the understanding that we produce the work if it is accepted. We find this is actually very productive for all concerned.

3. Determine how much you can spend on your brochure? It's no good just telling your designer to develop some ideas unless you provide a realistic budget within which to work. You do not want to waste money, but neither do you want to produce some schlock just to save a little. That's penny wise and pound foolish. A good bench mark you could use is that your brochure should match or better the quality of the best competitive brochures.

   Set a budget that tends to hurt and than add 10%.Your brochure must reflect the quality your company sells. There is seldom profit in looking second rate.

4. Printing Budgets Setting up a reasonable printing budget is easy, if not painless. Call up a couple of printers and ask them, in general terms, what it will cost to print the type of brochure you have in mind, based on all artwork supplied. Usually they will be glad to assist. After all it could mean an order.

5. Pre-Press Budgets As a rule of thumb, use about 50% of the printing cost as a budget for your copy, design, type and final artwork. This percentage will be lower on larger printing jobs of course. Take heart. There is some consolation in the fact that your pre press costs are a one time item.

   After you get over the initial shock, fire up your spread sheet and set a realistic budget.

   For the best results, let your printer print but have your creative person do all the copy, design and related pre press work. Do NOT have your printer designing brochures. And no matter how good your receptionist is with her paint program, do not have amateurs creating your corporate material, unless of course you want to look amateur.

10 Tips for Creating Professional Brochure Designs

The key to making a professional brochure is to stick to the basics. These ten tips will provide the crucial elements for creating a professional brochure design:

1. What’s out there. Collect and study brochures from around the community. What makes one design more appealing than another? You can develop your sense of good design by carefully studying other designs.
2. Voice / Audience. Who are you trying to reach with your information, and how do you want to come across to them? Choose a font that will express the voice you desire (professional, humorous, casual…) and still keep your message clear. Avoid using more than two or three font styles, so as not to distract the reader from your message. Vary the font size of individual parts of the design according to their importance. Avoid excessive underlining, which can cause clutter and make text harder to read.
3. Less is more. What is the purpose of your brochure? Use the 'Brochure Checklist' to decide what information is necessary, and arrange the components of your brochure in order of importance. The clearer you are about the order of importance within your information, the better your brochure will be. Make sketches and move the various elements around. Try repositioning one or more elements to see how your design is affected.
4. Bars and boxes. Use bars and boxes sparingly. Boxes, borders and bars work well for directing one^’s attention and separating busy areas--but too many can make your brochure design look cluttered or confusing. Explore other options for grouping and separating.
5. Negative space. Use 'empty' space to create a relationship between the contents and the page. Bring the specific information into focus on the page by adjusting the space around it. The amount of negative space in a design affects its overall tone of lightness or heaviness. As a person shouting in a noisy room stands out when the room suddenly becomes quiet, so does a word stand out on a busy page where the busyness suddenly stops.
6. Keep it simple. Keep your message in mind and include only those ingredients necessary to communicate the message. If you choose graphic elements to ornament your brochure, ask yourself whether they help to direct the reader’s attention, or simply create distraction.
7. Bigger, bolder and brighter. Once you have determined the relative importance and sequence of the particular components in your message, you will be ready to consider how to treat each of them. The most important items should obviously receive more of your reader’s attention. They should be larger, bolder, brighter, or in some other way made to stand out from the rest of your message.
8. Color. Color can be applied as ink on paper or as the paper itself. There are hundreds of paper colors available, yet some of the most effective brochures are done in only one or two colors. Black and white brochures can often be more dramatic than color. The cost of printing should be considered before making a color decision.
9. Paper selection. Paper comes in all sizes, colors, and textures. Ask your teacher about paper options. Using recycled paper can add an interesting flair to your brochure design, and it helps reduce the impact we make on our natural resources. However, using recycled paper can increase the cost of your brochure, because it is generally more expensive than regular paper.
10. Proofread! You should proofread your final design several times before having it printed. Once printed, it’s too late to fix an error that you didn't spot. Read lines backwards to check for errors. Step back and look critically at the overall layout.

Create brochures that help you sell in Publisher

Applies to
Microsoft® Office Publisher 2003
Microsoft Publisher 2002

Microsoft Publisher includes pre-designed brochure publications, set up specifically to provide information about special offers. By starting with a pre-designed publication, you can:

• Base your brochure on a publication with a ready-made professional design.
• Reformat the brochure with just the click of a button, to switch from a 3-panel brochure to a 4-panel brochure, and to include reply forms, a customer address section, and more.
• Ensure that your company's marketing materials project a consistent identity, when you select a single Master Design Set as the basis of each piece you create.

Of course, as with all publications created in Publisher, you can also start from scratch to create a completely unique look.

Tip If you have less information than is appropriate for a brochure, or just want a more casual look, consider creating a flyer instead.

Create your brochure

When you create a brochure, you can decide which elements, such as customer address and response form, you want it to contain. You can also personalize the brochure by choosing color and font schemes that best reflect your company identity.

Follow these steps to create a brochure:

To	Do this
Start your brochure	Start Publisher. In the New Publication task pane, under New from a design, click Publications for Print, and then click Brochures. Note If you are using Publisher 2002, in the New Publication task pane, click Brochures. Under Brochures, choose a type (for example, Informational, Special Offer). Click the preview image for the brochure design you want.
Specify brochure layout and content in the Brochure Options task pane	Under Page size, click 3-panel or 4-panel. Under Customer address, click Include or None, depending on if you will be mailing your brochure to customers. Under Form, click a type of response form to add, or click None. Click Color Schemes, and then choose the color scheme you want. Click Font Schemes, and then choose the font scheme you want.
Replace placeholder text	Click the placeholder text, and then type. Notes If you have already created a personal information set, your business contact information and logo will automatically replace some of the placeholder text. In most cases, text will resize automatically to fit within the text box. Repeat as needed for side 2 of your publication.
Control text size in text boxes	Click the text box. On the Format menu, point to AutoFit Text, and then click Do Not AutoFit (if you are using Publisher 2002, click None). Select the text, and then choose a new font size from the Font Size list on the toolbar.
Replace placeholder pictures	Right-click the placeholder picture, click Change Picture, and then choose the source of the new picture. Tip If you don't see Change Picture when you right-click, click the placeholder picture once until you see the white circles surrounding the picture's frame. Click the picture again until you see gray circles with x's in them surrounding the picture itself, and then right-click the picture. (For more information about working with pictures, see Publisher Help.) Repeat as needed for side 2 of your publication.
Complete the brochure	When the brochure looks the way you want, save the file. If you will be mailing your brochure to customers, prepare it for printing by merging the addresses into the brochure. Tip If you don't already have your addresses in a data file, you can create a new address list in Publisher. Point to Mail and Catalog Merge Wizard on the Tools menu, and then click Create Address List. If you are using Publisher 2002, point to Mail Merge Wizard on the Tools menu, and then click Create Address List. Print your brochures.

How to Design and Layout a Brochure

Learn how to design and layout a brochure in this article for graphic designers.Â

How to Design and Layout a Brochure

Designing a basic brochure - how hard can that be? For good graphic designers, the answer is a lot tougher than you think. Even for the most basic type of brochure, before you ever put pencil to paper or click your mouse, there is essential information the client and you need to discuss.

The first thing you need to know is the purpose of the brochure or what the client wants that brochure to accomplish. That ties directly into who the target audience is and what the message of the brochure will be. There are three main types of brochures and in each case; the cover is used to accomplish a specific goal. The three types of brochures are those that are used to advertise or market, those that educate or inform, and those that entertain.

For a brochure whose primary purpose is to advertise or market products and services, the cover will most likely have two parts: a catchy phrase that grabs the potential customer's attention, and then lists the benefits of the product (what will this product do for me?). In the instance of a brochure that is primarily educational or informative, the product generally appears on the cover with the information of what it does or can do listed inside. The entertaining brochure is used the least. You might see it in a family-style restaurant, for example, and it contains puzzles, drawings, etc. for kids to keep them occupied. But, for this piece, I'll focus on the first two types of brochures.

The next thing you and the client need to decide is the number of panels in the brochure, which is influenced by a number of factors. Some questions to consider:

· How much information will be in this brochure?

· How is this brochure going to be used?

· Is there a bleed?

· Is the brochure going to be of a unique design that might include die-cuts or unusual folding?

· Will the brochure be a direct mail piece? If so, what are the postal regulations for the size and mailing costs?

· Also under mailing, will there be a returned piece such as a Business Reply Card (BRC)?

· What is the allotted budget for the brochure?

Designers need to get the parameters and specifications from the client before they proceed, as these may greatly affect the cost. Printers can also be a tremendous resource in explaining how a brochure's parameters and specifications will affect everything from the size of paper a brochure is printed on, to trimming, folding, and special cuts.

Once those decisions are made, the graphic designer and client need to discuss what is often referred to as the "hierarchy of information" or what's the order of information; starting with the most important and moving onto the least. At this stage, you'll need to know on which panel or panels information is being placed. In some brochures, information (particularly photographs and maps) can go across two panels to striking effect. At the same time, when thinking about how the brochure will be laid out, consider whether each individual panel will hold distinct information or are the panels related?

You're still not quite ready to move into the actual design process as you need to refer back to that target audience the brochure is aimed at. Here you need to know the answer to the following question: what is the message the client is sending with this brochure? Advertising, educating, informing, and entertaining are how that message is presented; the actual message is what you want to say about the particular product, service, or company.

When all that information is gathered, you can finally get down to the business of designing. You'll take into account the basic elements of good design - alignment, repetition for a sense of unity, contrast and a focal point that provides interest, balance, scale and perspective, color, and so on. You'll also want to keep in mind the font, size, color, and orientation of the text.

As with any design there are also things you'll want to avoid. These include:

· Avoid over-used typefaces, two of which are Arial and Helvetica.

· For content type, keep the point size under 12.

· Don't use more than three type faces in a brochure.

· Generally don't use more than one alignment.

As you can see, designing even a standard six-panel brochure is often a much more complicated process than you initially might think. The more organized you are, the easier the graphic design process will be, and probably a lot more fun. With any design project, it's a good idea to have all the necessary information, pictures, parameters, and specifications before you let your creative juices flow.

Best of Brochure Design - Cool Samples and Examples of Brochures

Top 7 Fonts Used By Professionals In Graphic Design

All though there have been many other most used font posts, most of them outline fonts used by the ‘not-so-well-trained’ designer. In this post I want to outline the fonts that are often used by the more ‘professional’ of designers.

The Six Part Series

This article is the third article of six in this series.

• Top 7 Most Overused Techniques & Elements Used in Graphic Design
• Top 7 Most Overused Icons / Shapes Used in Graphic Design
• Top 7 Fonts Used By Professionals In Graphic Design
• Top 7 Most Overused Concepts Used in Graphic & Web Design
• Top 7 Most Overused Stock Images Used in Web Design
• Top 7 Most Overused Clichés In Logo Design

Top 7 Most Used Fonts Used By Professionals In Graphic Design

1. Helvetica

Without a doubt, Helvetica is the most heavily used font by professionals (and also by the not so professional) in graphic design. Although some praise the font, many believe that it is spaced too tightly.

And as Vivien pleas in her 16 most overused fonts article, “Understand that you can’t always rely on Helvetica to illustrate and deliver your every message. Helvetica is not perfect for everyone and every occasion.”

2. Trajan

Trajan finds its way into many Hollywood movie posters and anything remotely to do with religion, law, marriage, class or the past. You can check out the flickr pool for more uses of Trajan.

A bit of history on the font Trajan… Trajan is an old style serif typeface designed in 1989 by Carol Twombly for Adobe. The design is based on Roman square capitals, as used for the inscription at the base of Trajan’s Column from which the typeface takes its name.

3. Garamond

Although there are many versions of Garamond, the most used version today is the Adobe Garamond version (as seen above) released in 1989. Garamond is a great font for magazines, textbooks, websites and long bodies of text and was recently named the second best font (after Helvetica) by a German publication.

4. Futura

Futura is a font that comes up often in large displays, logos, corporate typefaces and in books where small text is needed. It is based on geometric shapes (near-perfect circles, triangles and squares) which became representative of the Bauhaus design style of 1919–1933. Futura has an appearance of efficiency and forwardness. Some do hate the font though.

4. Bodoni

Bodoni is a great font for headlines, decorative text and logos. Bodoni has a narrow underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs. The face has extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall geometric construction which makes it a very aesthetic looking font.

6. Bickham Script Pro

Used mainly for formal occasions, Bickham Script Pro is a font which does the job well… Cameron Moll even recommended it in his article “Typefaces no one will get fired for using.” The ‘not-so-trained’ designer usually vouches for Vivaldi instead which is one of America’s most hated fonts. Another great alternative would be Sloop.

7. Frutiger

The Frutiger font family is neither strictly geometric nor humanistic in construction; its forms are designed so that each individual character is quickly and easily recognised. Such distinctness makes it good for signage and display work and it is often used in Web 2.0 Logos.

The full family has a warmth and subtlety that have, in recent years, made it popular for the smaller scale of body text in magazines and booklets.