Just about every serious business person who’s marketing a product or service must develop a brochure to help sell that product or service. Even if you are not doing the design yourself and hiring somebody to do it, it’s your job to understand all the ins and outs of development. This will ensure that you end up with a professional product that’s properly targeted to your market or niche. The design must be simple enough, yet carry all the information necessary to help connect to prospects. Notice I mention “simple” first. Most people have no problem filling every white space available on a piece of paper when planning brochure printing. It’s being able to restrain from that what is difficult.
Brochure Design Ideas…
Before you tackle the design process you need to study every angle related to the brochure. Don’t just start putting stuff on paper. First of all, you need to consider 2 things: form and function. Form would be the actual design, colors, fonts and how you want the design to look. Function will include the content, text, diagrams and photos and how these elements are supposed to interact with the consumer. The bottom line is that you want your brochure to tell a story in the most concise manner possible. Function also involves the shape, position and folds of the final product. Plus, there’s a grey area where both form and function will meet harmoniously. If you can successfully achieve this, your design and content will merge seamlessly. Your final brochure will look professional and well thought through. Most importantly, it will convert readers into buyers. If you miss the point of the brochure in the first place you’re simply going to end up with a pretty piece of paper than will yield little to no sales. People don’t want to know every single feature of your product or service. They simply want to be engaged, satisfied and confident in what they are getting. If you get too technical and speak in language they cannot relate to or even understand, you are going to lose trust and ultimately a good customer. So remember, always speak in terms your customer can easily understand.
Here are some technical details that will help with your design:
- Don’t necessarily base your brochure design around an 8.5 x 11″ piece of paper. Also, don’t immediately opt for a tri fold brochure design. If you are printing large quantities in a proper printing press, you have more flexibility for sizing and folds. Plus, for a professional looking brochure you will likely want bleeds (where the ink goes all the way to the edge of the paper) so the printer will have to print on a bigger sheet of paper anyway and then cut to size. There are certain final sizes that yield the least wasted paper so you can always ask your preferred printer to offer some size recommendations.
- Think about the paper type. Do you want a thinner, more lightweight paper? Do you want a thicker material that will hold it’s shape better? The latter will probably look best and last the longest, but it will be more expensive, take more space and be heavier and more expensive to distribute. Keep all that in mind and try to find a good balance. Also consider the paper coating. You can choose between dull or gloss coating, or even no coating at all. Keep in mind this will all affect how your ink and photos look. For even more flexibility, all types of paper can be re-coated after printing with an entire array of options such as aqueous coating, super high gloss UV coating, spot varnishes and one of my favorite “soft-touch” coating.
- Decide beforehand how you will distribute the piece. Will you mail it? If so, you must leave space for an address and postage. You probably also need to consider how to tab it to keep it closed while in transit. If you are only going to hand it out at a store for example, you might not need an address area. Having one anyway, even if it’s small, can allow for more flexibility in the future.
- Pick up a few of your competitor’s brochures before you start conceiving yours. The worst thing you can do is shoot completely in the dark. You want to have a good idea of what others are doing in order to be able to compete accordingly. It doesn’t mean your are going to copy. You can create an original piece nonetheless. But at least you are aware of what your competition is doing so that you can develop a better marketing strategy.
- Be careful with time sensitive material. If you are going to put dates or other information that will deem the brochure obsolete after a certain amount of time, make sure you have a realistic timeframe for distribution and conversion into sales. Otherwise you’re bound to throw away money. In many cases, creating timeless material can be best unless the brochure is designed specifically for a certain time-sensitive event. Be aware of other things that can yield your brochure obsolete. Things like phone numbers, addresses and employee names. If there are high chances that any of these might change during the time you expect to use your brochure be very wary about the way you use them in your final print.
- Don’t skimp on the photography. There’s a very good reason behind the saying “a photo says a thousand words.” Because it does! Avoid saying your product is crap by using crap photography. Taking good photos is best left to a professional product photographer. Trust me, even if you spend a lot of money on good camera gear, unless you have someone that can operate it properly, you’re going down a very expensive rocky-road, downhill, with no brakes.
- Measure twice, print once. I can’t stress this enough. Make sure that all your measurements throughout the design are spot on. Make sure all the text is perfect and there are NO TYPOS. There is no room and no excuse for typos in professional design. Even if you think it’s not your fault there’s a mistake, trust me, it is your fault. If you are the designer, even if your client signed-off on a project as approved, if you find they made a mistake, even a small one, contact your client and get it sorted out. They’ll appreciate you for this.
- Always have your projects quoted by at least 3 different printing companies. That’s the only way to really arrive at an average price. Plus, even if you have somebody that you work with most of the time, nobody can focus on every single area of printing. So, depending on the project, the person who usually gives you the best price might not necessarily always be able to. Unless you enjoy paying extra, quote with various companies.
There’s no real magic to designing a good brochure. It just takes planning beforehand. Then, a good amount of thinking during the design process. If you are planning the design of a brochure for your product or service, please feel free to contact me by clicking here. You can discuss the project further with me for valuable guidance and information. All this with no obligation. I’d be thrilled to develop your professional brochure, but if in the end you decide not to hire me… No hard feelings! However, you’d be glad if you do. I guarantee it! 🙂
Have a good one! -Danny C
