How To Make Your Brochure Design Shine

                                                                                         

Brochures are as good as the time you can put into them. Some brochures are designed and written and sent to the presses in less than six hours. Others, when given enough lead time, have taken up to six weeks to design and write. Obviously, many factors help decide the timeline you have to create a brochure: how busy is the rest of your business? If you can afford to outsource your brochure printing process, the marketing agency’s workload can mean you must wait months for a good brochure.

If you are designing and writing your own brochure, there are a few rules that you need to know that will help you to cut down on the time it takes to create your brochure.

Design Rules

Keep it short. No one wants to read a long-winded brochure. Resist the urge to cram every square inch of the brochure with text. Use photos to tell a story and use only as many words as needed. Yes, brochures are used to give more details than many other types of marketing vehicles, like flyers, but that doesn’t mean you have permission to bore the readers to tears about minute details. Keep the page length short, keep the sentences short, keep the paragraphs short and keep the headlines short.

Keep it simple. Only use one or two fonts and use the same types of graphic elements, like a dotted line or a certain color of line to break up sections of your brochure. Repeating graphic elements creates style and consistency, which is pleasing to the eye.

Do not indent paragraphs. It is best in a brochure to use spaces between paragraphs. And when you use spaces to denote new paragraphs, it’s not necessary to also use indentions. Use one or the other; otherwise, you’re just wasting space.

Use bold and italics sparingly. And do not use underline or all caps at all. Underlined words and sentences can be hard to read and people read words that are all capped one letter at a time. You do not want to chance anyone slowing down to read your brochure copy because slowing eventually leads to stopping. Make sure you do not overuse bold and italics because they lose their effect if they are used too much.

Copy Rules

Use “you” a lot. This helps you build a relationship with your prospect or customer. If you talk about them in the third person, “our customers”, people will not think you are talking to them. Your brochure should breed some familiarity and people that are familiar with each other say “you”.

Avoid open-ended questions. Always phrase questions so that they can only be answered by “yes” or “no”. You do not want people to start thinking of alternatives to your product or service.

Use informal language. Avoid using jargon and formal, academic-speak. Do not bore people when they read your brochure. Write your brochure like you were talking to a friend. This will help you keep a friendly tone and to leave out an unnecessary information.

Always include your contact information on the back of each brochure. Even if you are handing out two brochures together, do not assume that people will read them together. Each brochure must stand alone. Make sure your business name, contact name, phone number, email address, Web site address and postal address are on every brochure.

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