10 Great Brochure Design Tips for Beginners

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Is this your first time creating a brochure? Or maybe you just need a few pointers to guide you along. The use of brochures is one of the most essential and effective forms of marketing right after digital marketing about which you can find more info of its relation with businesses on this weblink. The following are a few ideas to keep in mind as you go through the design process. 10 great tips that will help you produce a brochure that delivers the message you want.

1. Use Color:
Color is worth the investment. Color gets the attention of your reader. I’ve heard that the average mail recipient will spend seven seconds looking at your brochure deciding whether to act on it or not. You’re competing with all of the mail in the box and your brochure needs to be noticed. Nothing says look at me like a splash of color.
2. Use Photos:
Use those seven seconds to your advantage. Don’t bog down your brochure with a lot of boring text. A generous helping of photos and other attention-getting graphical elements like headlines and use of bold will keep your audience interested.

3. Use Discretion:
Most people look at images first, then headlines, then body copy. Because of this, try to get your most important information and selling points across in the images and headlines. There’s no need to write a book when the images convey your message.

4. Use Less:
The most important rule of design that will get your audience’s attention during those crucial seven seconds is, Less Is More. Stick to three fonts or less for your brochure. Century Schoolbook, Century Expanded, Georgia, and Palatino are good, legible choices.  Many people prefer to select a type “family” and use its components for different brochure elements (body text, headlines, captions). A type “family” includes specifically executed variations of a single typeface. For instance, the Arial family includes Arial, Arial Black, Arial Rounded MT Bold, and Arial Narrow.

5. Use Consistent Typefaces:
Don’t fill the small spaces of a folded brochure with big headlines that look like filler.  Be consistent in your use of typefaces and sizes for headlines, body text, and captions; size 16 for headlines, size 12 for text, and size 10 for captions.

6. Use White Space Judiciously:
Break up the text with bullet points and keep paragraphs short.  Use adequate line spacing to make your brochure attractive and legible, and don’t crowd elements on the page or push type together.

7. Use the Address Area to Your Advantage:
If you’re mailing your brochure, use the address area to include every bit of contact information you have: your return address, website, logo, and if you have one, your mission statement on the left side of the panel.

8. Beware the Fold:
I can’t tell you how many brochures I’ve seen where the edge of a  photo is creased by a fold, or the text runs into a fold. You don’t want your message in the fold unless you’ve designed it that way. Whatever fold you’re using (bi- or tri-fold, z-fold, etc.), when you have your final design for proofing be sure you fold the brochure to check that your layout is correct.

9. Use a Proofreader:
Don’t waste your hard work with spelling errors, poor production, design mistakes, or incorrect information. Ask an independent person, preferably a professional who is in your target market to scan the brochure for any mistakes or design flaws. Also, ask the person to provide honest feedback and inquire if the content stimulates their interest. And if your brochure includes information on an event, be sure you confirm the date(s), time, and place before you send it to us. If you’re on a tight budget, triple-check that vital piece of information for accuracy. And finally, know the ‘chain of command’ for error-checking. If there is more than one person who approves communications such as brochures, create a list and be sure everyone who needs to has signed off on the final copy–literally signed on the final copy before it gets sent to us.

10. Use The Digital Dept. for Printing:
Just because you can print your brochure from your inkjet printer, doesn’t mean you should. This final tip really comes down to a decision based on your budget. But for the best print quality, at an affordable price, professional printing is the way to go.  When you factor in the cost of ink, the cost of folding the brochures and applying labels yourself you can actually save a lot of money by letting us do the labor intensive work for you. You’ll get a professional looking brochure that will stand out from the rest.

While this post is geared toward the beginner, the tips here are used daily by beginners and professionals alike.  They are intended as a guideline for you to get started.  There are many other issues to be taken into consideration. For example, paper choice, use of stock designs and size are all things to think about. Please visit our website at www.digitaldept.com to see more brochure options.

If you’ve created a brochure for yourself or someone else, I’d like to hear from you. Please add your tips or comments below and I’ll try to address as many as I can.

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Uncertain Times Call For Very Certain Measures

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We’re facing one of the most critical economic times in our history, and a complacent business is one that could fail. Now is not the time to sit back and hope for the economic recovery to come to your rescue. As a business owner you should begin new marketing strategies to engage current and prospective customers. You need to muster up the courage to invest in your business.  How can this be done?

  • Check your profit margin. Folks are looking for bargains and if your markup is generous, it’s better to sell merchandise at a good discount than not at all.
  • Give the customer a reason to come into your place of business. For existing customers it might be as simple as a postcard with an appreciation discount. We all like to be appreciated.
  • Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Why should they shop with you? Are your prices competitive?
  • Approach your vendors and ask them to work with you to offer special pricing, participate in co op advertising or renegotiate your contract.
  • Update your marketing collateral – websites, print ads, brochures, business cards and other supporting materials should reflect your business’ identity. You only get one chance to make a good first impression.

These are just a few ideas to get you to kick start the positioning of your business for the economic recovery. I encourage you, whether a sole proprietor or have several employees, to think in certain terms during these uncertain times. You will definitely position your business to be even stronger once the economy rebounds.

We provide printed marketing collateral including cards, brochures, flyers, mini-brochures, business cards and more.  To start your business, contact us today.  Your competition did.

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Product Photography and Its Importance in eCommerce

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When choosing a style of photography for your products, you need to consider the potential buyer’s opinion of what they find interesting and appealing; what one buyer finds professional, another may find bland or boring. And if you are doing this to improve your SEO score, I would recommend you have a peek at these guys, as the content to learn there is in abundance. So in a world saturated with banal and boring imagery, making it increasingly difficult to get noticed on the web, the goal is to maintain a balance between creativity and professionalism while still producing a flawless photograph of the product.

Poor photography will communicate to the customer that you don’t care about your products. Unique photography is the key to standing out and showing customers that you’re serious about how you look and what you’re selling. Each product has traits that need to be emphasized and therefore every picture should be customized per item. If all your product shots are the same one after another, the customer will tire of looking and move on, however, if you use interesting photos and give the customer an opportunity to interact with or use their imagination to affect an image, it will stimulate a more responsive reaction. People notice time and effort, and they will be more willing to expend energy paying attention to details of each photograph if someone else did as well.

Poor preparation is obvious and can make or break a picture. Whether it’s ironing t-shirts, cleaning off glass or rearranging lighting, every product needs to be properly prepared before it’s photographed. Beside proper preparation and technical acumen, there is really no way someone can say that one style is right or wrong, but what is best for the customer and product.
Photographing a t-shirt on a person can be better than putting that t-shirt on a mannequin, but it has to be a fitting model. It wouldn’t make sense to throw a Bob Marley tee on a metal head, unless it was in jest. In the same vein, it also wouldn’t make sense to have a female college student wearing a fairy princess necklace for adolescents.

It’s very important that your photos makes sense and are appropriate for your target demographic. When a 14 year old girl sees another teen wearing something that piques her interest, while in a setting she can relate to, her impulse is to buy or at the least consider. So in addition to the product, the surroundings are an important element of the photo, creating an organic selling environment to entice buyers with this pre-designed lifestyle image. In the end, customers want to feel that others are buying the same products they are; and a photo with said product in an appropriate setting is a good way to create that illusion.

Great photos let you show your customers and clients the benefits and key features of your product. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, but a great picture is worth ten times that when it increases sales, promotes your brand and distinguishes you from the competition.

Seen a great photo lately? Share it with us!

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Increase Marketing During Hard Times

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Yes, that’s right, I said increase your marketing. When hard times hit, the natural tendency for organizations is to cut marketing budgets to the bone. That’s just backwards thinking. Marketing should be positioned as an investment rather than an expense.

Advertisers need to understand that during hard times, it is especially important to be bold and even increase your marketing budget. Harvard business professor John Quelch writing in The Financial Times of London suggests the following about marketing during recessionary times:

● Research the consumer. They are redefining value and responding to the recession. Price elasticity curves are changing. Consumers are willing to postpone purchases, trade down or buy less. Trusted brands are especially valued, interest in new brands and categories fade.
● Focus on family values. During hard times we tend to retreat to our village. Family scenes in advertising gain purchase with consumers.
● Maintain marketing spending. According to Quelch, it is well documented that brands that increase advertising during a recession when competitors are cutting back can improve market share and return on investment than during good economic times.
● Gimmicks are out, reliability, durability, safety and performance are in. New products, especially those that address the new consumer reality and thereby put pressure on competitors, should still be introduced, but advertising should stress superior price performance, not corporate image.
● Adjust pricing tactics. In tough times, price cuts attract more consumer support than promotions such as sweepstakes and mail-in offers.
● Stress core values. Adapt marketing strategies to economic realities. CEOs should spend more time with employees and members.

Organizations that acknowledge the consumer’s need to retreat or flight to safety will win, according to Lisa Renner, CEO, Beyond Marketing, LLC., Lenexa, Kansas. She noted the more than two million people who took advantage of Denny’s free breakfast offer recently—demonstrating the need for comfort food, as another form of flight to safety.

“We have to change the way we think about marketing and advertising,” she said. “The winners are those that shift their thinking to solving consumer problems by looking through the consumer’s lens rather than through their own.”

What do you think? We’d appreciate your thoughts…How are you approaching marketing during these hard times? Please post a comment and let us know.

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