Newsletters and Brochures

Newsletters and Brochures

Newsletters and brochures should be designed with the audience and purpose in mind. Brochures are designed to promote awareness of your company. There are two types of brochures, image and information. An image brochure should have a different look than information brochure, telling people how to do something and persuading them to do it.

You should start your process first by planning its content. Creating thumbnail sketches to test various design options is a good way. Make sure to use a consistent design for a series of brochures or for issues of a newsletter. When designing a brochure, think how the reader will get the document. When designing a document, keep 4 things in mind:

Put your strongest image in the top half of the page.

Arrange small photos in one column of the grid or in the shape of a C, a U, or T.

Pull out interesting quotes or statements that will summarize a section of a long story. Make sure to put these in larger type in the middle of columns to draw attention to the story.

Decide how much space to give a story, before you write it.

It is important to keep 6 things in mind when designing both newsletters and brochures:

Keep pictures near the text they illustrate.

Use small tab indentations when you have small type and narrow columns.

Justify type and use rules thin lines between columns for a more formal look.

Use bold or italics, instead of underlining.

Provide an e-mail address or phone number for those who would want more information.

Do not put important information on the back of a page that the reader will cut off or fax to you.