A brochure is the centerpiece of your business’ print marketing materials. A quality brochure will explain what your company has to offer in a succinct and organized way. A poorly executed brochure will only serve to confuse and frustrate its reader. The following guidelines will help you create an effective, informative brochure for your potential customers.
White Space is Your Friend
When designing a brochure, there’s a desire to squeeze everything about your business onto it. The problem is, a brochure is supposed to provide someone with a brief overview of your business, not a detailed accounting of everything you do and are. People are more likely to want to look over something short and sweet, rather than dense and lengthy.
If the point of your brochure is to get someone to read it, filling its pages with too much information is exactly the way to ensure no one will. Leaving more white space will make your brochure more pleasing to the eye. White space helps readers better take in information. It makes for improved legibility and understanding. Consider, for instance, the space between the paragraphs in this article. Visually, they help you understand how this article is organized.
Use Photos
Photos are more likely to attract someone to a brochure than text. The right photo can give a sense of your business’ ethos. It can be tempting to avoid using photos because they take up precious text space in a brochure, but remember the old saying “a picture’s worth a thousand words.” A single picture can say more about your company than a paragraph or two.
For instance, if you were looking at a company’s brochure and there was a picture of smiling staff members wrapping Christmas presents together, what would you think? Perhaps that this business dedicates time to volunteer work, or staff members are important to this business, of that this business’s staff are generally happy. Picking the right photos is of high importance. If you use stock photos, be careful that they don’t look too staged; this can give off a phony feeling about your business.
Employ Lists and Bullet Points When Possible
Lists and bullet points are great for summarizing information, which your brochure is supposed to be doing. Readers appreciate lists because they are a quick read. Running your eyes down a list of services, rather than reading a dense paragraph naming all of them, makes for a more enjoyable reading experience.
The information you decide to put in a bullet list is emphasized because it stands out from the rest of the content, so consider what you want to place that much emphasis on. Are your business’ values really important to who you are? Or maybe your services are what you want to highlight? A reader who only skims your brochure is more likely to take in information from the bullet list than from the prose.
Stick to Your Business’ Colors
Your brochure is a key document for your business’ brand. For that reason, you want to be sure to highlight your business’ colors in the brochure. Is your logo blue and yellow? Try using those two colors at different opacity levels as the main colors for your brochure. If you must add a third color, do so. But try not to use more than three main colors in your brochure; more than that, and it will start to look unprofessional.
A brochure may be the first impression a person has of your business; thus, you want to give the right impression. Taking time to be thoughtful about the design and the content of your brochure will make for a communications piece that succinctly and strategically introduces your business to a newcomer.
If you have any questions, our team would be more than happy to help. Call us today at 215-393-9787.
