Designing Professional Brochures and Flyers That Get Attention

A brochure or flyer is often the first contact people will have with your business, which is why it's important that you make a good first impression. In this article we're going to take a look at each format and give hints to help you enhance your piece through professional design.

Flyers

A flyer is traditionally a single sheet, usually with printing on one side. These are handed out at events, posted at various places, or directly mailed to the customer. Flyers are popular marketing tools because they're relatively inexpensive to mass-produce, but too often, bad design decisions lessen their impact.

One of the biggest mistakes made when designing flyers is the overuse of fonts. Just because you have hundreds of fonts available on your computer doesn't mean you have to see how many different ones you can put on the page. A good rule of thumb is to use no more than three different font families, but some designers prefer to limit it to two.

Most flyers utilize some sort of headline, so pick a nice, bold font that's easy to read and creates impact. If you're feeling particularly creative you can opt for a more decorative, specialty font, but just make sure that it's easy to read.

Next, you'll want to choose a primary font for your body copy. This is not a place to be creative, so ditch the fancy fonts here and go with something standard that's easy to read. Fonts like Arial, Helvetica, Verdana and Times are so popular because of their legibility. Use one of these and you can't go wrong.

Many amateur flyer designs use a centered layout. This means that everything is centered in the middle. It's boring and - with a lot of copy - can be impossible to read. Consider using a basic, two-column grid system to layout your flyer. Divide your copy into two columns using either flush left ragged right, or fully justified text. Either way, it'll look better than a centered layout.

Also, consider spicing up your flyer using graphics or clip art that are relevant to your information. Don't go overboard, though. Your graphics are meant to enhance the piece not draw attention away from it. Get creative with your layouts by wrapping your text around your clipart or making use of drop caps for added effect.

Black and white flyers are fine, but with today's digital color printing, full color is a better investment than black and white. People respond to color, so use it when you can.

Brochures

There is a wealth of design techniques that can be used to make a brochure more powerful and attractive.

Your choice of paper - especially thickness - says a lot about your business. Going with a heavier stock adds elegance to the overall piece and can produce better print quality.

Another great way to get a professional looking design is to apply special effects or techniques to your piece. These techniques cost more, but make for a truly professional look.

One important technique to consider is the paper fold. Traditionally, a brochure is a single page design that can be printed on one side or both. However, you can achieve a multi-page layout through creative paper folds. A single sheet can be folded once to get a four-page design, or twice for a unique six-page layout.

Perforation folding is a great tool for marketers who have a special offer, or coupon, that the reader could easily tear out. This can be set up as a postcard to mail back to your business, or to provide information that could be used for your direct mailing efforts.

Another design technique to think about is hole drilling. Drilling a hole into your brochure allows the reader to easily hang the brochure. This could be especially useful if you're printing a calendar of upcoming events that the reader would want to keep handy.

Professionally designed brochures and flyers don't have to be had by unlimited budgets. All it takes is a big imagination and a little know-how to come up with an eye-catching design that works.