Poor Man's Guide To Cheap Brochure Printing

Imagine the standard letter sized flier. Now fold it three times widthwise, and then turn it 90 degrees. What does it look like? In most cases people would say that it is a brochure printing right? Well that is what we are about to teach you here. This article will tell you how to use run of the mill home or office equipment (like letter sized paper) for cheap brochure printing. Do not worry. You do not need to be an expert in brochure printing to do these procedures. You just need to know a few basic office clerical skills and you will be all set. So now we go to the steps.

1. Setting up the right format in your word processor – Open up your word processing software to start creating your brochure. The first step that we need to do is to set the page to “landscape” mode. This means that we want the page to lie on its side. The width becomes the height and the height becomes the width. To do this you need to find the “page options”. For Microsoft word, that is located on the File->page setup... option from your menu bar. For OpenOffice.org Writer the page options are found under the Format->page... option in its menu bar. Once you click on that option, you will be taken to a dialog window. Look for the “orientation” options and set it to the “Landscape” setting. Afterwards press “OK”.

2. Adding 3 columns – Next, we have to format the page so that it has three columns. This is so that we can make a tri-fold brochure setup. To do this, just type in some random text and then highlight them to select them. Afterwards, click on the “Format” menu (applies to Word and Writer) and then click on the “Columns” option. You should be taken to a dialog window with various column options. Just click on the “3 columns” item and then click “OK”.

3. Orienting yourself - Good! Now we have a standard template to work with, a landscaped page with three columns. Your columns should be where your folds are for your brochure page. You have two main “pages” to create. The “cover” page and the “inner” page or inner panels. For the cover page, if you are looking at it from the page perspective, the front of your brochure is the right most column in the page. The back is located at the center, while the inside “flap” is at the left column. The “inner” page on the other hand is pretty straightforward. The left, center and right columns directly correspond to the left, center and right panels of the inner part of the brochure.

4. Draft cover – Now that you have oriented yourself, you now need to enter the cover content of your brochure printing. Usually these are where your most attractive images are at. Try to keep the images light with high contrast so that you can print them in black and white to save more on printing. Also do not forget to add your contact details and other important information on this page as well.

5. Draft inner – Next, write your inner panels. Most of the “meat” of your content is in this page. So this is more text heavy than the cover. Of course, try to add some images if you can so that it does not get boring. Do not forget to write with subheadings in mind so that people can spot the information they want quicker.

6. Printing in two sides – Good! Now, once you have finished your design, it is time to print. Print your cover page first on a standard letter sized paper. Next, flip the resulting printout of the cover so that the blank side faces the printing side and put it back unto the printer paper tray again. Afterwards, proceed to print the inner page. Keep the orientation in mind though as you place the paper so that the top part of the cover page should correspond to the printing of the top part of the inner page as well. If you make a mistake, just print again until you get your orientations correct.

7. Double sided photocopies – Now, with your first master brochure printing complete, it is time to make copies. Printing page after page in your printer will make your brochure printing expensive. However, if you use a double sided photocopy agent you can reduce the costs by more than half. Just go to your local photocopy service and ask for double sided photocopies of your brochure prints. This should let you mass produce your brochure designs cheaply.

8. Colored paper – Since you probably want to print/photocopy in black and white to save money, you can opt to use some colored paper for your brochures so that you can have a “color brochure” that you can distribute. As you get your new designs photocopied. Ask your service if they can print in color paper, or if you can provide the paper that they will use.

9. Folding and finish – Finally, all that you need to do is to fold your brochures and you are done! All that you really spent on this is the photocopy cost and the colored paper. The rest was done by you, all for free. This is how to do cheap brochure printing, especially if you are saving money.

Hopefully you have learned a lot from these steps. It will really save you a lot, and you will still produce nice and good looking brochures.

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