subject: Guarding Against Bad and Boring Brochures by:Kaitlyn Miller [print this page] When you design and print brochures, there is always that fear that you are creating a wasted piece of printed material. You may be afraid to create a bold and untested layout, or you may just be embarrassed that you only have the budget for cheap brochure printing. These fears are well founded, but they shouldn't really limit you and your design. In fact these fears might lead you to worse mistakes when you print brochures, which you should really avoid. So don't be trapped by that fear in designing brochures. Overcome them by trying to avoid the warning signs of bad and boring brochures.
Too much text: One of the first signs of a boring brochure is the text. If your brochure content has too much text that it becomes hard to fit everything in, you should really rethink the whole content before continuing with your work. One of the worst decisions that you can do here is to try and fit in everything into the design by sacrificing your images, borders and other crucial design elements. A brochure that contains only text is hardly enticing. In fact when people encounter such a brochure, people can get tired by just looking at the rows and rows of text. If this happens the brochure becomes boring and uninteresting, which will lessen the chances of getting your message across to your audience. So try to avoid printing too much text in your brochures lest it gets labeled boring.
Too many images: On the flip side, color brochures with too many images can also become a bad brochure. Even if a picture paints a thousand words, brochures images are usually for support only. They typically portray what is being said in a brochure. If you print one with too many images people might miss the point on what your brochure is really about. They might totally get the wrong idea. So try to strike a balance with your text and supporting images. Have a one to one correspondence on an image and a text section if you can. For small image galleries in the brochure, you might want to keep the image sizes as small as you can. If you do not do this, your brochures might turn out like catalogs, which are really not recommended.
Overuse of marketing words: Another serious problem plaguing brochures is their writing. One of the most telltale signs for a bad brochure are texts that are overly advertising driven, with blatant marketing messages everywhere in its paragraphs. Any kind of extensively loud, boastful and flowery words can really turn off people since it will all sound "too good to be true". This strategy will only cause damage to your brochure's credibility and marketability as well. If you have been given content like this from your marketing department, you should already be weary if you want to continue printing brochures until you have it edited.
Cheap Brochure printing: Lastly, another thing to consider to avoid creating bad brochures is your printing budget. You have to guard against "overly" cheap brochure printing. You don't have to get the cheapest printing quotation that you have. There are still other "cheaper" brochure printing options out there that are still good looking and well made. Do not settle for the cheapest. If you can use better paper stock by just adding a few extra dollars, why not go for it right? This at least uplifts your brochure to a better quality level than the cheapest ones out there.
Great! So look at those warning signs of bad and boring brochure printing. See them early and fix them quick enough before you send your designs to the brochure printing service. If you remember these tips, you should no longer fear about creating brochure designs in the future.
