Brochure Design Essentials

Brochure design is a delicate art form. A cluttered brochure is just that - clutter - so your brochure designs must make powerful impression in a relatively small area. It's important to focus on one key idea or you risk confusing your audience. The following brochure design essentials demonstrate ways to highlight the most important information without weighing down your brochure design.

Go with a clean layout

A clean layout that incorporates plenty of white space and consistency is easy to follow. Your text should contrast against your background so it pops off the page. Use shapes and lines judiciously to draw readers' eyes to the most important benefits, offer and call to action.

Use appropriate fonts

Find the best font for your brochure. Chances are it's not Times New Roman, Arial or Helvetica. If you can't find the perfect font, create your own. Your font should express the tone of your organization - elegant for a bridal shop, powerful for a motorsports dealer. Your body copy font should differ from your headlines, but don't use more than two or three fonts in your brochure designs.

Choose colors wisely

Enrich your brochure with superb color choice and usage. Color wheels and swatches are excellent tools for developing a powerful color scheme. In most cases two or three colors will do the trick; in others you're free to employ a veritable rainbow of colors. Sometimes, all you need is a few differing shades of the same hue. No matter what colors you use, practice consistency across graphic elements: your headlines should be the same color; body copy should be the same color; pull quotes and boxes should be one of two or three colors, depending on how many you employ. Strive for color balance, not stark contrast.

Highlight benefits, offer, call to action

Charts, images, pull quotes, boxes, diagrams, bullets, numbers, arrows, and other graphic elements serve to highlight key benefits, offer, call to action and additional important brochure information. Again, highlight one main benefit - or series of related benefits - to retain a clean layout.

Save time with a template

Instead of wasting time setting up your artwork, save time with free brochure templates pre-formatted for professional press quality output. These templates are ready to go in the right color format and resolution and include markings for bleed lines, cutlines and safety areas. Brochure design captures the spirit of an organization, product or service - then pushes a sale. Don't be afraid to get creative: Contrast, oversized elements and humorous images can attract immediate attention, while a clever layout that gets to the point can drive your return on investment through the roof. Remember, it isn't as much about what you want to say as it is about what your want your audience to do.