Make Your Brochure Or Catalog More Interesting - 7 Tips
Here are 7 easy tips to make your brochure or catalog more interesting. The tips cover 3 areas: graphic design, copy, and printing.
1. Use “factoids” to highlight your capabilities Find something related to your content that can be turned into cool factoids. Even if you have a product that may be considered dull, you can find interesting facts. For example, lets say you manufacture hoses for industrial use. Why not use your manufacturing statistics to say “We’ve manufactured enough hose to wrap New York City 1,263 times!” or “We recycle over 500 used tires per hour in our rubber reclamation facility!” Highlight the factoids graphically.
2. Use graphics to break your message into easy-to-read chunks Many recipients of your brochure will not read the entirety of its content, so make it easy to find important features. Use side-bar treatments, large quote marks around testimonials, bulleted copy, and icons to represent content throughout your brochure. Don’t crowd your message with end-to-end text.
3. Use quality images Photography of all kinds is readily available online. If you’ve hired the best designers you can afford, as tip #4 suggests, you probably don’t have to worry about finding the right photos. If you are a “do-it-yourself” designer looking for photos, take your time. While you may be able to immediately find images through online sources, it always takes lots of digging to find the best images. Don’t rush to choose images, you will be rewarded with a brochure or catalog that gets more attention.
4. Hire the best designers you can afford Simply stated, if it looks better, it is better. People are generally more impressed and have higher belief in and retention of your brochure if it looks good to them. The good looks also capture the attention of the viewer and makes them look deeper into the message of the brochure.
5. Make it easy to contact you People are accustomed to finding your contact information in common places. Use that information to make sure you place your business name, web address, and phone number on the back page/panel of your brochure. If you want to place your web address and phone number on internal pages, use graphics to segment the information and make it easy to find. Keep in mind that your headlines are more important than your contact information. People won’t be looking for contact info if they aren’t interested in your message first. Make the graphics tasteful.
6. Use a unique die cut Die cut your cover page around the important graphics to increase interest. If you don’t have the budget to create a unique die, here are a couple simple, low cost die cuts that make your brochure stand out: Round corners - most printers have standard round corner dies - they cost very little and make a visual difference. Use an angle-cut across the corner or across the cover page of your brochure. Angle cuts can be done on standard paper cutting machines without the need to create a unique die.
7. Use different pages sizes Cut some pages shorter than others to create a stair-stepped look. Or fold the printed sheet so that some pages are longer than others.
Dan ODonnell is Creative Director and Owner of Direct Axis, a 4-member design/communications agency
Direct Axis specializes in graphic design for higher education, nonprofits, and manufacturers.
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