10 top tips to designing a great printed brochure

In our last blog we took a look at the difference between litho and digital printing to give you a better understanding of the way we work and give you an insight into the best options when it comes to promoting your business using printed marketing materials.

In our newest blog we are going to take a look at Brochures and give you some helpful tips that will ensure you are moving in the right direction.

Brochures are an extremely popular tool and prove to be an invaluable weapon when used across a wide number of industries. Being specific to your business means you can fill them with only the important information that you want your customers to read and take in. The thing to bare in mind in all circumstances is the design aspect, with each little detail tailored to individual businesses. So how do you produce a brochure that has the desired effect and overall massive impact. Let’s take a look at Colprint’’s top 10 tips to help you get the best out of brochure marketing.

10 elements to help you succeed when producing printed brochures

1) Original Designs & Sketches

The first thing you need to do before you even turn on your computer or contact a graphic designer is sit down and think about what you want to achieve from your brochure and what information you want to include. Start drawing up some design sketches and seeing what works well and what doesn’t, use every idea you have to create a few different concepts. Everyone’s input and opinion matters when working in a business environment so take colleagues ideas on board and see what you can come up with in a mini brainstorming session.

2) Target Audience

Brochures are no different from any other form of marketing in the sense that you only get out what you put in. The thing to remember is you are catering for a wide audience and your opinion isn’t necessarily the thing that will determine your brochures success - keep your customers at the forefront of your mind. How about doing a survey to find out what your customers want to know about in relation to the product or service that you as a business offer. Think about the things you like to read about in relation to the businesses you regularly use, and you will start to gain a better understanding about what it is your audience will want to read.

3) Brand Focus

Always remember that your brochure acts as an extension of your brand, so please ensure you remember your brand values when you start to design your brochure. Make sure you remember the theme of your business, the colours you follow and the fonts you use throughout your business on a day to day basis should be something you incorporate into your brochure. With a consistent look and feel to it, your brochure will become instantly recognisable, especially if you’re at some kind of networking event. The connection is instantly made between brand and brochure, allowing your target audience to familiarise themselves with your brand as a whole.  

4) Limited Fonts

Brand guidelines will frequently dictate which fonts to use and how to use them within your marketing material. Although the power is in your hands and you have the freedom to do what you like, please bare in mind that going overboard can kill your efforts in one quick swoop. Try to use the same font throughout, only varying the style for things you want to stand out like the brand name or a slogan. You should only ever use 3 sizes - one for a heading, sub heading and general text.

5) Simplicity

One of the most important aspects of your brochure in terms of the tips we are giving you is how clear and simple it is. Make sure it reads well and the content is clear enough for your customers to read - it terms of style and layout. Always be aware that space is something you have at your disposable, providing a simple but effective way of making images stand out, without cramming mounds of text around it. Ask for a second or third opinion to make sure the colours and text work well together. If you struggle to read your own leaflet, regardless of how nice it looks, your customers will have no hope.

6) Cover Pages Play a Key Role

This is the most important aspect of your brochure is the cover page. Think of it as the entrance to your shop or business, the thing that makes your customers want to come inside. The same applies to your brochure, the cover pages have to be easily distinguishable and make the readers want to turn the page and find out more. Keep the main message clear on your front page - your brand logo and a short insight about what’s inside. Sometimes only the branding is necessary if your business is well known. The front page of your brochure is a lot like a fishing rod trying to catch people and reel them in...

7) Contact Details

A Printed brochure is usually created with the purpose of selling a product or offering customers some form of offer. If you want your customers to act on your information you need to make sure you have supplied them with the relevant information so they can get in contact with you and find out more. This can be a web address, email, phone number or simply your address. Leaving this vital information out will only mean your business and the success of your brochure will suffer.

8) Quality Images

When designing your brochure, ensure your images are of the highest possible quality to make your brochure look stunning - this will do your brochure the world of good, transforming it from a schoolboy project into a powerful business marketing weapon. Use original images where possible to offer the reader something they haven’t seen before. Copied and pasted images can become pixelated and blurry so when the time comes to print your brochures, the quality will suffer significantly! Please don’t fall into the copy and paste trap and try to maintain as much originality as possible.

9) A simple Guide For your Readers

Be sure to keep every customer in mind when you are designing and writing contenting for your brochure. Although you have a target audience, these will not be the only people to read your brochure, so you need to make sure everyone can gather all the information possible. The best way to do this is to carefully plan the layout of all pages, so that it reads easily and provides a clear guide to all readers, avoiding any kind of confusement.

10) Checks & Proofreading

Last but not least, the 10th top tip from Colprint!

Proofread every single page at least 3 times to make sure there are no spelling mistakes. Get a second or a third colleague to proofread your brochure before you even think about printing a copy. If you have the budget, hire a professional proofreader to make sure your brochure is fit and ready to go. The importance of fresh eyes cannot be underestimated - someone else might pick up on something that you have missed, which is true in a lot of cases.

Well that’s it from us today! We hope our latest blog has been a pleasure for you to read and hopefully you leave this page having learnt something new!

Be sure to bare us in mind next time you think about printing brochures or starting a new advertising campaign and we can give you all the fuel and ammunition you need to set you on your way.

Thanks for reading - Colprint   

What’s the difference between digital and litho printing?

When it comes to producing the perfect finish, you will have already gone through the process of planning, designing, and creating marketing material for your business or company. The next step is to choose a style of printing. This is all well and good if your company has it’s own printer, but for many of you who don’t, there is still the problem of finding a printer that will deliver the results you are looking for, in the way you imagined before you even started your project.

The two main options for printing are digital and lithographic, with digital printing being the far more popular option. This is probably because the advantages of digital printing have been recognized far more over the years. With excellent quality and turnaround time, digital printing is probably the way to go for you…

The main reason people tend to go for digital printing is the speediness of the process, with lithographic printing proving to be a much longer slog. Otherwise know as ‘offset printing’, lithographic printing takes longer because the images and text is first embedded onto a plate, before being transferred to a rubber blanket and then onto the printing surface. This process is far more costly due to use of oil and water but produces fantastic results. If you have a larger budget when choosing the method to use for your advertising means then lithographic printing may be the way forward, however for many of us, it’s all about tightening the purse strings, not loosening them.

With digital printing, a lot of the steps used for litho printing are cut out and the process is kept relatively straight forward. Straight forward does not necessarily mean ‘basic’, with the most modern technology still being incorporated. Once the appropriate files have been prepared, you can then RIP the components to produce a bitmap. The bitmap is then sent electronically to the digital printer ready for output.

Alot of people still think that digital printing requires no human input, but in Colprint’s case, this is untrue. Once the file has finished the RIP process, Colprint then copy the file to press and one of our printing specialists selects the paper script having physically loaded it onto the machine. A proof is then carried out for quality, assuming this will be approved the job is run, packed and distributed to the customer.

Digital Printing has a number of different benefits compared to litho printing which we will now explore:

• Shorter turnover time - this allows for a quicker process and in turn allows your business to function faster and more smoothly when it matters the most.

• Economically friendly - because less sheets are used during set-up, there is less waste

• Cost effectiveness - digital printing is generally a lot cheaper than litho printing due to the work that has to go into each litho printing job

• Quality - this method of printing has been widely recognized around the globe and offers a similar quality to that of litho printing. (Colprint use the highest quality digital presses to ensure there is no sacrifice in quality when providing our customers with marketing materials).

• Variable Data Printing - this form of printing is customised based on digital printing. Using external files from a database you can change the information on each piece without stopping or slowing down the press. For example, you can personalise individual pieces with different names, logos or addresses, giving you more flexibility when it comes to producing your specific marketing materials.

• Precise Proofs - digital printing offers you the opportunity to see an actual sample of the printed piece which can often be difficult during the litho printing process. Seeing samples is also cheaper than litho printing as the plates have to be prepared to create a ‘wet’ proof.

If digital printing seems like it would be a good option for you and your business when it comes to producing marketing materials in a cost effective manner with quality results, then please feel free to get into Colprint today. If you have any queries or questions our professional team are always on hand to answer any questions and give you any advice that you may need.

Thanks for reading our latest blog - we hope this has been a good insight for you!