Flyer

• Know your market
  Determine what the goal of your brochure is. There are many types and kinds of brochures. The design is completely determined by the job they must achieve.
• Keep it simple.
  Your text should be short and to the point. People do not tend to read long paragraohs.
• Promote your company name.
  People tend to choose a company that they know. Your brochure represents your company.
• Promote your product or service.
  Stick to general terms, do not be too technical. Focus on why your company does best.
• Promote your unique and special expertise.
  What do you have that no one else does or what you do better than the compitition?
• Avoid cliches and trendy jargon.
  Speak plain english if you want people to read your material. Give them some good hard information about your company and services. Above all, stick to the point.
• Avoid listing product prices and/or pictures of your staff.
  Remember that if your prices or staff change, your brochure is useless. Your printer will love you. Your accountant won't.
• Keep your brochure focused on your main points.
  What exactly do you want your prospect to learn about your company? Tell them that and little else. Don’t forget the job of a brochure is to get a phone call or walk in. Your sales people will fill in the detail.
• Avoid using printers for design work.
  Printers will job your brochure design work out to people like us so why not call us in the first place? You'll save a markup and get a better job, faster.
• Use copy and design pros.
  Hire the best, most experienced professional copywriters and designers you can afford. A prudent investment at the creative stage of your direct mail package will pay off in higher response. In-house staff often lack the experience and the time to produce a strong mailing package.
• Offer a free gift.
  Giving a free gift increases response.
• Emphasize your free offer.
  Highlight free premiums prominently. Include the premium’s specific value if it can be perceived as a benefit.
• Give a time limit.
  Make the offer limited for a quicker and bigger response. Include a specific deadline, if it’s genuine.
• Make it easy to respond.
  Be sure that your offer is easy to understand and respond to.
• Back up your claims.
  Whenever possible, include proof of your claims. Refer to research studies or use testimonials of satisfied customers with their photographs.
• Color gets response.
  The use of full color and "bleeds" (graphics or color background printed all the way to the very edge of the page) can increase response.
• Determine content first, then design.
  Before you decide how many pages your brochure will have, determine what information it will contain. The design should grow logically out of the subject matter.
• Study your competition.
  Make a collection of the direct response solicitations you get in the mail. Get your competitor’s promotional packages. Learn from what others do well and not so well.
• Finalize copy before you set type.
  Try to make all your writing changes before you set type. Changing copy after it’s been typeset can get very expensive. Go over your typewritten draft again and again and again until you’re sure it’s right.
• For self-mailers, check postal rules.
  If you plan to use your brochure as a self-mailer, check with your post office to make sure it satisfies all postal regulations.
• Don’t proofread your own work.
  Unless you’re an ace proofreader, have someone else proofread the copy you’ve been working with. It’s surprisingly easy to overlook the same error over and over again.

Print Ad

• Color.
  Color sells. No ands, ifs, or buts.
• Typefaces.
  Keep it simple. Do not use too many fornts. A good font family will do the trick.
• White Space.
  You want to get the most out of your advertising dollars, so it's tempting to squeeze as much information as possible into that small space. A sea of gray text won't get read. White space can actually lead your reader to the important information.
• Pictures and graphics.
  Research shows that ads with large photos or illustrations of merchandise get higher readership than ads with small illustrations or no art. Readers want to see the merchandise so they will recognize it in your store, or compare it with similar merchandise in your competitors' ads. Since many more people will look at your visual than read your copy, make your photograph or illustration at least half your ad whenever possible.
• Positioning.
  Most people skim ads in a sort of reversed "S". They start at the left top margin, and work down to the right bottom margin.
• Avoid headlines set in all capital letters.
  Typography Is The Key To Effective Communication tells us "Our eyes and brains are conditioned to identify lower case letters and words. Familiar looking words are glanced over with full comprehension." We also read words by the shape of the word, not by reading individual letters. Ascenders and descenders give distinctive shapes to words; all caps make most words look the same.
• Communication.
  Does it communicate the main point, such as a single offer or main attraction, and the necessary time, date, phone number or address?

Brochure

A full-blown brochure represents quite a little investment. Even if you're going two or three color, you'll pay plenty after you're finished with photography, illustration, type, printing, binding, and so on. In order to help you get the most for your money, here are some practical brochure tips and techniques that you can put to work next time around:

• Keep the cover simple.
  Forget about trying to do too much on the front cover. All you need on that surface is one clean, clear concept that positions the material that's about to follow.
• Consider keeping the inside front cover empty.
  It gives a brochure a nice, open look. White space never killed anybody. You don't have to jam in a message every chance you get. Besides, since the reader holds that easily-curved cover page at an angle when reading, it's not the place to go into excruciating detail about your product's or service's many benefits.
• Deal in spreads, not individual pages.
  With a nice-sized piece you can run your graphics across two pages and make use of the sweeping scale a brochure spread provides. Why organize your piece around individual pages when you've got a nice big area to work with? Again, don't be afraid of white space.
• Don't forget the subheadlines.
  They're a great way to break up copy and give the reader a chance to see where you're headed should they not want to read every single word of body copy. A subheadline can make an emphatic statement, ask a question, be playful or serious as the situation requires.
• You can use a box for added impact. Everything doesn't have to flow in long columns of type. It's often nice to drop some important information (like a Question & Answer section) into a one-point fine-ruled box. It gives the piece some extra visual interest. Use a dropped-in box to highlight material. Maybe it's the perfect place to put your testimonials.