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Creating great looking brochures, flyers, or even an advert can be a daunting task to most people. But with the right help and guidance you will be surprised how quickly you can turn mundane documents into professionally looking publications.
A successful document is one that effectively communicates your message. Good design contributes to the overall effectiveness and usefulness of your document by making it more visually appealing and more readable.
Good design is not just a matter of aesthetics; it involves choosing the most appropriate design elements for your document. Good design choices produce lively and interesting publications and help communicate your message.
Following what I call my 10 commandments, you will avoid the pitfalls that most people fall into when they first start to put together their publications.
Here are my 10 commandments
• What is the purpose of your communication?
Every document has a purpose. Some are meant to persuade (such as advertisements, sales brochures, posters, and flyers). Others are designed to inform (such as business reports, bulletins, and newsletters).
• Who is your intended audience?
Identifying your audience helps you choose design tools and techniques that grab the readers' interest. As you develop your publication, take your readers' perspective. Consider their needs and reactions. Your goal is to interact with your readers, not talk at them. By writing and designing from this perspective you will grab their attention.
• What is the image or impression that you want to project?
How do you want your audience to perceive you? What is the overall look and feel of your publication? Is it formal or informal? Is the content serious or fun? This overall image is supported by your choice of fonts and graphic elements, and your writing style.
• What elements are needed to enhance your design?
Create a list of parts that will go into the final composite of your documents. Will you use headlines and subheads, photographs, or graphics? Will you use rules, or borders, or boxes? How much text will you use? How many pages?
Once you have a good idea of the pieces you need, organising them into an eye-catching page design is much easier.
• Make it easy for readers to find their way about
Think about the flow of the text. Have a logical structure with text going up and down the columns.
• Choose appropriate fonts
Using the right fonts will help to get your message across. Stick to only using a maximum of 3 different fonts per publication. A mixture of serif and san-serif will add more interest. In general, serif type is considered more readable while san-serif is more legible.
• Don't be afraid to use white space
People feel the need to fill every part of the page with information. Unless you are designing a newsletter, consider adding lots of white space around your images and text. It might be the most boring information you have to write about, but at least make it attractive to look at.
• Avoid undesirable "rivers" of white space or "white" holes in the page
A very distracting visual effect. This occurs in poorly set text where large type is justified in narrow columns. This often appears when pressing the spacebar twice after each full stop. To remedy this, alter the type size, or adjust the line length, or change the column width, and stop pressing the space bar twice.
• Avoid a busy page layout
To many bordered elements or rules tend to compartmentalise the page and break up the natural flow of text.
• Be consistent in your publication
What you are looking for is consistency. If you stick to using my 10 commandments then all your publications will look as if it's been designed by a professional.
These tips are just a small sample of what we cover on our Design Principles and Techniques Training Course.
Wishing you success
Neil W Mason
neilm@in2-training.com
I am the owner of In2-Training (UK) Ltd and I have been helping customers increase their design skills for over 20 years.