You don’t need weeks to create a quality-marketing tool. In fact, business brochures can go from concept to customer in days. Even better, brochure design has never been easier. Thanks to the Internet, you can find brochure design templates to lay out your custom designed brochure, stock photography to illustrate your business brochures, graphic designers who can design the brochures for you, and quick printers who offer delivery in a matter of days. Before you begin your brochure design, you need to make a few decisions:
1. The size of your business brochures. Figure out how much space you need for copy. If you are mailing out your brochure, consider postage costs and USPS guidelines for size and shape of mail.
2. The style of your custom designed brochure. You can choose from c-fold, accordion-fold or cross-fold brochures to make text flow from panel to panel.
3. Illustrations, photography and artwork. Your company logo or product logos are must-haves, but you can also use photography, product photos and illustrations in your business brochures to make them come alive.
4. Quantity. Order as many business brochures as you can use up front since most printers offer quantity discounts.
Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done
DIY business brochures
If your brochure design is as simple as text and product photos, you can design it yourself instead of outsourcing it. Pre-made brochure design templates turn software programs, such as Microsoft Office and Quark into a virtual DIY design studio. You can either download free brochure design templates from supporting software packages or buy pre-designed templates from other vendors.
I recommend: StockLayouts offers more than 125 stock brochure design templates categorized by industry, in numerous software formats and with stock photos and artwork incorporated into the templates.
QuarkXpressTemplates.com provides over 300 brochure design templates on CD-ROM for use with QuarkXpress, PageMaker and InDesign.
HP and
Microsoft Office offer free brochure design templates for their respective software programs.
Use photography to make your business brochures come alive
A picture might say a thousand words, but that doesn't mean it will cost thousands of dollars. Incorporating photography into business brochures doesn't mean you have to line up models, hire a photographer and spend time staging a photo shoot. Stock photography is available for almost any scenario to personalize your brochure and is usually best for companies that provide services rather than products.
I recommend: iStock International is a collection of member-generated royalty-free images.
Fotosearch also offers thousands of royalty-free images searchable by category.
Corbis sells royalty-free CDs that allow you to use any photo on the CD as many times as you want in business brochures or other marketing materials.
Hire graphic designers to create your business brochures
If you need your business brochures ASAP, hop online to search for graphic designers who offer fast turnaround, multiple mockup designs and competitive pricing.
I recommend: Logo Jeez and
Infinity Logo Design each offer several custom designed brochure packages including tri-fold, four and eight page business brochures with quick delivery, multiple concepts and revisions.
Choose a printer for business brochures
Many high-quality quick print companies on the web allow you to upload your custom designed brochure file to their site and promise to turn it around in a matter of hours or days.
I recommend: PrintPelican.com offers discount printing on business brochures.
InkChaser.com offers instant print quotes on business brochures in a variety of sizes and color processes.
PSPrint prints business brochures with turnaround in one to five days.
Cactus Mailing Company is a one-stop shop that will design, print and mail your business brochures and offers quantity discounts.
Tips & Tactics
Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide
- If you outsource your brochure design, ask the designer how many mockup designs they will provide for the quoted price. If they won't offer you several choices without charging extra fees, find a design firm that does offer multiple concepts.
- Make sure all costs associated with printing your business brochures are included in a written contract.
- Set-up fees for printing business brochures, such as plate charges and proof charges are often not included in the overall quote. But with digital printing becoming more prevalent, these charges are becoming less common.
The official source of Brochure Design is the Brochure Design page at Business.com
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