Business brochures are an investment of your time, creative energy and budget. You want to ensure that you get great deals on your corporate brochure design and that you get brochures that actually have a positive impact on your bottom line. Good brochures can mean more sales and more awareness of your company. A bad brochure, however, can cost you a great deal in printing costs and brochure design services without yielding any positive results for your company.

Making the most of brochure design means developing a brochure that is easy to distribute and is easy for customers to hang onto. Where possible, you also want to ensure that your brochure is available in different media--online, for example, or on CDs that you can distribute. If your company needs great brochures, consider:

1. Hiring a professional brochure design service to develop a brochure that lets you understand great design.

2. Developing e-brochures so you can share your brochure contents in print, online and through other media.

3. Testing your brochures for effectiveness to avoid wasting your printing money on a brochure that doesn't offer a return on your investment.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Work with a business brochure design company to get professional results

Many software programs feature brochure design templates that can help you create your own brochure designs. While these can be useful for simple brochures, important flyers and brochures should be designed by a professional service. If your brochures have not been yielding the sales volume you want, a professional customized brochure service can help you find a design that gets you results.

I recommend: Brochure Design Service offers professional custom brochure design services. The company offers two-day and rush services on corporate brochures. Brochure Labworks provides affordable brochures in only 24 hours.

Customize business brochures by using them as e-brochures

If you already have printed brochures, you can have a digital media professional use these as the basis for e-brochures, which are digitized and can be placed on a CD, in an email or on a web page. Rather than just choosing between bifold and trifold brochure design, e-brochures can be as long as you like without becoming bulky. They are also somewhat novel and may intrigue customers more than print brochures.

I recommend: Comit Technologies is a digital media design company that offers e-brochure design services. The company can make your online brochure as easy to use as a standard website. Digital Brochure Design can design company brochures for use on the web, through email or via CD.

Try out your brochure design samples before you decide on a final design to print

Successful companies often consider several brochure designs before selecting one design to send to the printer. You can select the best design among all your options by testing your designs to determine which one has the best design elements and will be most appealing to customers.

I recommend: Nancy J. Wagner has an online guide that details a test you can put your brochure design through to determine how effective it will be in selling your services or products. The guide encourages businesses to ask eight basic questions about their brochures--which address the brochure's headline, content, call to action and other essential elements. Wagner even recommends steps that companies can take to strengthen their brochures. Randall Rensch has an online checklist for businesses that want to test their brochure one last time before sending it to print.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Successful business brochure design consists of both images and copy. When creating the copy for your brochure, always anticipates your customers' needs and concerns. Try to respond to those rather than falling into the common trap of simply discussing your business at length in your brochure.

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.

While some companies think that brochure design consists of nothing more than printing off some company information and folding the result into three parts, brochure design is much more involved than that. Brochure design actually involves carefully crafting and targeting your company information for maximum appeal. It can involve market research, careful layout, selection of the best images and the creation of important and easy-to-scan content. Good business brochures can mean more sales and more leads, so using forethought before taking brochures to the printer is a must.

Whether you hire brochure design services or design your own brochure, understanding the basics of business brochure design gives you an edge. Brochures are often the literature that customers take away with them and keep if they are considering a purchase. Brochures give you the opportunity to promote your business easily and affordably. If you want to make the most of brochures, consider:

1. Learning the basics of corporate brochure design so you fully understand your needs.

2. Using software to design your own business brochures.

3. Designing virtual brochures to take your marketing message online.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Master brochure design basics so you can work with a professional or design on your own

If you decide to hire someone to create custom brochure design options for you, you still need to be able to communicate your aims and needs. This can be hard to do if you don't understand the difference between bifold and trifold brochure design (brochures that are folded into two or three parts, respectively). Understanding brochures lets you know your options and enables you to choose the brochure style that will best reflect your business.

I recommend: Tom Egelhoff offers a step-by-step process for designing a brochure, complete with examples. This is a great way to familiarize yourself with what really goes into designing a company brochure. DesignSitesUp offers some useful examples of successful brochures.

Take advantage of software programs to design your own brochures

You may not want to outsource each of your brochures to a design service. Using brochure design software gives you a great sense of what is possible in terms of brochure design and style, so that even if you ultimately decide to hire a professional, you will have some knowledge of what you like and don't like beforehand. If you do decide to design your own brochures, brochure design templates available with many software programs make the task very simple.

I recommend: Tutorialized can show you how to create a simple, functional brochure using only Microsoft Word. Belltech Systems offers a Business Publisher software title that creates brochures that fold into two, three and four segments. SmartDraw comes with brochure design samples and templates for easy creation of company brochures.

Use virtual brochures so Internet users can get your promotional message

While you may think of brochures as merely paper-and-ink creations, many businesses are now using virtual brochures to save costs and promote themselves more widely. Virtual brochures are similar in design to their paper counterparts, but have the added advantage of being online, so they are easy for your customers to find. Virtual brochures can also save you money on printing costs and are gentler on the environment.

I recommend: Process Peak can design and install virtual brochures online, allowing you to expand your business. Electronic Media Arts, a full service digital media and design company, has recently added virtual brochure design to its list of services.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Brochure design and printing go hand in hand. If you've decided to make use of traditional brochures, you must consider printing costs. Before approving a final brochure design, visit your printer to ask for an estimate. If a brochure needs a special high-grade paper or your brochure will cost more to print for other reasons, it's preferable to know that up front.

You need to make many decisions when designing a brochure. Printers and graphic designers use terms that may be unfamiliar to you when they discuss some of the elements of brochure design. Learning these terms can help you create a successful brochure. A brochure is typically a multi-page document or it may be a single page folded to create multiple panels. The various folds, graphic elements and other parts of brochure design come together to create a pleasing look that captures your reader's attention and makes your content readable and convincing.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Self-mailer

A self-mailer is a brochure that you can mail as is. It's the correct size and shape for mailing and has room on one panel for a mailing address. Often you can leave an outside panel mostly blank with room for postage while using a return address and minimal marketing slogans. Be aware when designing self-mailers that the Postal Service often prints bar codes on the bottom of the mailing panel and these can mar or cover up design elements if you place them there.

I recommend: Read about the benefits of using a self-mailer in your direct mail marketing at WKBW.com.

Accordion fold

An accordion fold is a common type of fold for a multi-panel brochure. You can use this type of fold to turn a single sheet of paper into a six-, eight- or 10-page brochure by folding the paper in a manner similar to an accordion. This type of fold is good for brochures that contain a lot of information, especially those about specific products.

I recommend: Check out a list of common types of brochure folds, complete with illustrations, at the National Printing Group.

Embossing

Embossing is a process that raises part of the paper, creating a three-dimensional image. Embossing gives a brochure an elegant look, and you apply a metallic foil coating for an attractive design.

I recommend: View examples of brochure designs at Positronic Design.

Margins and gutters

The margin is the distance from the edge of a column of text to the edge of the page. A gutter is the distance between columns of text.

I recommend: Computer Companion details how to use Microsoft Word to make a tri-fold brochure and explains how to use margins and gutters to format the page.

Templates

Templates, in the broader sense, are any form of pre-designed structure for your brochure. More specifically, however, you can obtain templates that designers make for use with specific computer applications. These templates contain all of the design elements of your brochure, waiting only for your specific text and information. These templates often contain specifications for font size and color, artwork and photos, and other design elements to give your brochure a professional look.

I recommend: Find out how you can use templates to create a professionally designed brochure at MyCreativeShop.

Call to action

Marketing is not only about showing pretty pictures or even informing your audience about your product or service. A good brochure inspires your readers to do something. Figure out what you want them to do and close your brochure with a call to do it, whether it be to buy your product, call one of your sales representatives or visit your company's Web site.

I recommend: Learn how to use a strong call to action to make your brochure successful at UPrinting.com.