Do you want to design a leaflet that goes straight in the bin or blows around the car park?
To throw a lot of text and pictures on a page and get it printed is easy but I see many leaflets that, with a little help, could benefit considerably with a few guidelines and a little planning.
You may ask why bother and what difference will it make? You have all the info on there to read and a picture to show your product… but how attractive is it? the whole point is to grab the audience and get them to read it not throw it in the bin?
If there is no interesting title or intro it wont be picked up to start with.
If the text is too long it looks scary and time consuming.
The pictures may be too small and not do it justice.
A well planned layout will enhance the content and make it attractive to the reader. The objective is to communicate your message and get the customer to react and do what you want them to.
Here’s a few tips on some basics that will help you design a leaflet that will look good!
1. Margins and borders
Make sure you allow at least 10mm margins around the edge. 12mm or 15mm sometimes but not less than 7.5mm.
Do this for three reasons,
a) it will stop any text being chopped away by accident when the leaflet is printed and trimmed.
b) The text wont look crammed in and falling off the page.
c) It will display the content and look balanced and attractive to the eye.
Leave slightly more space at the top and bottom if you can so the the titles and final messages dont look like they are slipping off the page because you couldn’t cram it all on.
2. Decide on a layout
To begin, sketch out your page.
You need a title, introduction, body text, pictures, a call to action and contact details.
3. If you have a logo dont make it the too big.
The sales message is the most important element.
4. Avoid large blocks of text.
Decide on how many columns you will use, depending on the amount of text you have, two columns may look better than one. If there is space, for example on an A4 size, three columns of text look good and give you a greater flexibility of where to put pictures and images.
5. Roughly draw a grid.
Work out where your content is going to go. Its easily changed but it will help you make sure you have everything there and how much space you may need.
When drawing out the grid and the columns of text it will help you decide where to put the images and how they will look in relation to the text.
6. Breaking up the text.
Break the text at the right place with paragraphs and images will encourage the reader to continue reading. Use sub titles and bullet points with a short list if appropriate.
7. Always try and finish off the information with a call to action.
8. Important – make sure you include your contact details.
Make them easy to read and correct. Mistakes in this vital piece of information means you have just wasted all your time and money.
Thats the basics for starting to design a leaflet, hopefully it will help and give you ideas on layout and how to build an attractive and useful sales tool, which will lead to more enquiries than the one filling up the recycling bins!
How to Design a Leaflet Part Two follows…
Angie Phillips of A.N.G Creative Design, based in Essex, UK, helping you communicate your message to your clients and generating more leads and sales.
