Less Is More When It Comes To Typography In Brochures

Typesetting is a very important aspect of graphic design. The success of your brochure as a marketing tool depends on how you use lettering, style and contrast in sizes between headlines, copy, and subheads.

Often, in brochure design, too many effects are applied to type in an effort to make the document “eye catching”, without the designer realizing that it actually works against them.

The first, and most obvious objective is to make sure that the typography adds to the overall eye-appeal of the piece. With the average person being exposed to around 7,500 marketing messages per week, the last thing you want to do is create a document that looks like it will be a chore to read.

One of the best ways to increase eye-appeal is to limit the mix of fonts to two (maximum three if you really push it) within a document. If you use more, it begins to look messy, with different fonts competing for attention. If you do this, there is a risk that people will put off reading it ‘until later’ – and we all know that ‘later’ never comes. Clean and easy on the eye is ALWAYS a safe approach.

Another key point is to stick to convention, unless there is a GOOD reason for not doing so. By convention, I mean the way people EXPECT to read. For example, while ragged left may make a document look different or artistic, if the eye has to make large jumps to find the beginning of each line, it makes it very difficult for people to deal with.

People are used to starting each line at the same level, so don’t make them work unnecessarily hard to figure out a new way of doing things.

Keeping the body copy directly beneath each sub-head also helps people see what belongs where. If the subhead and the copy have a line space between them, it isn’t clear that the copy ‘belongs’ to the subhead above it.

Lastly, make sure you give your reader a clear start and finish point. Lead them THROUGH the copy, so that they will read it all, easily and comfortably. Put the key benefits and advantages of the product or service you are marketing up front, and design the brochure so that they get priority and people see them first.

And of course, the finishing point should the call to action, which tells people what to do to take the next step and move towards obtaining the benefits on offer.

If you are looking for more information on business brochures, we’ll be delighted to help you. For more marketing ideas have a look at our Marketing Ideas Bank in our website or call our brochure design Brisbane‘s team.