A well-designed brochure assures that you do not miss the opportunity to showcase the best qualities of the products and services you aim to promote. At the end of the day, it’s not all about what you are actually able to do, but rather what and how you are able to show it all off.
A modern brochure design, if done wisely, conveys the right message in the right way to the public. To gain recognition, you need to get yourself and your work noticed by people. So, keep reading to learn how you can make this happen!
The world of brochures is there for those who fancy a modern design in print form. Thought-provoking inspiration and many ideas (as well as ready templates) can be found online that allows you to create the best and most creative brochures. Whether you fancy using InDesign, Photoshop, Illustrator or Microsoft Word, fine-designed brochures are always going to remain as an effective advertisement tool for your company. Hence, great efforts should be made when inventing the right design for a brochure.
Now, let’s take a look at how you can create mind-blowing, eye-catching marketing material for your company! In this article, we will be covering the best tips, as advised by our design professionals, on how to design modern brochures.
Tips on how to create a brochure design
Brochures are used as a way to advertise the products, services, or events of a corporate business. Everything you can imagine of, need to be advertised on paper in an effective way. This means that it must not only be visually appealing to attract people, but it must also equally be legible to retain people’s interest and attention towards its content.
Brochure templates will always be there online waiting to be copied, it is highly advised that you put your creative mind to great use. The biggest mistake you can make when designing your company’s brochure is to create a design template that looks dull and repetitive. You also wouldn’t want you brochure to look too old-school and outdated. What you should aim for though, is for it to be special, creative, and modern. You want to give it some sense of uniqueness!
When designing a brochure, you should always begin with the basics. This includes the following:
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Readability in a brochure design
Instead of being thrown into the deep end later on into the design process, let’s first make this clear. One should not forget that a brochure, no matter for what purpose, always needs to be readable. You may have the craziest, funniest, and the most outstanding visual idea for it. Yet, the most important factor that you must consider is that it must be kept understandable. Otherwise, there is practically no point in your creative efforts whatsoever. Don’t let your modern, creative company brochure miss its main goal in informing people.
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Motivate your reader to look inside
Now, as you already know that your brand new brochure template has to be legible, remember that there are other design factors that you must also consider when creating the perfect one! One of them being the type of fold you would want.
Forget the typical, conventional design formats of brochures. A fold dividing your brochure doesn’t necessarily have to be in the middle! Other types of folds that you may use include:
- Four Panel Roll Fold
- Half Fold
- Die Cut Z Fold
- Z Fold
- Five Panel Accordion Fold
- Poster Fold
- Double Gate Fold
Experiment, be creative, and explore the many design possibilities there are compared to the classic brochure templates you’ve seen in the past. This will make your readers want to look inside. The ultimate scope is to attract attention. No one will want to read even the most readable letters and look at its amazing content if the brochure doesn’t look inviting in the first place.
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Make the brochure simple
Why is it so important? You’ve probably seen a lot of brochure templates and they didn’t have the simplest forms. Depending on the context, whether it is a personal or corporate brochure, your designs may vary.
You’ve probably seen quite a lot of crazy designs around, but it is also always a great idea to stick to simplicity. Despite wanting to make your brochure look as strikingly bold and different as you want, there is no need to overcomplicate the design. Sure, you may experiment with other templates rather than the usual tri-fold brochure template, yet the design of it all should still be kept clean. Accentuate on the key parts of your brochure and remember to not create a clutter.
Remember, simple doesn’t always mean boring. There are many ways in which you can play around with this. A great tip is to explore all the options and research for more design inspirations.
Brochures Examples
The craziest thing about brochures is that there is a never-ending list of them. Imagine that for various events and occasions created by a company since its existence, especially so if you think about travel or healthcare companies. There is no doubt that there would be at least ten brochures, maybe even up to 40, that needs to be designed throughout the years!
The total number of modern brochure designs existing, surpasses the unimaginable number of existing logos, trademarks, and fonts there are in the world. Think about it, while each company has only one logo that they stick to, they may choose to create as many brochures as they want during the year!
By analyzing existing modern brochure design templates, you will not only see which one of them are the most creative options and ideas. You will also be able to build a better understanding of the basic guidelines of making a brochure. So, let’s go ahead and review recent collections of print brochures in order to spark new ideas for your design process.
1) The Extraordinary Tri-fold Brochure
First, we begin with an extraordinary tri-fold brochure. This project is absolutely stunning, witty, and innovative. The brochure folds diagonally to give a powerful impression, and interestingly, this crazy brochure template, full of unpredictable folds, can even be found online for free.
Colors are not intrusive and there are not too many of them, just simple shades of blue, white, and black. Additionally, the font is kept simple and professional. This is a great example of how you can nail the design by just selecting a unique type of fold as a template! By doing this, your brochure can easily go from good to great.
2) Pieria & Dion’s Vivid and Colorful Brochure
Another brochure design idea that sells? Check out this fruity combination of vivid colors and an interesting fold. Together, it creates shapes that just work perfectly. Today, the food industry has become so overcrowded, making it extremely important that products and brands stand out from its competitors.
A great tip to be taken from this example is to also make sure you embrace the white space in your project. When there is a lot of color, keep it clean and leave some space for your content to breathe. Both you and your clients will be thankful for that. Make it pleasurable rather than tiring for your clients to look at your template.
3) The Die Cut Brochure
Let’s dig even deeper to explore even more unique shapes and colors that can be paired to create an astounding brochure design. This example of a modern brochure, made with a die cut technique sends the message across the ocean. This is how the design performs well with shape, drawing all eyes to the cover of the brochure.
Since the travel industry is almost as jam-packed as the food industry, designers must bring out their most imaginative ideas. Brochures, a simple and cost-effective marketing tool, are all about coming up with great ideas when it comes to the strategic designs of print advertisement.
4) Calarts’ Bold and Powerful Brochure
Stop for a moment and reflect on what the designer did here. This brochure design definitely pops out, and there are two reasons for that. First of all, the colors used are vibrant, and the palette looks incredibly stunning, similar to the fruit brochure design seen earlier. Secondly, the large and bold font calls for attention even more strongly than the colors used. Together, this curates an extremely young and powerful brochure design.
It grabs attention and adds all the extra spice to the brochure. Anyone who sees this would most likely want to read it as soon as they get it. Therefore, to maximize the return on your marketing spend with making brochures, be sure to choose your design wisely.
5) Groundflights’ Brochure Kit
Groundflights’ sales kit makes use of calm and cool pastel colors. The versatility of pastels and clean shapes included in the design results in this kind of gentle-looking modern brochure which is a favorite among marketers across many types of industries.
At the same time, the lack of excessive and dramatic use of colors puts the project in line with Groundflights’ corporate business identity. The template makes use of white space to enhance the backdrop and clearly display the content. This is what helps make all the information extra readable to audiences.
Different to the brochures we’ve seen earlier, this brochure still kept its traditional frame. However, the detailing on the edges and the structure of the kit that is designed to replicate a flight ticket is what allows the brochure to successfully communicate the main message of the company, while also retaining its visual appeal.
6) Adult Swim’s Artistic Brochure
Brochures are highly effective promotional tools. Some of them are so spectacular in the sense that they become a piece of art. Take a look at this unique cat brochure created by Adult Swim to promote their booth at Comic Con for example.
At first glimpse, this brochure may look a bit crazy. However, if you look closely, the text is actually organized in a neat manner which still makes it easy for audiences to follow. Despite the super detailed artwork, the whole brochure still retains its structure. This is what essentially makes this design work. If the text were to look too messy, this would have weakened the appeal and readability of this brochure. It can give audiences a visual headache.
Therefore, if you want to add some detailing to your brochure and make it look artistic, ensure that you at least maintain a clear textual structure.
Final thoughts…
Some of us may be worried that digital creative world will take over old-school techniques, but you couldn’t be any more wrong! Print advertisements, although not as popular as they once were, aren’t going anywhere. Today, they have to power to be just as persuasive and effective as a marketing tool.
Brochures are unique, meaningful visualisations companies that can be easily taken home by consumers. They give companies the space to express and promote their products and services in a creative yet informative way.
However, unlike many other tools, the typical brochure doesn’t provide a ton of space to fit all of your content. Therefore, when it comes to brochures, you need to make all the space count, and this is where a great design and brochure template can come to your advantage.
If you need help in creating yours, be sure to get in contact with our design experts at DesignBro. With years of experience in the industry, they are able to design the best brochures for all types of companies.
Besides having grown up in the design Industry, Christiaan has advised some of the world’s largest companies on their branding & packaging designs. Has been the resident judge for design awards, and has spoken at numerous global design & marketing events. Christiaan founded the London office of the award-winning Cartils agency, and has founded the DesignBro.com platform.