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Thursday, November 5th, 2009
Simple graphic design tricks for brochures and fliersBy Tyler King
If you're ever making a flier, brochure, or any other type of document where you need to squeeze a lot of information on one page, you've probably struggled to find ways to differentiate different sections of text. For example, on a page where lots of things need to be called out, it can be difficult to draw the attention of your audience to the right places. Everything can't be bold, and if it is, bold no longer has any meaning.
If you've ever run into this problem, here are a couple easy techniques you can use to clear up your design. Using these tricks, you can make a page much cleaner and more attractive without actually changing the content.
Use different shades of gray
Text doesn't always have to be black, but it can be really intimidating trying to pick colors. Instead of coming up with your own color scheme, try using grays to differentiate text.
Change the font family
Fonts can have a huge impact on how the reader sees text, but once again, it can be really scary trying to pick between the endless different font options. If you don't want to sort through all the fonts, just pick between the two different main styles of fonts: serif and sans-serif. Serif font's have the little nubs (not sure what else to call them) sticking out of letters, while sans-serif don't. Generally, serif looks more old school and sans-serif looks more modern. If you're not sure what I mean, this graphic might help:
 So if you don't want to spend time comparing different fonts, just make sure to be conscious of whether a font is serif or sans-serif because that makes a huge difference and it's easy for you to choose between the two. If you're looking for even more guidance, just choose between Palitino Linotype and Verdana. Those are always safe picks that aren't too boring.
If you're going to use both font types on one page, you should generally use one for headers, and the other for body text. You shouldn't mix and match though (don't use both serif and sans serif fonts for the main body text). It's perfectly fine (and normal) to only use one font, so don't feel pressured to use two.
Don't use the Comic Sans Font
Under no circumstances should you ever choose Comic Sans as your font. Seriously. Never. Everyone hates it. It died in the 90's. Just let it go.
 Think about how most people read things
When an average person sees a page, they skim it first, and then go back and read details if they think they'll be interested. Make your page so that if someone takes one quick look, they're forced to see the most important information first. People generally skim in straight lines (top to bottom, or top-left to bottom-right).
Change the font size in subtle ways
Everyone knows that headers should be bigger than the body text. Font size differences can also be used in much more subtle ways that the audience might only notice subliminally. Keep the headers big and everything else small, but consider using a slightly smaller font for notes, parentheticals, and descriptions. I'll show you an example of this later.
Reverse Indent
Cramming text together can make it really hard to tell when a new line is just a continuation of the one above it or a completely new paragraph. Everyone knows about indenting text when writing long paragraphs, but that style normally looks weird on graphical brochures and the like. Try indenting every line, or every line after the first instead.
Subtle background colors
Most brochures have totally different sections of content on one page. It's hard to separate these without cluttering up the page. Try putting a very light gray background behind one section to set it apart without calling to much attention.
Don't center so many things
The human eye is attracted to strong vertical lines. It's hard to skim a page when the text on each line starts in a different place. If you center something, it should be because it's very important and shouldn't be grouped with anything else (which is why titles are often centered). If related content is all centered, it is very difficult for someone to parse all the information when they first look at the page.
There must be whitespace
Having whitespace (empty, unused space on the page) is absolutely critical. Without whitespace, the whole thing blurs into one big mess. Even if you have to cram individual sections together or make the overall font size smaller, you need to figure out a way to have some whitespace on the page.
There are multiple dimensions of emphasis
Between color, font-size, bolding, underlining, etc. you should be able to emphasize things in different ways. Give your audience visual cues that help them thoughtlessly group your page into different sections and then let them decide how to take it in. Instead of them thinking "this line is more important than that line", the reader can identify that some lines are headers, some are descriptions, some are details, and some are notes. It's not important for headers to be the boldest lines as long as the reader can quickly identify them as headers.
So let's put these principles to use. I recently received a pdf brochure from a friend and one of the pages stood out as something that could be easily improved on. I'm not trying to pick on the original version (it serves its purpose just fine), I just thought it would be a good page to practice with. Also note, I used some kind of extreme tactics to highlight the tricks I mentioned above. This isn't necessarily how I would design the page, it's just an example.
So here's the original (click the image to see a larger version)
 ...And my new version
 I made a few changes to the text to match the design, but for the most part I kept things exactly the same. Notice that there is absolutely no color anywhere on the page and there's nothing remotely fancy from a graphic design standpoint. My goal was to break the page into sections so that the audience can naturally break the page down and take it one section at a time.
Look at the names of the artists. Even though they are smaller and a lighter shade than the description text, they stand out more because they are bold and they're on the strong vertical line on the left of the page (they line up with the title, sub-title, header, and logo).
Think about what a reader sees when they skim this page. They see the title, sub-title, "Featured Artists" and then the name of each artist. After taking in that information (which is the order in which I want someone to see things), they can move on to the right column where they see the raffle items, and then the date/time/address.
There's whitespace, tons of different font sizes, four different shades of gray, exactly two font types (serif for headers, sans-serif for everything else). Just a few simple tricks turned the page from something that looked like a big mass of text into something that is easy to parse and comprehend.
This is obviously just an example, but the next time you find your page looking bland, cluttered, or unfocused, try out some of these tricks.
Tags: Design
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