Guidelines In Selecting Good Company Brochures

"A very good brochure is an extension of a client's marketing plan," Samuelson says. "It's just another arrow in the quiver to reach one of their target audiences. And when you're dealing with a very specific audience, a brochure demands that you be highly focused."

So, wel before a brochure design is committed to paper, the market needs to be defined. Samuelson says you have to ask who is your target and what the specific appeals of your product or service are. Those at Keller-Crescent, based in Evansville, believe that it's important for a company's image to ne conveyed throughout all forms of advertising--print, radio, and television. Samuelson says viewers may not remember the actual product being advertised, but the company's personality will be etched into their minds. Still others believe it's the visual impact that rabs the audience members' attention and stays with them. "Our society sees the most impressive, best-produced visual images, and they see thousands of them a day. You can't send somebody a Xeroxed copy of anything anymore and have it represent your corporation," says Kathleen Desmond, marketing strategist for the Pitcock Design Group in South Bend. "The brochure you use ot present you product or service bespeaks the level of professionalism of your organization." Desmond says a good brochure must be well-designed and sophisticated. And, she adds, sophisticated does not mean complicated. One sales piece her firm designed for a French company with a South Bend manufacturing facility was as simple as a chid's storybook. It described the company's hand-held tools, showing different head configurations that performed unique jobs, such as drilling and boring. The brochure brought home an international advertising/design award for Pitcock Design. Many other factors go into a well-designed brochure as well. Color is a key component. Ron Konkel, production manager of Communico, a subsidiary of the Indianapolis-based Jackson Group, says if there were four equally well-designed brochures lying on a table--a black and white, and then two-, a three- and a four color pieces--it would be the four-color brochure that attracts the most attention. Bob Lipps Sr., owner of Lipps-National Printing in New Albany, says that 75 to 80 percent of the brochures his company prints are four color. "Everybody's going to color printing today to sell a product." Terry Lucterhand, co-owner of Lafeyette Printing, says, "There will be even more use of four color by people who haven't had it accessible to them before. The cost to produce four color is coming down, and it has been for a while." He says better technology is responsible. As presdes become quicker, the length of time it takes to produce a four-color piece declines. This translates into a price reduction for the project. According to Luterhand, some people who used to rely on two-color printed material are gradually stepping up into the three-color piece. "The third color givres the designer the opportunity to use black ink as a third color." He says this is important for photographs, especially if they're not in four color. Brighter colors also are brought in as the third color to highlight a particular piece of information. Typography is important as well. With many individuals jumping into desktop publishing, there are those who believe the quality of typographical composition is slipping. People are just slapping type out on their Macs or PCs without much regard to typography. In the past seven or eight years, the quality of type has gone down tremendously. I think you can do good type on desktop; you just have to know what you're doing.