Learn From a Pro!
A Bonus Interview with Professor William Pritchard Shippensburg University
Could you tell me a little bit about your background? How many years have you been teaching and what types of advertising/design classes do you teach?
I have been teaching web, print, and interactive design at the collegiate level for 6 years. Previous to teaching, I held Art Director and Creative Director positions at various ad agencies. I also design books for authors.
When someone with a camping program is just starting to develop a brochure, what should they think about first? What should they think next?
First thing to think about is the audience for the brochure. Is it the campers? Is it the parents? Is it current or potential campers/families? The answer to this question determines the content and style of the brochure. Second thing: budget and amount of brochures you plan on printing. This will determine—or do away with—any plans for printing in color (graphics or text). Next decision: what kind of paper will I be printing on? Especially if you are using artwork/photos, this is a very important decision as the kind of paper you choose determines the line screen that halftones (photos) can be printed at.
What tips would you offer someone trying to write text for a brochure?
The most important text is the text you have on the cover of the brochure. The brochure is a strange item, because in order for it to be effective/persuasive (e.g., in order to have it read completely), the reader has to “do some work.” They have to turn over the cover, and keep flipping the brochure open until it is 100% open and “laid out” in front of them. The cover text should be enticing! Presenting a question to be answered is a good way to increase your chances that a person will continue into the brochure - because they will want to answer the question presented on the cover! For inside text: use a lot of headlines/subheads/bulleted lists, to keep the reader visually interested and not “bored” by solid paragraphs of text.
What qualities should you look for when choosing artwork or photography for a brochure?
There’s a saying in graphic arts: “garbage in, garbage out.” Photos and artwork should be crisp and of high quality all-around. You will not get an out-of-focus photograph in focus on your brochure. Scanning in artwork—as opposed to taking a photo off a digital camera—decreases quality slightly, especially if you are not trained in the technicalities of scanning. Also: postage-stamp-sized photos (like many found on the web) will not pixcelate if enlarged in your brochure. As a rule, begin with the largest-sized artwork possible, and scale down from that.
Are photos better than clip art?
Photos give a realistic and personal touch to the brochure—especially if the photos are of actual people/places related to the organization creating the brochure. Clip art? Last resort. Even the best clip art looks “canned,” but there are some newer (and expensive) packages out there that offer unique, colorful, and royalty-free alternatives to original art.
Should camp directors have photo or model releases on file for youth and adults pictured in brochures?
Every person used in a photograph that promotes an organization for commercial purposes should sign a model release. Many organizations don’t follow this rule, because people are usually just thrilled to see their face in print! But it is a legal issue. A model can come back to your organization at any time and claim they did not give permission for his/her image to be used, and without a model release you have no recourse and you can easily get tied up in litigation. Model releases can be a pain, but they are necessary evils, I think. See Steppingstone LLC’s sample model release
What are common mistakes made with photo selection for a brochure?
We are not just a visual society, we are an action society. Photos should have action, gusto, and movement, as much as possible. The typical “grip-and-grin” photos; static pictures of buildings; and huge “group” shots just don’t appeal to audiences anymore. Get as much action into your photos as you can—even if it is just a close-up of a child’s huge smile.
How can you have a streamlined design look with a brochure if you don’t have the money to hire a professional designer?
With today’s desktop software, anyone can create a professional, inspiring, and persuasive brochure on a home computer. But the software cannot teach you the rules of effective graphic design! Issues of page balance, motivational text, color matching and color theory...you have to bring all of this to the software in order to make something good happen.
Can you have a good brochure and not use full color? Is full color always better?
There are TONS of things you can do with just black and white by first realizing that a black and white job is really a black and white and TONS of SHADES of GRAY job! Shades of gray still use just black ink, and a piece that utilizes differing shades of grays for backgrounds, larger text, artwork, etc., will still be printed as a one-color job. Today’s page design software packages do wonderful things with GRADATIONS, so you can actually have shades of gray blending into each other seamlessly. Still, [it’s] a one-color job. Of course, if you have the money, color is best. But creativity is in no way limited by a one-color budget.
What are common mistakes made with brochure production?
The most common mistake is not getting the folds correct! Ever look at the cover of a brochure and everything is “shifted” to the left, toward the fold, and out-of-center on the cover? Before you lay out the panels of your brochure, you have to know—and mark in your file—where the folds are going to be, or you will have a very unprofessional-looking off-center brochure. Another big mistake is not utilizing the cover effectively. It has to entice your reader to go further into the brochure. If you create a cover showing nothing but the name of your org, your logo, and contact info, what reason to I have to keep looking into the brochure?
Do you think it is better to hire a professional designer or to do things yourself?
This simply depends on personal skills, knowledge, and budget. If you have the money and have no idea where to even begin to create a brochure, farm it out. If you are confident with your skills (i.e., if you have done this work before and people have commented positively about it), save design and production costs and get a lot of personal satisfaction by doing it yourself.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
Your brochure, in essence, is a folded-up advertisement. It is meant to motivate your audience to action. Always keep that in mind with every word and graphic you use. Oh, yeah, this too: Don’t use too much colored text! You want to steer away from the “junior high” look.
