I’ve come into contact with a lot of brochures in my lifetime, and I doubt I’m that unique. Brochures are all around us, both the good and the bad, and I always hate it when I come across the bad.

A brochure or postcard is often the first look I get at a company. The impact or impression this new company would have on me entirely depends on the look of the brochure now in my hands. It will determine what I think and how I feel about their business. And unfortunately, quite often do I see unprofessional, poorly-designed, flimsy marketing tools that pretty much concludes that I won’t be shopping with that company.

What makes these brochures so bad?

Companies attempting to make their brochures look more professional can completely backfire. Here are some of the more common mistakes I’ve seen.

The over use of underlining, bolding, or italics. I know you might have a lot of different facts you want to emphasize for effect, but the more often you use something like underlining the more commonplace it is and the less of an impact it has. Even worse it makes a page feel cluttered. All I see are the underlined sections that are all over the place and I don’t know what to focus on anymore. This will make me put the thing down and stop reading.

Using things like these sparingly provides real emphasis to one thing or another. You can’t say everything is of equal importance, so figure out what really is important before you make those underlined passages.

The next is focus. I’ve read plenty of brochures that seemed to have no particular group it was trying to target. A brochure without focus seems to drift all over the place. What would you think of a book without any kind of plot guiding the events? The target audience for a brochure acts as the anchor holding all of the information together. If a brochure is trying to talk to everyone the message becomes weak and murky.

Make sure when using brochure printing that you know exactly who you’re trying to grab the attention of. The less focused you are the less focused the brochure will feel and the less likely anyone will even bother reading it.

The last problem deals with the colors used. Color brochures certainly have their place, and can add a good flare, but if a company uses far too many colors with their brochures it lessens the impact. I’m sure they’re trying to look really professional by having a large amount of unique color schemes rather than just black and white, but then, often a single splash of color can have the biggest impact because it stands out.

If something is important you want it to stand out from the rest, but if everything is colorful than suddenly nothing stands out.

Just because these techniques can make a brochure look good, it only works if used in the right amounts. Too often when using brochure printing a company feels the need to load up their brochures with every gimmick they can to get people to read it. The harder you try to look like you have it together the less likely I am to believe it.