Getting tired of seeing your marketing brochures being thrown into the trash can? Frustrated that people don’t even give your brochures a second look? Here are some tips on how to improve and make your brochure design more effective:

Know your audience The first step to any marketing campaign is to know who your audience is. Determine which part of the population you need to target and concentrate fully on that niche. Is your product for women or men? Is it for professionals or is it for students? Narrow the scope of your campaign so that it will be easier to focus and make an appropriate design.

After determining who your target customers are, you should then spend time and effort into knowing their likes, dislikes, habits and preferences. Your brochure design should focus on the data you collected here. The more specific and personal your design is, the better reception you get for your products.

Remember your print size One of the most common mistakes by people who make their own brochures is designing the wrong set up size. An example of this would be when a design beginner uses an 8.5" x 11" size to layout his project only to use 8" x 10" paper when printing. Anytime a printer is forced to resize an image, the integrity of the design as well as the quality of the project is compromised.

Always include your bleeds Bleeds are the printable spaces outside the trim zone. They serve as insurance for your prints during trimming. Remember that during printing, several brochures are ran together in a single sheet and then cut and separated into single units. And while the cutters are very precise, cutting thousands upon thousands of prints will surely take its toll and the cutters can fluctuate slightly over the course of the order. Bleeds are essential if you have color or images right on the edge of your brochures. Not having them will cause a white border on the edges when your cutter becomes misaligned. Having bleeds prevent this from happening. The industry standard for bleeds is about 1/8 of an inch or 0.125 inches on all sides. However, for custom orders and orders that need die cutting, you should talk to your printer with regards to how much bleed do they require.

Monitor your resolution Remember that the images that you see on your screen do not reflect the colors and quality that you have once they are printed. Your images should have at least 300 dot per inch for them to be printed sharp and clear. 200 up to 150 is acceptable only when you want to print your images at a very small size. When these images are blown up, they will come out ‘soft’, blurry and even pixilated.

Check your proofs I can’t stress this enough. Your proofs are very important because they represent the last time that you will have the opportunity to change anything with your prints before they are sent to the printers. Grab this opportunity to check your prints for small errors and if you want, you can make minor adjustments with your brochure design.