Alberta: Tourism & Recreation  

Prior to having students create their own brochures, review a number of samples with them. Good design is vital to brochures if they are to communicate effectively about the products and services they promote or if they are going to clearly convey information for educational and entertainment purposes. A brochure of one page needs to be very compact and practical to gets its message to its readers.

• Identify the main features of the sample brochures.
• Who is the intended audience? How do you know?
• What are the main categories of information in this brochure?
• How could the designer improve this brochure?

Planning Brochures

A brochure is often only one piece of paper, folded in half or in thirds. Here are some suggestions you should consider when creating brochures:

•  Determine the size of your brochure.

•  Decide how much colour will be used in the leaflet. Will it

    be full colour throughout or only in parts?

•  Gather and organize all of your information first. Use

    headings to organize your main points into divisions or

    sections.

•  Write the text of your brochure. You can write in sentences,

    in point form using bullets, or even in a question-answer

    format. Readers don't want to spend much time reading the

    brochure so it must be to the point.

•  Create a thumbnail sketch to plan the layout of your

    brochure. How many columns will the brochure have?

    Where will you put text? Images?

•  Your illustrations (diagrams, photographs, maps, graphs,

    tables, etc.) must be related to the text and should be

    chosen because they convey information quickly and easily.

   Write any captions for your images that may be needed.

•  Make use of font styles and sizes, borders, boxes, and

    colours to highlight information and add visual appeal.

•  Symbols can also be used to communicate a lot of

   information in a very small space. For example, the use of

   varying numbers of dollar signs ($$$) in a table can show

   the price range for different resorts and hotels.