Brochures have long been used by many companies to advertise their new products or services to create brand awareness about their business. Sad to say, oftentimes brochures are thrown away without anything more than a cursory glance or even opening it up. Especially now in the digital age, brochures have been close to rendered obsolete. But that’s not to say there’s no longer room for them in advertising.
Just like other graphic design and advertising elements like logos, websites, and business cards, certain design trends come and go when it comes to brochures as well. Using a unique brochure design can help you capture your reader’s attention and help you stand out from your competition.
Remember, however, that with good design, it’s not enough to be memorable. The design has to work with the brochure layout and make sense with the content in order for it to be effective. Otherwise, it can leave your brochure looking cluttered and confusing.
To stand out from your competitors who are not only doing brochures but also digital ads as well, you’ll need to come up with unique and creative brochure designs that will leave a lasting impression on your readers. If you’re going to spend money for marketing collaterals, might as well do it right!
Here are some creative brochure ideas to inspire you.
1. Go Dark
Black is often considered to be a sophisticated color when used as a design element. It commands the attention of the audience and exudes elegance unlike any other color. When paired with bold colors, such as gold, red, orange, or green will draw attention to the brochure and make the elements pop from the page.
You can even use a glow-in-dark type of ink for your print to truly make your design pop. This kind of application would be perfect for cinemas, nightclubs, or arcades!
2. Think Outside the Box
Get creative with the trifold brochure you create. Just because it’s a trifold doesn’t mean it has to be a rectangle! Some inventive trifold brochures we’ve seen have featured different shapes, orientations, and sizes. You can even include die-cuts in your brochure to highlight certain elements. If you opt for a die-cut, just make sure to choose the right kind of paper that will keep the edges of your cut-out crisp.
3. Experiment with Typography
There’s a lot of interesting and unique typefaces and typography out there you can use in your brochures to spice it up. Apart from the literal thousands of typefaces you can choose and download off the Internet, more and more brands are employing designers to customize their own typography. Just be careful not to mix too many typefaces together so your brochure does not look cluttered or messy. It’s best to have one unique typography and two complementary typefaces to go along with it.
You can use the custom typography for the front cover and main headers then use the complementary typefaces for the other parts of the brochure.
4. Supersize It
Brochures that capture the reader’s audience aren’t cookie-cutter or generic-looking ones. If you want to really stand out, then one surefire way to do that is to go big or go home. Sure, there are standard brochure sizes that printing companies go by, but you don’t have to follow these. If you have a lot of information or photos you need to present on your brochure, you can go as big as you need so you don’t sacrifice on the design or readability of the text.
5. 3-D Elements
Typical brochures make use of two-dimensional designs. Thankfully, the Internet gives you plenty of creative brochure design templates which you can download for free with innovative 3-D design options. You can play around with these designs to help you add dimension and depth to your brochure. The 3-D elements come into play through the use of pop-up features to highlight key areas of your brochure. To nail this kind of design, it’s best to use vibrant colors to create the illusion of depth.
Check out how to choose the print kind of paper for this brochure so your 3-D elements stand up the way they’re supposed to.
6. Vintage Chic
Vintage elements have been popping up more and more frequently in all forms of design – be it logos, posters, and yes, brochures. These vintage-looking elements will include hand-drawn pieces that include lots of detail which really bring the piece to life. Businesses in food and beverage as well as clothing are ones that will particularly work well with this brochure style.
7. Forget the Grid
A lot of designers use a grid when figuring out the layout of their work. We’re seeing more and more designers these days experiment with the limits of the grid or do away with it completely. This gives them more freedom when it comes to creating their designs, allowing for more movement between the panels of the brochure.
8. Integrate It with Your Digital Marketing
Your brochure should work hand-in-hand with your digital marketing efforts. To make it more convenient for readers to head to a business’ social media accounts, designers have been including custom QR codes that link directly to the socials or the company website when scanned with any mobile device.
Unique brochure designs can command people’s attention, but the true purpose of design is for a company or business to be remembered. It’s not enough for your brochure to catch a reader’s attention, it should be able to sustain it long enough so the reader goes through the entire thing and processes all the content presented to them.
Hiring a knowledgeable and experienced printer can help you come up with new and inventive brochure designs that will help you stand out from your competition and present your content in an effective manner.
