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HDC Quick Guide to Tourism Brochure & Leaflet Design
The following brochure design guide will help you plan, develop & design more effective marketing brochures, tourism guides and promotional leaflets.
There is much more to successful tourism brochure and leaflet design than you might think!
Tourism brochure design involves a real understanding of the psychology of the audience and what they are looking for.
The brochure design planning process begins with "first impressions", and works its way through content, colours, photos, and more.
This basic brochure design guide is designed to give you an overview of some of the key considerations in successful brochure design.
Not that you may be the designer yourself, but you must be an informed consumer. At the end of this article is useful checklist of things to consider in developing your market pieces, and how to help your designers create successful and market friendly brochures.
Planning your Tourism Marketing Brochure
The planning model we use for developing tourism brochures (or any interpretive product) begins with the story. What is the topic or message that I need to present and what is the THEME that the piece needs to illustrate.
A theme is a complete sentence that captures the essence of the total site story. The content of the brochure then continues on the inside to illustrate to the reader the thamatic statement is is true.
2) Developing your brochure objectives
The next step in our planning process is too clearly identify exactly WHAT you want the brochure to accomplish - what are your objectives. We find that many (most) marketing brochures weren't planned with objectives - they were just jammed with information. At HDC we use three kinds of objectives in our planning process.
Learning Objectives:
With these objectives we like to quantify the kinds of information that the brochure will present.
For example: "Upon reading the brochure, the majority of tourist will be able to....."
With these objectives listed the designer knows what content (and photos) will be required to accomplish (or illustrate) these points.
Emotional Objectives:
In marketing, these are the most important. These are the objectives that will make a visitor "FEEL" that this will be a great experience - that "I can't miss this!", or that "this site or facility will be easy to get to - no trip stress". Emotional objectives are accomplished mostly with the photos you select. Take a close look at the two brochure covers - what emotions do they convey?
Behavioural Objectives:
For your attraction these are the most important objectives. These are the actions or behaviours you want the potential tourist to do. Here are some examples:
The behavioural objectives will (might) be accomplished if the other emotional and learning objectives do their job.
3) Who is the Audience?
The next step in the planning process is to clearly determine just who your attraction or site target markets are. Here are some examples of "typical" target markets.
Of course these target markets can be further broken down into sub groups, but this gives you the idea. Your site or attraction will have a specific target market mix (year-round or seasonal)that is most likely to want to visit your "kind" of facility or attraction. Understanding this market mix helps you to identify:
Once you have a good idea of your theme or story presentation needs, you have clearly outlined your learning, emotional and behavioural objectives for the brochure, and have focused on the target markets your site is best suited for, or that your want to work on attracting, the next step is in the mechanics of putting this "plan" into action.
The Checklist
The "to do" list for planning and designing successful heritage tourism and interpretive brochures!
1. First Impressions - The Cover
2. Leaflet/Brochure Planning
Your brochure can easily get lost in a "sea of brochures" if you are not careful. The effective use of the top 1/3 becomes more important when you consider where and how your final product will be made available to the public…….
The important thing to remember is to find out if the brochure is successfully conveying the messages you want "BEFORE" you print and distribute thousands of them!
3. Brochure Design Mechanics
3a. Point Size
Point size is the size of type you are using for your brochure. As a general rule you want to use as large a point size as you can. This may mean you have to edit your copy to get it to fit with a larger type.
Is the point size used for your brochure appropriate for the target audience (i.e. if it is to small, older visitors may have trouble reading it)?
Get some examples of other brochures to look at (and learn from). What point size are they using - can you easily read the copy?
3b. Font
Font is the way the text letters look. For example, this text is "Times New Roman". This is Antique Olive. This is Renaissance. You want to select the right font to go with the correct massage illustration. Your designer can help with this too.
Some things to consider:
3c. Brochure Folds
Another thing to consider is how you want your brochure folded. Here are some things to consider:
3d. Paper Selection
Another important area to consider is that of what kind of paper should we use to print our brochure on? Here are more things to consider:
3e. Paper Texture
Like with the weight of paper, paper also comes in different textures. This can run from enamel paper, like most colour brochures are printed on, to special papers with lots of textures (fibres) in them. Again, a printer can show you lots of different kinds of papers to select from.
3f. Paper Finish
This is part of the paper texture selection, but needs to be considered. Remember that if you are designing a brochure for outdoor use, like a site map or a walking tour, enamel papers (with shiny finishes) reflect sunlight, and may be very hard to read outdoors. You may want a flat finish (non-glare) paper for outdoor use.
Does your type of paper then support the publications intended use?
Does the brochure use unique or interesting die cuts to attract or focus the potential tourist's attention? Die cuts are an expensive brochure treatment, but can add to the "attraction power" of the piece. A die cut is most simply, a cookie cutter for the paper that cuts out designs.
3g. Publication Copy/Text
Copy or text presentation is also an important part of the overall brochure design. Too much text (or all text) can overwhelm the potential visitor. Remember -they are not on holiday to read lots of stuff. Here are some things to consider about your publications use of text:
3h. Photos and Graphics
As you begin to draft out your brochure (or critique an existing one), it is important to remember that the human beings remember:
10% of what they hear;
30% of what they read;
50% of what they see;
90% of what they do.
It is said that a picture is worth a 1,000 words. The distressing point is that, if you don't pre-test the pictures you use in your brochures, it can be the WRONG 1,000 words!
A graphic assessment should consider:
There are times when "no people in the photos" might work. Particularly when you are trying to keep control over the "numbers" of visitors, or what you are marketing is the "getting away from people" experience. This approach is attractive to very specific market groups. Can you name some market groups that this brochure style would appeal to as in the above brochure examples?
4. The Photo Selection "self test"
Here is a little exercise you can do with an existing brochure. Cut out all of the photographs out of the brochure, lay them out on a desktop, and mix them up. Then ask staff members (or visitors) to see if they can tell you where the photos were taken (or are they photos that "could come from anywhere", like a general lake photo, or fall colour photo?
5. Graphic Assessments
Sometimes a graphic will work better than a photo, and can give a better "interpretation" of the site or facility. More things to consider when using graphics:
6. General Leaflet/Brochure Layout Assessment - Putting it all together
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