Brochures are still an effective pieces of collateral for target marketing. Today, people want information presented in a brief and portable format to be accessed at their leisure, and that’s exactly what a brochure does. Sure you can holler a website at them to look up on their phone (that they will soon forget), but there is a time and a place when a brochure fills that need to holler more than just a website at someone in passing, but to put something physical in hand, with relevant information as a reminder to follow-up.

Just as businesses need a logo, letterhead, website, social media presence, and more as part of their marketing package, a well designed brochure can put all this in the hands of your potential customers.

What a well designed brochure can do for you.

• Credibility – Brochures are great advertising tools to build your company’s image, showcase your products, list real estate, promote an event, etc. Any businesses today can have business cards and letterhead, but a well designed brochure says that you’re more than a fly-by-night company. It shows investment in your business, which gives perception of success and adds value to your products or services.
• Save Time and Money – Brochures save time for potential customers by giving them the information they want more easily, and brochures save your business time by explaining the basics of what you have to offer. Think of your brochure as your salesman to go.
• Customers – It can bring you customers. As a tool to generate interest in your products and services, a brochure can get potential clients in your door, on your phone or on your website.

When and where to use a brochure.

• Tradeshow/Events – brochures are critical for tradeshows and events. Hundreds of vendors competing for attendees attention, and even if you get some face-to-face interaction with an attendee are they going to remember you? Are they going to remember your products and services?  For them, and for others you don’t get to even speak with, the brochure is the premier take-away piece that speaks for your company when you can’t.
• Sales Calls – sales is a tough business and one of the most critical tasks is getting time with decision-makers. Their time is critical, not only to you but to themselves. Make the most of your time and theirs with a brochure leave behind detailing your business’s products and services, allowing you to build the relationship before even trying to sell a product.
• Complimentary Businesses – You don’t place brochures about your construction business in a grocery store and expect to get many leads, but construction brochures in a hardware store make sense. Think about complimentary businesses, if they could benefit from your product and services and vice-versa, then reach out to them for a cross-marketing campaign.  Making sure your put your brochures in the most effective places is key to it being effective target marketing.
• Direct Mail – A brochure is perfect as an anchor of information supporting your direct mail efforts, detailing the products and services you offer. If designed well and the appropriate paper stock is used, the brochure can even be its own self-mailer to reduce cost and waste.

How to make a brochure more effective.

• Go BIG and Stand TALL – use hero graphics and large text on the cover of your brochure. Depending on the situation your brochure may be competing with other brochures for attention and also may need to be legible from a distance.  Also, place important information (company logo, name or call to action) near the top so that it will not be hidden within the pocket of a brochure stand.
• Track ROI – reward your potential customers on the brochure with a QR code to a discount on your website or a tearoff coupon to be brought to your store. This not only entices your potential customer but gives you a way to track your ROI for your brochure campaign.
• HIRE A DESIGNER – as a part of your core marketing collateral and one of the first-touch to customers from your business, it is critical that your brochure be the best.  A well designed brochure design involves the analysis of your business, target market and products or services, resulting in layout, design and copy that best communicates your message to your target market. I know a guy, and I’ll even put in a good word for you!

If you have any questions or are interested in having any design work done, don’t hesitate to contact me.

For a past project (designing a user guide for a medical device), I had to convert 18 different color images to black and white. There are many ways to convert color to black and white, each with varying degrees of difficulty and varying results. But particular to this project was the need for consistency in converting color to black and white, as I was working with 18 different color images that ultimately needed the same look and feel once converted.

The first step was to extract the background from the images. You always want to eliminate any unnecessary elements from the picture prior to any type of color conversion or before performing any altering effects.

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Some of the more basic methods of converting to black and white (converting through grayscale mode and desaturating) provided the limited subjective input I needed, but severely lacked in quality.

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Converting through a single channel, such as the red channel, to grayscale gave some nice results. However, it was inconsistent due to the difference in conversions from image to image because of varying colors present in the original images.

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Not to go unmentioned, the channel mixer is an excellent tool, and for sure the most sophisticated for color conversion. But as such, the channel mixer provides too much subjectivity for this project and proves to be a nightmare in achieving consistency across 18 images.

The method that worked best for this project was converting color images to black and white with the lab color mode, giving consistent conversions and excellent quality in the final results.

The following is the work-flow used:

Image>Mode>Lab Color … from here you go to Channels, click on the Lightness Channel, then Ctrl A (to select all), Ctrl C (to copy) the Lightness Channel.

From this point forward, I’ve seen a couple of different techniques that people do. What I like to do, and originally learned at the Digital Photography School, is to convert back to RGB mode, then click on Channels and paste the Lightness channel into EACH of the Red, Green and Blue Channels. (You can also do the same in CMYK mode for even richer results or for print media.)

This seems to create a nice, rich and open black and white image, that up till now has had no subjective influence. This technique presented quality conversions with consistent results, exactly what I needed for this particular project.

The only remaining adjustments (levels and curves) are slight and easily duplicated from image to image. Again, by using the lab color black and white conversion technique I was able to bring my images to a high level of quality before having to apply any subjective adjustment, this was key in choosing lab color as the best technique for this project.