As a marketing professional I have seen a lot of color brochures. I have noticed that brochure printing designs nowadays show a lot of innovation in terms of design. Also, I see a lot of intense competition going on to develop the best and most eye catching layouts. Within the last few years, a trend seems to be appearing on what the best design strategy should be for color brochures. Surprisingly, a lot of ?brochure? audiences gravitate to some classic brochure principles rather than the new brochure style gimmicks. So in fact, the most successful brochures are the ones who keep things simple but effective.

Image heavy

One of the most successful design strategies for brochures, that a lot of people like, are the image heavy brochures. Indeed a picture can paint a thousand words, and most people prefer beautiful images on color brochures than boring heavily worded ones. In my opinion this is easily understandable. A brochure should be easy to read and understand. Images help to quicken the flow of communication between the brochure and the reader. It can even convey feelings faster than any paragraph can.

So if you are creating a brochure, don't be stingy with the images. Place as much as practically possible. Try to portray what you are talking about, instead of just describing it. In the end, more people will like your brochure because of this.

Tri-folds and gate folds

Another interesting fact is that most people like the traditional tri fold brochure rather than those fancy folded ones. Again, this is easily understandable. Those fancy folds like the French folds and accordion folds give readers some trouble in trying to figure out how the brochure flows. This can sometimes annoy readers and make them less susceptible to the color brochure's message. Who wants to figure out how to unfold and defold a brochure in french fold fashion when a tri fold brochure can just be opened in one step right?

This means that for your brochures, you don't have to be tempted by those exotic folding options. A simple tri fold or a gate fold will do. People have an easier time with them and they will probably read your brochure message faster and more efficiently.

Elegant inks and embossing

Lastly, we also found out that a lot of people respond to elegant types of brochures. These are the brochures with elegant but simple design elements such as metallic or glossy inks and symbol embossing. If you have seen wedding invitations with embossed symbols and glittering inks, that should be like what I am describing. Elegant brochures like that attract people since color brochures like that seem very well made. Anyone will be interested to see what that beautiful brochure is all about. Of course, not everyone can pull of that kind of brochure design, since it can really only apply to select topics. However, if you are creative enough, you can use embossing or elegant inks, and integrate them into your more modern color brochure designs.

There are still a lot of design strategies that really make brochure designs stand out, but the three above have been proven time and again to attract all people of different demographics. They can do this because they adhere to some basic color brochure principles that appeal to people. So you should integrate these ideas in your own brochure design if possible.