And when things like this happen, brands that have continued to invest in holistic, omnichannel marketing strategies benefit immensely. Since the latest trends are already a part of their marketing strategy, they do not have to reinvent the wheel to fit the bill. They can just keep an eye out on the latest trends and tweak the types of designs they’re using accordingly.

Whether you’re a brand that has been investing in omnichannel marketing, or one that wants to bolster up your print marketing campaigns, the time is finally here. 

And while we agree that all print marketing designs are important for a brand’s success, brochures are undoubtedly the flavor of the season right now. 

Local events are opening up, local businesses are increasing their outreach and people are looking for opportunities to engage with local brands and businesses even while traveling. Brochures can help you connect with your target audience and boost your brand’s awareness and reach immensely. 

So in this blog by Kimp, we bring you all the design tips you need to make your brochure designs shine in 2022. 

The Significance of Brochure Design in 2022 

Following a marketing trend just because everyone is doing it is never a good enough reason. So before we tell you how to design the best brochure marketing campaign, let us understand what makes this type of design so special in 2022. 

Digital marketing has never been stronger and every business advisor is urging businesses to embrace the online world. So you would think that the print marketing world will be seeing a steep decline. But this immense participation by brands in the digital world has given print marketing an inadvertent boost. 

Every one going digital means increased competition, crowded content channels, and expensive ad slots. But a brochure design can help you counter many of these disadvantages that digital channels have today.

Brochure marketing: 

• Can help in brand awareness. According to a study by Bentley University, 79% of tourists agree that they like to interact with brochures and 85% of them feel they can easily learn about a business from brochures. 
• Improve offline sales. Educational content has been a winner online and customers prefer brands that educate over the ones that mindlessly promote their products. Brochures allow you to educate your customers and hold their attention more than a flyer or billboard can.
• Reach local audiences. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic related travel restrictions, global buying came to a halt. While customers never batted an eye shopping from countries miles away, they have now begun discovering local alternatives. This is the time to tap into your local marketing campaigns and what better design to use than a brochure? Make the most of your store walk-ins with an attractive brochure. 
• Optimize your marketing budget. As we mentioned before, the online marketing and advertising space can become quite competitive. Pay per click budgets are on the rise but if you have a good brochure in your arsenal, it can be the most cost-effective marketing material for you.

8 Design Tips to Ace brochure marketing 

No matter what the medium you choose to communicate with your audience, the delivery model matters the most. For the marketing campaign to be successful, you have to connect with them and keep the audience engaged for the length of the message. Design is usually the tool marketers and brand managers turn to get that done. 

So what design tips do you need to ensure your brochures keep your audience engaged and emotionally connected to the brand, while also communicating the message? 

The team at Kimp has curated insights from the projects we have worked on to help you navigate all of this. So let’s dive right in.

1. Emphasize your brand identity 

Brochures are a great tool to spread brand awareness so it’s crucial to ensure every brochure celebrates your brand identity. Moreover, brochures are extensively used in local marketing which means people are familiar with the format and likely to engage with them if they are well-designed and informative. 

But customers today have a short attention span. And more than that, they also have a shorter recall span. It takes over 5-7 impressions for a customer to remember a brand. So, businesses today have to consistently spread brand awareness across all mediums to build brand recall. 

All these point to a simple solution – design brochures in a way that helps customers register your brand’s visual identity. 

Every brand has a few brand colors and standard imagery that connects to its product, values, and industry. Including them in the brochure design prominently is important to emphasize brand identity.

Consider this brochure designed by Kimp. You can see that even though the brochure is long, we have not missed an opportunity to emphasize Field Trip’s brand identity. Right from the text backgrounds, the title font color, and the illustrations – all of the elements celebrate the brand colors. Next time when someone looks at these colors, they will associate it with the brand right away.

Even if you do not have a distinct set of brand colors, you can leverage the images and symbols in your logo to build brand recall. Just like this brochure designed by Kimp does. The quadrilateral shape is important to Tron’s identity and it features heavily on the cover image (front and back). 

2. Choose colors with intent 

Colors are magic in the world of marketing. But in reality, color psychology is more scientific  than many of us are aware. The human brain is wired to perceive images on the basis of colors and as we grow up, we associate specific colors to specific meanings. This can be due to cultural influences, cliches we see everyday, or even learned experiences. And brands leverage this to communicate to their target audience in meaningful ways. 

How do you connect with a person reading a few lines of text? You communicate the intent and the unsaid words via colors in your marketing campaign. So naturally, the colors you choose for your brochure design matter a lot for success. 

In this brochure design by Kimp, we can see that the team chose a monochromatic theme to express their message. That is a good strategy when you have a singular intent to convey. In this case, the intent was to appeal to the corporate clientele and invite them to the golf event. So the color blue was a great choice because it is the most used in the corporate sector and represents professionalism and trust.

Kimp Tip: Colors can mean different things to different cultures and people from different regions. So understand your target audience thoroughly before picking a color for a design. And keep in mind, the colors you pick must work with your brand identity and bring the whole design together.

Sound a bit too complicated? Sign up for the Kimp Graphics subscription and let your design team know about your brand and your target audience. They’ll come up with a combination of colors that speaks to both.

3. Leverage fonts for visual hierarchy 

Brochures can be a little long, unlike the usual crisp one-pagers customers have become accustomed to. So how do you hold their attention and ensure they stay with you till the very end? 

The only way to hold people’s attention is with smooth transitions and taking them on a journey that keeps them turning the page without even realizing it. Now, in a video, you can use audio and connecting frames to do that. But what is it that you need in a text-based marketing medium?

In brochure marketing and most other print marketing materials, the secret is establishing a visual hierarchy. This way, the customer is guided through your messaging to the CTA. 

But how do you establish visual hierarchy? Well, using typography is the easiest and most effective technique for establishing visual hierarchy in design. 

Consider the design below by Kimp. Right from the cover image, the team used differing font sizes and styles to grab the customers’ attention.

4. Pick the right design style for your brand 

You can say a lot without actually saying a lot. Have you ever immediately understood the theme of a party from the invite itself? How about a social media advertisement that had one image and a website? Did you click on it because the image was enough to tell you what you needed to know?

In all these instances, the design style that the design team chose was enough to communicate their message with you. In fact, it is the design style  that did the job more than anything else. 

That is why the Kimp team recommends focusing on the right design style for your brochures. There are so many routes to take but you must pick a design style that:

• Works for your target audience 
• Conveys the tone of the message 
• Reinforces your brand identity 

For example, if you have a bold and colorful brand identity, a minimalist design style does not work in your favor.

In the design above by Kimp, the brochure has a modern design and that works for the brand. It is a salon so customers are looking for something stylish and sleek, instead of something full of details. 

Kimp Tip: Balance in design is very important. No matter what design style you pick, you have to create a design that is harmonious and attractive. 

Looking for a team that can make your design visions come to life? Kimp Graphics is just a click away! 

5. Choose the right brochure layout for a seamless narrative 

We spoke of the importance of flow in a message, so how can we not talk about the significance of brochure layouts? The layout you pick guides your audience on how to read the contents. If you position the wrong text on the wrong fold, it will vastly impact the user experience and spoil all your efforts. 

So before you design your brochure, understand the contents and decide how you want to position them. Yes, the volume of your content determines how long the brochure has to be, but the layout and folds depend on the story. 

For example, you want the most important pieces of information easy to access and not hidden away in a fold. Your CTA has to be on the outermost fold so that even if your customer is not reading it in full, they still connect with you. 

As you see in this brochure designed by Kimp, the customer can understand the contents even at a cursory glance. And when they open one fold, the layout opens up the second one too and the message flows well.

This is a Z-fold brochure by Kimp. The team arranged the contents such that the customer sees the benefits first, followed by a quick intro, and finally the promotional message for the brand. The layout selection allowed them to feature the CTA in the right section for maximum impact. 

Kimp Tip: There are many brochure layouts to explore but it is always better to keep it simple, especially when the message is short. But in any case, ensure that you print a few mockups and understand how the customers will experience it before printing a large batch. 

Read our guide on choosing brochure layouts for more information. 

6. Attract the audience with the right cover image 

Where is brochure marketing going to come in handy for your brand? Mostly at offline events, where wandering customers stop for a second and decide whether the brochure at display is worth their attention or not. So, needless to say, your first impression has to be the best impression. 

The right cover image can:

• Pull the audience in
• Convey the brochure’s subject to the audience 
• Emphasize your brand identity 

With such a crucial role to play, do not take the choice of your cover image lightly. When you are writing the design brief for your brochure, tell the design team what you want the customer to feel when they pick it up. Detail the emotions, subject, and all other parameters so that they can make the right choice for your brochure’s imagery. If possible include examples of images in the style you need if you can find any. 

If you have a brand style guide include notes in it about the images you use in your marketing materials. 

Consider this design for Vet Circle by Kimp. The cover image of a happy pet parent with a happy pet is sure to get anyone to pick up the brochure and see what it is all about. And the image does not clash with the brand colors, so it is truly the perfect image for the brochure.

Consider this design for Vet Circle by Kimp. The cover image of a happy pet parent with a happy pet is sure to get anyone to pick up the brochure and see what it is all about. And the image does not clash with the brand colors, so it is truly the perfect image for the brochure. 

Kimp Tip: Do not compromise on the cover image even if you cannot find the image that works the best for your brochure. You can always work with a design team like Kimp Graphics to include a custom illustration in your brochure design or to compose an image using different stock elements.

Of course, at Kimp you’ll get all this included in the flat monthly fee.

7. Visualize your message 

We have discussed a lot about designing the cover image, layout, and even picking the right design style for the brochure. But it is not just about what is on the outside, the contents matter a lot too. Especially since the presentation determines whether the message is successful in reaching the audience or not.

And when it comes to designing the contents of a brochure, we have just one tip over and above what we have already discussed. And that is to take the aid of visuals in conveying your point. 

Brochures are an ideal format to market educational content about your brand, product, and services. It is the print equivalent of a long blog. But just like in the case of blogs, just blocks of text will not do you any favors. The way to a customers’ heart and mind is full of images, icons, and illustrations. 

Visualize your message just like how Kimp did in this brochure design.

The extensive use of icons and illustrations invites the customer to explore the brochure without getting intimidated by huge blocks of text. Usage of visual aids also allows the brochure design to breathe. A picture speaks a thousand words, so illustrate your brochures to share more of what you have to offer! 

If you are looking for a design team to creatively design brochures, using eye-catching typography, compositions and editing, look no further than Kimp Graphics! 

8. Make your brochures shine online too 

Combining online and offline marketing campaigns is important to build a holistic approach to reaching your customers. This marketing technique also ensures that the customers meet a consistent brand across all touchpoints. 

While you can include QR codes and your online addresses on your brochure designs (as most Kimp clients do), you can also repurpose them for use in digital platforms. Repurposing print designs for digital usage can be tricky. Print designs exclusively use CMYK color schemes while digital designs use the RGB color scheme. 

If you want to repurpose your brochure and promote it online, include that in the design brief and the team will know to use the appropriate color schemes and provide you with the files for each format. That way, your brochure design looks great no matter where it’s being featured. 

This brochure design by Kimp shows how a brochure can be easily repurposed across online and offline platforms. 

Boost your Brochure marketing with Kimp

Are you excited to invest in brochure marketing? We hope you now know how significant it can be and the ways to achieve maximum impact with your brochure designs too. 

But it can all feel easier said than done, especially, since moving from design for digital platforms to print design can seem quite tricky. So what do you do? 

Well, you need a team that understands print designs and knows how to make the best of them for your brand. And since these designs need other skills like editing, graphic design, and illustration, you need a design team that can handle it all. 

So why don’t you try Kimp Graphics? With the unlimited Kimp Graphics subscription, you get unlimited designs, revisions, and services across 100+ design categories at a flat monthly fee.

We also have an unlimited video design subscription if you are looking to create videos for your brand too. 

Sign up for our free 7-day trial to get started.