First steps when you want a brochure

When you decide that your company needs a nice glossy brochure (usually after seeing a competitors) the first thought that crosses your mind is 'who will do this for me?'.

However, although very important, this is not the first question that needs answering.

Step one

The first and most important thing to understand is how are you going to use the brochure i.e. who will receive it; what do you expect to achieve from it - corporate positioning, direct sales, promote new services etc. Only when you answer these questions can you start to work on the content.

Copy

To get started work out your page headings as this will give you a 'contents' for the brochure and help you to decide how many pages will be needed. You will then have to decide whether you will be writing the content yourself or if you are going to use the services of a professional copywriter.

Pictures

You will need to decide on the pictures you have and whether more need to be taken or will you 'hire' them from a photo-library or buy the from a royalty free library. Do not expect pictures used on your web site or pulled from the internet to be any good for a printed piece. Websites use pictures at a resolution of 72dpi but printed works require a resolution of 300dpi. Also to be borne in mind is that any pictures acquired from the web are probably covered by copyright and you would need to acquire permission to use them.

Distribution

Please put some thought into how you are going to distribute the brochure. There is nothing more frustrating to me than a client who tells me that he/she has not had much response from their brochure and, when asked, says that all the brochures are sitting in their cupboard. Based on your answer to the first question you should be able to work out how many copies you will need to be printed and how you will get them to your intended audience.

So now you are ready to choose a design company.

What should you be looking for? This will depend on how much you know about the process. Will you need a designer who can arrange photography, arrange an appropriate copywriter and organise print (like www.creativeline.co.uk for example) or will you be handling these processes yourself.

If you require a full service you will need a design company with an established base of contacts. You should ask to see similar projects they have produced for other clients and ask them exactly what they handled on those projects.

If you are going to handle all but the design yourself you can choose between a design company or a freelance designer. I would not recommend using a friends son whose at or just left college - experience is essential to avoid costly mistakes.

Making the choice

The web is a great way to find design companies as you can view their portfolios online - a great time saver. But nothing beats recommendation. Ask other companies you know who they use and what they think of the service they get. Check out their brochure and see if you are impressed.

When you have shortlisted your designers you will need to provide a brief so they can can provide you with accurate costings for the job.

Do not expect free designs. Designs take a long time and considerable effort and should be paid for. I do not believe in 'free pitches'.

Having briefed the designers and obtained quotations you can now make an informed decision on who to go with.

...or master of one

For better or worse?

Jack of all trades...

In today’s clinical ‘Mac’ studio environments all the design disciplines of old fall to the fingertips of one person –‘the designer’ or ‘Mac operator’. 

www.creativeline.co.uk is no exception.

But it wasn’t that long ago that it took to 6 or more talented professionals and a lot more time to produce the same job.

A typical project now would involve a designer sitting at his/her Mac and producing a series of design ideas, maybe searching the internet and downloading relevant images, scanning the thousands of fonts on his/her hard drive to find the most suitable, copy and paste in text from clients’ Word document and perhaps retouching some of the pictures.The end result – a perfectly finished design job, which is also the print ready artwork, produced in just a few hours. Pdf and email then puts it front of the client in minutes.

...or master of oneWell lets spare a thought for all the talented guys who, not much more than 15 years ago, had rewarding and fulfilling jobs but are now redundant – all thanks to the mighty Mac (PC).

A typical design project undertaken in the nineties would first go to a designer/visualiser (not always the same person). He/she would not only have the creative juices flowing through his/her veins but also the talent to put these ideas onto paper using pens, pencils, magic markers etc. These visuals would often take hours, pictures had to be hand drawn and headlines had to be traced. These were one offs. If the client wanted to see variations it would often mean starting again.

Once approved the job would then pass to the ‘typographer’. Armed with the visual and a hard copy of the text his/her job would be to count up the characters in the document and, using mathematical equations and cast-off tables, work out what size and type styles would fit to the design. No mean task for a 48 page brochure.

This type mark-up would then be sent to the typesetter, usually via motorbike messenger (another dying job thanks to PCs and email). The typesetter would follow the typographers’ instructions and return either ‘galley’ setting or setting to layout (this came later) about 24 hours later. If the typographer got it wrong the text would be too long or short and he would have to make adjustments to his calculations and send it back to the typesetter for resetting. This would be very expensive and time consuming mistake.

Meanwhile the project co-ordinator would be organising any photography or illustrations that would be needed. Quite often the photographs would need to be retouched which was a highly skilled job involving the making of large duplicate transparencies and merging them together then retouching them with photographic dies. If library shots were to be used this entailed a call to the stock library with a brief for them to find a selection of transparencies to choose from or a visit to the library yourself to search through. Shots would typically cost around £300 for A4 usage in print. Illustrations would be commissioned much as they still are today, however, they skill of the ‘airbrush artist’ has now been made redundant.

So, eventually the typesetting, photographs and illustrations would be ready to go to the finished artist (also know as keyline artist or artworker). His/her job would be to draw up the artwork onto CS10 board, using Rotring pens for the keylines and crop marks and ruling pens for any broad rules. He/she would then paste up all the text onto the board.The pictures would then be traced with a camera safe blue pen and pasted into position. Boards would usually be drawn up in ‘spreads-to-view’ so a 48 page brochure would result in 24 A3+ boards. But these were not yet finished. The next stage for the finished artist was to put a colour mark-up overlay on the boards and meticulously indicate where colours needed to be applied at the next stage in the process. The boards would then be given a further protective overlay.

Next the boards would be photocopied and sent to the client for checking. Any changes would normally require resetting and re-paste up.
The boards would then be sent for “repro’ where they would be photographed and colour separated. The pictures would be scanned and colour separated films would be produced. These would then be cut into the films produced from the artworks colour by colour. This was a very precise process carried out by hand on light-tables. These films would then be used to make colour proofs and if accepted the final printing plates.

ConclusionSo one guy sat at a Mac is now expected to do the job of designer, typographer, typestter, finished artist, photo-retoucher and the reprographics. But is not his/her fault that all these people will now find themselves jobless, it is evolution.

Ask yourself this question – is the designer getting paid the equivalent of 6 salaries – I don’t think so!