Case Study — Setting a Brochure
Someone sent me a copy of a law firm’s general brochure. This post discusses how the brochure could be greatly improved by applying some well-worn rules.
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Note: A real brochure is the focus of this post. I could have created a copy, or I could have hidden the name of the publisher, but then I’d be running into copyright issues.
What struck me first was the brochure’s unusual trim size: 8.5 inches tall by nearly 4 inches wide. What inspired the firm to create a brochure with such odd dimensions, I wondered.
I thumbed through the brochure, and found copy set like this:
To see what’s wrong with setting copy this way, download this PDF file. Read the paragraph in the upper left, which is set just as it is in the brochure. Then, read the paragraph in the lower right. You’ll notice that one is much easier to read than the other. There are several reasons for this.
For one, the copy in the upper left is set too tight. The lines are too close together. This makes it harder to read, and that tends to discourage readers.
If the copy had been set with a reasonable amount of leading, it would look like so (the paragraph in the upper right of the PDF file):
Just that one change makes the copy much easier to read, and that’s very significant, because that makes it much more likely that people will bother to read the brochure.
What else could be done to encourage people to take the time to read the brochure?
The copy was set in a condensed face (most likely, to stuff too much copy into not enough space). If the face weren’t condensed, the copy would be much easier to read. It would look like so (the paragraph in the lower left of the PDF file):
There’s at least one more thing that could be done to improve readability, and that’s this — set the body copy in a face with serifs. If the copy were set in a face with serifs, it might look like so (the paragraph in the lower right of the PDF file):
Compare the copy in the upper left of of the the PDF file to the copy in the lower right (shown above). Which is easier to read? Which is more likely to be read?
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We’re not quite done. Let’s consider the very unusual trim size of the brochure: 8.5 inches tall by nearly 4 inches wide.
This brochure is going to be printed on a sheet-fed press (unless the firm plans to print millions of them). Hence, it’s going to be printed on standard-size sheets. Unless the firm has money to burn, the trim size should be based on the size of those sheets. A very practical size would be 8.5 inches tall by 5.5 inches wide (i.e., a letter-size page folded in half).
Now, you may have noticed that the copy set in the serif face with leading takes up more space than the copy set in the condensed, sans-serif face without leading. Where are we going to find that extra space? Are we going to add another leaf to the brochure, thereby increasing the cost of producing it?
Heck no. We’re going to set the copy in a wider column (on a wider page) so that one page in our redesigned brochure contains just as much copy as one page in the existing brochure.
Compare these two columns of type. The left-hand column shows the copy as it was set in the odd-size brochure produced by the law firm. The right-hand column shows the copy as it might have been set if the brochure had been designed with readability, cost, and convenience in mind.
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That’s it, right? Now we’re all done.
Not quite. Once again, compare these two columns of type. Notice that the copy on the right has four paragraphs, rather than two.
Why? Because we want people to read our brochure; to encourage that, we need to make it as easy as we can for them to read it. That means breaking the copy into paragraphs, and there’s an age-old rule for doing that. As Strunk and White advised many millions of aspiring (as well as reluctant) writers:
Ordinarily . . . a subject requires subdivision into topics, each of which should be made the subject of a paragraph. The object of treating each topic in a paragraph by itself is, of course, to aid the reader. The beginning of each paragraph is a signal to [the reader] that a new step in the development of the subject has been reached.
Back to the basics for a minute. The purpose of the brochure is to attract business. It can’t do that unless people (e.g., prospective clients) take some time to read it. They’re not likely to do that if the copy is hard to read or if it’s not organized in a reasonable fashion.
To be effective, the brochure has to be very readable.
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We’re nearly done. Just three more things to notice.
Note: The rest of this discussion refers to this comparison of the printed brochure to our revision of it.
The first thing to notice is the URL in the bottom paragraph on the right. In the law firm’s version of the brochure, it’s just some type. In our revised version of the brochure, it’s a link. Click it, and a page listing the firm’s recent successes appears.
The next thing to notice is the series that makes up the bulk of that last paragraph. In the law firm’s version of it (the left-hand column), the elements of the series are not parallel. The first element has the form client followed by action. Most of the other elements do not have that form. The result is such odd constructions as:
- successful representation of nationwide construction litigation
- successful representation of nationwide counsel
- successful representation of national defense
- successful representation of national representation
Compare the law firm’s copy to the revised copy. In the revised copy, every element in the series is parallel to all the others, just as it should be.
Note: Given the importance of accurate writing in legal matters, a firm’s brochure must be free of all errors in spelling, syntax, grammar, and punctuation; else, it seems as if the firm doesn’t notice such errors or doesn’t care about them.
Finally, the beginning of the second paragraph on the right, which says the firm did something recently. This occurs again at the beginning of the last paragraph, which mentions recent succcesses. Turn to page 5 of the printed brochure, or page 6, or page 9 and you’ll find other references to what the firm did recently.
But how recent is recent? It turns out that this brochure was produced in August of 2005 — about a year and a half ago.
If your marketing materials are dated (i.e., they use terms like recently, soon, last year, next year, etc.), then you need to print the date of publication on those materials, else you run the grave risk of misleading people when your claims are no longer current.
