Color Printing

How much thought have you put to the way you fold your brochures? Do you realize what an important element of the brochure this can be, and what a big impact it will have on the person who picks it up and starts reading?

A lot of people don’t realize just how much a fold can alter the brochure design. Whenever you consider any brochure layout the first thing you need to do is look at how the folds are going to be, and create your image accordingly.

What often happens is that when people are designing brochures they see the image only when it is completely spread out, and not exactly how it will be when folded. This creates a false image. Even when folds are taken into consideration, most people only go with a few basic fold patterns to make it as easy as possible to see mentally what the final result will be.

But by doing so people fail to create some very unique custom brochures with folding patterns you don’t usually see in advertising. A more complicated fold pattern also gives you potentially more pages to work with. The folding greatly changes the graphic design aspect of the brochure.

Here are two direct comparisons for folding patters, and I’m guessing you’ve seen both of them at some point.

The first fold patter is often used in restaurants for their menus. It has two flaps on the left and right side that open up into a much larger inner area. Here are the benefits: you can have a much larger, single image or chunk of information in the center of your brochure. If most of what you have to say goes together, or you like a larger amount of images, this folding patter will probably be best for you.

Another style instead folds several times in such a way as to create a mini book that goes from one smaller page to the next. If you have a lot of different points you’re trying to make this will be the perfect kind of folding to use, because it allows you to have a separate page for each point.

You should talk to whoever your printer is to find out exactly what can be done with different shapes and sizes of brochure paper. After all, some folding patterns require a larger more square shape initially, while others need a much longer, narrower rectangle. If the printed size is wrong the brochure will never look as good.

Brochures are one of the more intricate forms of advertising for a reason. Not only do you have to write and design them, but you have to consider how you’ll end up folding them as well. But then again, they’re also a style you can’t really match with any other advertisement.