Brochure designs can make or break your customer base. That’s because they have to be targeted, effective, and informative. However, that often comes at the expense of creativity. The proofing process itself can become strenuous. This is why you need the best brochure design software to ensure a great brochure design.
These days, having a successful brand and business has a lot to do with aesthetics. Brands allocate hundreds and thousands of dollars a year to curate the perfect brand image with all the right marketing strategies and materials to complement it. Apart from brochures, these marketing materials also include guides, newsletters, direct mail materials, and pamphlets
Though many brands focus their marketing strategies on digital platforms, marketing materials are still relevant and instrumental tools in rounding out your brand’s marketing efforts. In an increasingly digital world, digital marketing is all the rage, and rightfully so, billions of people use the internet and digital technology daily.
Still, marketing materials such as brochures are an excellent way to broaden your audience reach by appealing to folks that spend their time offline and prefer receiving tangible things from their brands. A tangible piece of marketing holds more weight for many people and is more memorable than digital ads on mobiles and TV.
Designing marketing brochures is tricky; a good brochure has to capture your audience’s attention, generate interest, boost your leads, and in turn, your sales. Your consumers probably receive hundreds of marketing messages and materials in the mail every month; your brochure needs to stand out!
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What Makes a Successful Brochure Design?
To give you a headstart, here are some of our expert tips on making a good brochure that will boost your sales and conversions.
1. Clear Objectives
Your brochure is talking directly to your customers. This means you should plan out exactly what you want it to say, how you’ll say it, and what you want to achieve through the brochure.
Do you want to direct consumers to your website? Do you have a brick-and-mortar store to direct them to? What are you trying to tell your customers about your company’s products or services? These are all things you need to clearly consider before mapping out your brochure and finalizing its design.
2. Know Your Audience
The first tip is tied directly to this one; you need to know your audience. In order to tailor the tone and content for your brochure, you need to know who you’re addressing and what the best way to address them is.
You can use surveys, customer satisfaction ratings, demographics, online analytics, etc,, to determine who your audience is. This extends to their age, buying habits, preferences, sometimes gender, and culture. Knowing your audience is the key to reaching them in a way that gets you your desired result.
3. Stand Out
We know it’s easier said than done, but your best bet to generate leads and sales from a brochure is to stand out. Use engaging content and visual aids to grab your audience’s attention when they open their mailbox or see your brochure at a store counter. Play around with the design; use aesthetically pleasing color schemes and fonts, anything that catches the users’ eye.
Remember, your customer goes through many brochures and pamphlets; yours needs to be unique enough for you to avoid the dreaded shredder or junk pile and for them to want to keep your brochure and give your brand a try.
4. Keep it Simple
Consumers have notoriously small attention spans and seldom stick around if an advert is confusing. Keep the content of your brochure simple; avoid big words and flowery vocabulary.
Your brochure needs to be accessible and understandable to a wide variety of audiences, so whoever picks it up will read it whether they read at a 4th-grade level or are avid readers. Our advice is to keep it simple, to the point, and straightforward with the information you want to convey to your audience.
Layout the content clearly under headings; nothing looks worse than a cluttered brochure with lines upon lines of content in small writing.
5. Less is More
Like we said in the last point, keeping it simple is key! This also extends to the overall design of your brochure. A minimalistic design is an excellent way to go with brochures.
While using lots of font sizes and types may be tempting, streamline the design to be coherent. A coherent brochure design with consistent fonts is an excellent way to give your marketing material and brand a polished, professional look.
A less-is-more brochure design strategy is a great way to go; you can still achieve an eye-catching, beautiful brochure design while maintaining aesthetic minimalism!
6. Quality Matters
What do you do with brochures you pick up while you’re out or the ones you receive in the mail? The ones you think are pretty are chucked into that drawer of your kitchen, and the ones you’re not interested in getting tossed.
You want your brochure to be the first one, and for it to survive over the long term for your audience to come back to it, you need to ensure the best quality possible for its manufacturing.
10 Brochure Design Software and Tools to Elevate Your Next Project
Now, let’s get to what you are here for the ultimate list of design software to superpower your sales. This software will boost your brand awareness so you can have a killer marketing game.
1. GoVisually
GoVisually is an excellent online proofing tool that can now be integrated with productivity software like Trello and Asana. It significantly streamlines the design process by letting contributors proof and make edits online in real-time.
No more making multiple copies for each round of edits, no more confusion and miscommunication.
GoVisually will save you time and effort by having everything you need on its online dashboard so you can make changes, get them reviewed, and have an updated copy all at the same time. This way, you can fasten the brochure proofing process and download final copies.
2. Adobe InDesign CC
Adobe InDesign CC is often referred to as the best design software, and for a reason! It offers a wide variety of impressive features and design capabilities, so you can explore and execute all your creative ideas, no matter how wild they are.
Adobe InDesign CC is also incredibly easy to use; the user-friendliness of this software is one of its best features. You can learn the software and become intermediate or expert in no time.
Also, Adobe InDesign CC has an impressive selection of typography, font, and color management capabilities so that you can make killer brochure designs!
3. Adobe Illustrator CC
Adobe Illustrator CC is another excellent design software created by Adobe. The features and capabilities are very similar to Adobe InDesign, with slight variations in the workflow.
This is a great software for all types of marketing material designs, especially brochures and pamphlets.
4. Scribus
Scribus is a publishing tool that works incredibly well for brochure designs.
While the features might not be as advanced as those of the Adobe design software, Scribus has a decent selection of design capabilities that will help you create the perfect brochure for your brand.
5. Inkscape
Inkscape is an open-source vector art creation software.
It is free and has an impressive array of features that will aid you in creating a boost your sales! The only con with Inkscape is that due to its SVG standard, you can only design a single canvas at a time. This can make creating a multi-side or multi-page brochure a bit tricky. But given that it’s a free design tool with features to match popular design softwares like InDesign, we’d say it’s a pretty good bargain!
6. Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Publisher is also a great tool for brochure creation. If you have a subscription to Office 365, Microsoft Publisher is a good option.
Since most people already have command over Microsoft and its features, navigating Publisher will not be that hard. In addition, there are many elements available on Microsoft Publisher that will help you streamline the brochure editing process and make video review as easy a breeze for you.
7. Canva
At this point, who hasn’t heard of Canva? Many people consider it a life-saver – and that too with good reason!
It is one of the easiest, most convenient apps out there. Anyone, from kids to adults, can use Canva to bring their creativity out. Whether it is a brochure or a flyer, Canva allows you to make use of many advanced features that enable you to create a unique design online. By using Canva, you can cut down on the creation time by loads.
8. Affinity Publisher
Affinity Publisher is a great alternative to many other brochure design software that may be harder to navigate. For example, InDesign. Affinity Publisher has a simple interface that makes it easy for you.
As discussed earlier, this is an important aspect of any brochure design software because the simple an app’s interface is, the easier it is for you to turn your brochure dreams into reality as fast as possible.
9. QuarkXpress
QuarkXpress is one of the earliest brochure design tools available in the market, and it has managed to stay a prominent contender for such a long time because it has amazing features.
Quark can really help you take your brochure strategy to the next level! No matter what it is that you want to turn your brochure into, you can turn to QuarkXpress.
10. Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark is an all-rounder that makes it easier for you to channel your creativity into your projects.
Whether it is a social graphic, short video, or web page – Adobe Spark comes to the spotlight and saves your design procedure. Brochure design is no different, considering that you can rely on Adobe Spark any day of the week to help you create just the right brochure for your audience.
Final Takeaway
So that’s it – there goes our list of the top 10 brochure design tools out there. We hope this list helped you and that you are able to make something amazing with these tools.
And remember – whichever tool you pick, you can always quadruple your work efficiency using GoVisually.
