Chapter One What Is a Digital Brochure 4 C h a p t e r o n e W h a t i s a D i g i t a l b r o c h u r e Have you ever seen a display rack filled with bright pictures printed on folded paper Those folded papers are brochures You might find them in rest stops along a highway or near the entrances to stores These brochures might advertise things to do or places to eat But brochures can be used for many other purposes as well Have you ever wanted to tell people about a project you’re working on Perhaps you wanted to encourage people to do something important like take steps to save brochures are often used to advertise tourist attractions to travelers
5 the environment Or you were holding a fund-raiser for your school or club and needed to tell people why they should chip in Maybe you started a small business selling things and wanted to let people know about the work you do These are just some things that brochures are good for Brochures use words and pictures to provide informa tion They tell readers about a topic and encourage them to do something It could be to donate to a charity join a group visit a new town or participate in a new activity Brochures are often printed However you can also make digital brochures using a word processing or desktop pub lishing program on your computer You can e-mail these digital brochures to people or post them on a Web site Printed brochures are useful for providing information to people who are away from their computers
FRONT OF BROCHURE PANEL 1 PANEL 4 BACK OF BROCHURE PANEL 6 PANEL 3 PANEL 2 PANEL 5 INSIDE OF BROCHURE 6 Brochures come in many shapes and sizes but the most common type is a single piece of letter-sized paper folded in thirds This is called a trifold brochure because the paper is folded into three sections It is a good size for many projects and it uses paper that is easy to find Folding a piece of paper into thirds gives you six sec tions for your brochure You’ll end up with a front cover that takes up one-third of one side of the paper and attracts people to your brochure a back cover where you restate your most important points and four other sections where you put more information That sounds like a lot of space but it’s not Trifold brochures have room for only about 15 to 20 sentences especially if you include pictures You’ll want to make sure that’s enough room to explain everything you want to say A brochure might have too much space for simple things such as inviting people to an event In that case you need only a few words describing the occasion along with the date time and location an average brochure has six panels C h a p t e r o n e W h a t i s a D i g i t a l b r o c h u r e
7 There are many other ways to tell people about your project or topic If you don’t have a lot to say you might want to try a flyer or a poster These usually have only a few words and one or two pictures on a single unfolded page If you have more things to say than you can fit on the six sections of a brochure you might want to think about making a booklet or a Web site These can hold far more information than a brochure can But if what you have to say fits into a brochure it’s a great way to present your words in a format that’s easy for people to read and hold Posters are a great way to advertise simple messages
