Design a Newsletter Worth Reading

You have no control over who actually reads your business’ newsletter, right?  Wrong. Give your newsletter some visual appeal and your professional appeal might just soar in the eyes of those who receive it.  Consider these guidelines:
 
1. Consistency is key. It’s important that a newsletter maintain consistency with your established business identity. Use similar colors, writing style, and fonts to extend the impact of your brand.

2. Sometimes less is more. Leave a lot of white space throughout your publication. This is most easily done with gutters and margins. Your pages will look tight and tidy – a technique that makes reading much easier on the eyes.

3. Line em’ up! Using a grid to line up images and text adds to the organization of information and makes for a more enticing read.

4. Fewer fonts. Use fewer typefaces and don’t vary your text size too much. The wealth of fonts available are hard to resist, but too many styles and sizes can make a newsletter confusing and unprofessional.

5. Keep pictures, cut clipart. By using a small number of well-placed photos instead of a myriad of small clipart images, you gain organization and an overall sense of design. Consider cropping
your photos to add to their artistic effect.  If printing in black and white, make sure you choose photos with enough contrast.  Otherwise, you’ll end up losing dynamic detail and appeal.

6. Size matters. Use size variation of images and text to create contrast and hierarchy of importance. Newsletters are text-heavy by nature; don’t let your interesting images drown in copy.  A picture speaks a thousand words – let that cliché work for your newsletter.

7. Being redundant works. Repeat elements like page numbers, section headers and section dividers to create a framework that is subtle but impressive.

• See a sample newsletter