From the course: Graphic Design Tips & Tricks

Simple brochure presents your face to the public

From the course: Graphic Design Tips & Tricks

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Simple brochure presents your face to the public

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- Hi everyone. John McWade. Today I wanna pitch you a quick idea for a brochure or a Web site where you want to present a face to the public. By face, I mean people, not just a logo or some other facade. This is an ideal format for anyone whose work is person-to-person: consultants, realtors, teachers, a political slate, things like that. All we do is, instead of a standard mugshot, picture our people full-body, as though they were standing in front of you, surrounded by lots of white space and a block of clear copy. It's unassuming and it's inviting at the same time. The way to set it up is like this. I'm working on a square page; which is a format I like. For one thing, it looks very designed, very intentional. Standard letter-size proportions work too, but they're kind of ambiguous, a little wishy-washy. The piece can be any size. On paper, it would be the size of a CD up to the size of a book. Anything really. On-screen, it would be pretty big, probably page-width. Each panel could appear separately, or it could scroll sideways. Ideal for the current Wordpress themes. The design technique will be to work from what we call a hang line. Place a guide about a quarter of the way down from the top of the page all the way across the document. Now we'll hang the text off of that line; just like hanging clothes on a clothesline. I'm using only dummy copy here; but it looks like this. Now place your image with the line roughly at shoulder level which will look like this. And that's the format. Nothing to it. Lots of white; white is visual silence; one clear block of copy that's short enough to read quickly; and our guy, who looks like he would in real life. To add some depth in this case, I've changed the copy from solid black to 70%, which makes our guy stand out a little more. Now you can add as many more people as you need. Be sure to do 'em the same way. Just don't deviate from the format. And there ya go. It's really easy, and it looks really nice. I have the names at the bottom, those green names. Green goes with the apple to emphasize the hang line; but you don't have to do that. The names on the hang line would be fine. I'm sure you can find other ways to vary it. But that's it. A great little basic format to use as a starting point for your next piece. And that's your design for today. See ya next time.

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