Creating a package or brand

One of the most important features of an identity package or branding follows the Principle of Repetition: there must be some identifying image or style that carries throughout every piece.

Business cards

Standard business card size in the U.S. is 3.5 inches wide by 2 inches tall (8.5cm x 5.5cm in many other countries). A vertical format, of course, would be 2 inches wide by 3.5 inches tall. It is so inexpensive to have both sides of your card printed in full color, so in some cases you can consider putting minimal but effective information on one side and the rest on the back.

Try this . . .

Do you see a problem with this card (besides the type stuck in the corners)? Here’s a question: Whose card is it? It is actually Orlando’s card. Which principle is missing that could clarify the information?

If we do just one thing—utilize the Principle of Contrast—we know whom the card represents.

We have to get the text out of the corners. When you have a lot of information, consider a tall card.

Now that there is really some contrast on these last two cards, can you feel your eyes more attracted to them?

or this . . .

Consider something very simple, especially if you don’t need to provide any information except how to contact you. I have a card that only includes my name and email address because I avoid the phone.

typefaces

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Corporate cards typically include a great deal of information (as on the opposite page), but more casual cards like these can maximize the visual attraction and minimize the information to what is truly necessary.

Tips on designing business cards

Business cards can be a challenge to design because you usually need to pack a lot of information into a small space. And the amount of information you put on a business card has been growing—in addition to the standard address and phone, now you probably need your cell number, fax number if you still use that technology, email address, social media info, your web address if you have one.

Format

Your first choice is whether to work with a horizontal format or a vertical one. Just because most cards are horizontal doesn’t mean they have to be. Very often the information fits better in a vertical layout, especially when we have so many pieces of information to include on such a little card. Experiment with both vertical and horizontal layouts, and choose the one that works best for the information you have on your card.

Type size

One of the biggest problems with business cards designed by new designers is the type size. It’s usually too big. Even the 10- or 11-point type we read in books looks horsey on a small card. And 12-point type looks downright dorky. I know it’s difficult at first to use 9- or even 8- or 7-point type, but look at the business cards you’ve collected. Pick out three that look the most professional and sophisticated. They don’t use 12-point type.

Create a consistent image on all pieces

If you plan to create a letterhead and matching envelopes, you really need to design all three pieces at once. The entire package of business cards, letterhead, and envelopes should present a consistent image to clients and customers.

Letterhead and envelopes

Few people look at a company’s stationery and think, “This is so beautiful, I’ll triple my order,” or “This is so ugly, I’m not going to donate my time to them.” But when people see your stationery, they think something about you and it’s going to be positive or negative, depending on the design and feel of that stationery.

Try this . . .

All three items should look like they belong together. Sometimes this means you have to toss out a few of your ideas because they won’t translate to all the pieces of the package.

This layout is centered. What is it that prevents it from looking like an amateur arrangement? Put it into words.

or this . . .

If you use a second page, make its design secondary but recognizable.

Your letterhead is not an advertisement on a crowded subway so you can get away with placing elements in what might seem to be unusual places. The recipient will find the information.

Tips on letterhead and envelope design

Design your letterhead and envelope at the same time as your business card. They should look like they belong together—if you give someone a business card and then later send a letter, those pieces should reinforce each other.

Envelope size

The standard business envelope is 9.5 × 4.125 inches. It’s called a #10 envelope. The European size is 110 mm × 220 mm, and it’s called a C4 envelope.

Create a focal point

One element should be dominant, and it should be dominant in the same way on the letterhead, the envelope, and the business card. Experiment with possibilities other than the centered-across-the-top layout on the letterhead (also see pages 37–41).

Alignment

Choose one alignment for your stationery! Don’t center something across the top and then put the rest of the text flush left. Be brave—try flush right down the side with lots of linespacing. Try setting your company name in huge letters across the top. Try placing your logo (or a piece of it) huge and light as a shadow beneath the area where you will type.

Second page

If you have a need for a second page to your stationary, take a small element that appears on your first page and use it all by itself on a second page. If you are planning to print, say, 1,000 sheets of letterhead, you can usually ask the printshop to print something like 800 of the first page and 200 of the second page. Even if you don’t plan to print a second page, ask the printer for several hundred blank sheets of the same paper so you have something on which to write longer letters.

Faxing and copying

If you still use a fax machine and plan to send your letterhead through a fax or print it on a copy machine, don’t choose a dark paper or one that has lots of speckles in it. Also avoid large areas of dark ink, reverse type, or tiny type that will get lost in the process. If you do a lot of faxing, you might want to create two versions of your letterhead—one for print and one for fax.

Flyers

Flyers are fun to create because you can safely abandon restraint! This is a great place to go wild and really call attention to yourself. As you know, flyers compete with all the other readable junk in the world, especially with other flyers. Often they are posted on a bulletin board with dozens of competing pages that are all trying to grab the attention of passers-by.

Try this . . .

This flyer, above, tries to be bold and fun, but you can only get so far with Helvetica/Arial.

Find intriguing elements and make them large, create a focus. Use an appropriately distinctive font.

These graphics are actually characters in the font Backyard Beasties that were colored in InDesign.

The headline font, above, is Baileywick Festive and the text is Humana Sans.

Online print shops make it so easy and inexpensive to create full-color flyers with full bleed on glossy stock. Take advantage of this!

or this . . .

Use a huge headline or huge art.

Use an interesting typeface in a huge way.

Set the text in several columns, each one flush left or flush right.

Crop a photograph or clip art into a tall, narrow shape; place it along the left edge; align the text flush left.

Or place the art along the right edge and align the text flush right.

It’s okay to set the body text small on a flyer. If you capture the reader’s attention in the first place, she will read the small type.

These flyers have strong focal points that will pull in interested readers.

Tips on designing flyers

The biggest problems with most flyers created by new designers are a lack of contrast and a presentation of information that has no hierarchy. That is, the initial tendency is to make everything large, thinking that it needs to grab someone’s attention. But if everything is large, then nothing can really grab a reader’s attention. Use a strong focal point and contrast to organize the information and lead the reader’s eye through the page.

Create a focal point

Put one thing on your page that is huge and interesting and strong. If you catch their eye with your focal point, they are more likely to read the rest of the text.

Use subheads that contrast

After the focal point, use strong subheads (strong visually, and strong in what it says) so readers can quickly scan the flyer to determine the point of the message. If the subheads don’t interest them, they’re not going to read the copy. But if there are no subheads at all and readers have to read every word on the flyer to understand what it’s about, they’re going to toss it rather than spend the time deciphering the text.

Repetition

Whether your headline uses an ugly typeface, a beautiful one, or an ordinary one in an unusual way, consider bringing a little of that same font into the body of the text for repetition. Perhaps use just one letter or one word in that same typeface. Use it as your subheads, initial caps, or perhaps as bullets. A strong contrast of typefaces will add interest to your flyer.

Alignment

And remember, choose one alignment! Don’t center the headline and then set the body copy flush left, or don’t center everything on the page and then stick things in the corners at the bottom. Be strong. Be brave. Try all flush left or flush right.

Newsletters

One of the most important features of a multiple-page publication is consistency, or repetition. Every page should look like it belongs to the whole piece. You can do this with color, graphic style, fonts, spatial arrangements, bulleted lists that repeat a formatting style, borders around photographs, captions, and so on.

Try this . . .

Below is one solution to the problem of putting boxes inside of boxes: use rules to separate space without enclosing it, break through the alignment, let the image itself be a container.

Designed by Ruth Johnson

Avoid a different typeface and arrangement for every article. When you create a strong, consistent structure throughout the newsletter, then you can call attention to a special article by treating it differently. If everything is different, nothing is special.

This newsletter uses an underlying grid of twelve columns per page; this allows the designer to create stories that span various numbers of these columns yet always appear organized.

or this . . .

This arty newsletter contrasts the bright art with black and white text on a strong, two-column grid. Notice where the images break out of the grid.

Most people skim through newsletter pages picking out headlines—so make the headlines clear and bold.

Every newsletter has its own purpose that it should be designed toward. You can see that this one promotes the gallery, the artists, and an awareness of local art and events.

Tips on designing newsletters

The biggest problems with newsletters seem to be lack of alignment, lack of contrast, and too much Arial/Helvetica and Times New Roman.

Alignment

Choose an alignment and stick to it. Trust me—you’ll have a stronger and more professional look to your entire newsletter if you maintain that strong edge along the left. And keep everything else aligned. If you use rules (lines), they should begin and end in alignment with something else, like the column edge or column bottom. If your photograph hangs outside the column one-quarter inch, crop it so it aligns instead.

Paragraph indents

First paragraphs, even after subheads, should not be indented. When you do indent, use the standard typographic indent of one “em” space, which is a space as wide as the point size of your type; that is, if you’re using 11-point type, your indent should be 11 points (about two spaces, not five). Use either extra space between paragraphs or an indent, but not both.

Not Helvetica/Arial!

If your newsletter looks a little gray and drab, you can instantly juice it up simply by using a strong, heavy, sans serif typeface for your headlines and subheads. Not Helvetica. The Helvetica or Arial that came with your computer isn’t bold enough to create a strong contrast. Invest in a sans serif family that includes a heavy black version as well as a light version (such as Eurostile, Formata, Syntax, Frutiger, or Myriad). Use that heavy black for your headlines and pull-quotes and you’ll be amazed at the difference. Or use an appropriate decorative face for the headlines, perhaps in another color.

Readable body copy

For best readability, try a classic oldstyle serif face (such as Garamond, Jenson, Caslon, Minion, or Palatino), or a lightweight slab serif (such as Clarendon, Bookman, Kepler, or New Century Schoolbook). What you’re reading right now is Arno Pro Regular from Adobe. If you use a sans serif font, give a little extra linespace (leading) and shorter line lengths.

Brochures

Brochures are a quick and inexpensive way to get the word out about your brand new homemade-pie business, school fundraiser, or upcoming scavenger hunt. Dynamic, well-designed brochures can be eye candy for readers, drawing them in and educating them in a delightful and painless way.

Try this . . .

The business cards were designed specifically to reinforce the brochure; the brochure acts as a fancy calling card.

This information would fit onto a flyer, but getting it printed as a brochure at an inexpensive online printer made the piece much more impressive and useful.

or this . . .

A small booklet can act as a more informative brochure when you have a lot of information to leave behind. This 12-page brochure uses a scan from a page in a sixteenth-century book, complete with wrinkles, as a background,

Every border across the top uses a different pattern, but the repetition of its size and placement encourages variety within the unity. The underlying grid of six columns per page allows flexibility in the design.

Play with the graphic images in your brochure—make them bigger, overlap them, wrap text around them, tilt them. You can do all this if your layout presents a solid, aligned base.

Tips on designing brochures

Brochures created by new designers have many of the same problems as newsletters: lack of contrast, lack of alignment, and too much Helvetica/Arial. Here’s a quick summary of how the principle elements of design can be applied to that brochure you’re working on.

Contrast

As in any other design project, contrast not only adds visual interest to a page so a reader’s eye is drawn in, but it also helps create the hierarchy of information so the reader can scan the important points and understand what the brochure is about. Use contrast in the typefaces, rules, colors, spacing, size of elements, and such like.

Repetition

Repeat various elements in the design to create a unified look to the piece. You might repeat colors, typefaces, rules, spatial arrangements, bullets, etc. Within a strong repetition, you can have fun with variations.

Alignment

I keep repeating myself about this alignment stuff, but it’s important, and the lack of it is consistently a problem. Strong, sharp edges create a strong, sharp impression. A combination of alignments (using centered, flush left, and flush right in one piece) usually creates a sloppy, weak impression.

Proximity

Proximity, grouping similar items close together, is especially important in a project such as a brochure where you have a variety of subtopics within one main topic. How close and how far away items are from each other communicates the relationships of the items.

Postcards

Because they’re so visual and so immediate—no envelopes to fuss with, no paper cuts—postcards are a great way to grab attention. And for these same reasons, an ugly or boring postcard is a waste of everybody’s time.

Try this . . .

Don’t forget about using columns of text instead of one big block. It gives you many more options for creating a layout that communicates clearly.

Someone needs to redesign this politician’s brand.

Try a font that surprises you. At MyFonts.com you can type in the headline you need and then see what it looks like in hundreds of fonts.

Try an odd-sized postcard, such as tall and narrow, short and fat, oversized, or a fold-over card.

Just be sure to make sure your intended size fits regulations before you print it; check the web site (usps.gov). And verify the cost of postage for an odd-sized card.

or this . . .

Whenever possible with your postcards, be playful! Create a postcard the recipient would like to keep instead of immediately toss.

A colorful, playful piece is more likely to be looked at than a boring piece. Design something that you would like to read!

Tips on designing postcards

You only have a split second to capture someone’s attention with an unsolicited postcard that arrives in the mail. No matter how great your copy, if the design of the card does not attract their attention, they won’t read your copy.

What’s your point?

Your first decision is to determine what sort of effect you want to achieve. Do you want readers to think it is an expensive, exclusive offer? Then your postcard had better look as expensive and professional as the product. Do you want readers to feel like they’re getting a great bargain? Then your postcard shouldn’t be too slick. Discount stores spend extra money to make their stores look like they contain bargains. It’s not an accident that Saks Fifth Avenue has a different look—from the parking lot to the restrooms—than does Kmart, and it doesn’t mean that Kmart spent less on decor than did Saks. Each look serves a distinct and definite purpose and reaches out toward a specific market.

Grab their attention

The same design guidelines apply to direct-mail postcards as to anything else: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. But with this kind of postcard, you have very little time to induce recipients into reading it. Be brave with bright colors, either in the ink or the card stock. Use striking graphics—there’s plenty of great and inexpensive clipart, photos, and picture fonts that you can use in all sorts of creative ways.

Contrast

Contrast is probably your best friend in a direct-mail postcard. The headline should be in strong contrast to the rest of the text, the colors should use strong contrast to each other and to the color of the paper stock. And don’t forget that white space creates contrast!

In general

The guidelines for business cards also apply to postcards: Don’t stick things in the corners; don’t think you have to fill the space; don’t make everything the same size or almost the same size.

Advertising

Although newspapers and direct mail are disappearing, advertising is still part of trade magazines, event programs, theater programs, conference catalogs, newsletters, and of course online markets.

Try this . . .

This sort of look happens so often: random alignments, random graphics, chopped-up white space. It’s easy to fix.

Train your Designer Eye: Draw vertical and horizontal lines to see how many different alignments are in this small ad. For the centered bits, draw lines through the centers.

At least now we have the use of one alignment, flush left, and the strong line of the type aligns with the strong line of the photo edge.

Those odd little graphics (the apple, rose, and butterfly) seem to be simply filling the space. Let the white space be there! It’s okay!

Train your Designer Eye: Name at least five other changes that were made. (Suggestions are on page 228.)

What do you think about that little bit of space on the left edge?

Train your Designer Eye: Name at least three more changes that were made. (See page 228.)

This is essentially the same ad as the first one, except you can see that the information is more organized, easier to read, and the white space is nice and neat instead of split into numerous pieces. The white space will be where it is supposed to be if you follow the four principles. It is your job to let the white space exist.

or this . . .

Sometimes a graphic image can provide the inspiration for your ad. This tall photo inspired a tall ad and a clever headline.

Put into words where the four principles are used in these pieces.

This rack card acts as an advertisement. To create an all-type ad of any sort, learn to use the typographic features in your software! Learn to control the space between letters, between lines, between paragraphs, between heads and subheads, between tabs and indents. I keep saying that because spacing makes the difference between an amateur and a professional look.

Tips on designing ads

One of the biggest problems with small ads is crowding. Many clients and businesses who are paying for an ad feel they need to fill every particle of space because it costs money.

Contrast

With a newspaper or catalog or program ad, you need contrast not only in the advertisement itself, but also between the ad and the rest of the page that it’s placed on. In this kind of ad, often the best way to create contrast is with white space. Advertising sections tend to be completely full of stuff and very busy. An ad that has lots of white space within it stands out on the page, and a reader’s eye can’t help but be drawn to it. Experiment. Open a newspaper page or program and visually scan it. I guarantee that if there is white space on that page, your eyes will go to it. They go there because white space provides a strong contrast on a full, busy page.

Type choices

If you will be printing on cheap paper such as newsprint, which is porous and coarse, you’ll find that the ink spreads out. So don’t use a typeface that has small, delicate serifs or very thin lines that will thicken when printed, unless you are setting the type large enough that the serifs and strokes will hold up.

Reverse type

For the same reason as above, if you plan to print your ad on cheap paper, generally avoid reverse type (white type on a dark background). But if you must have it, make sure you use a good solid typeface with no thin lines that will fill in when the ink spreads. As always when setting type in reverse, use a point size a wee bit larger and bolder than you would if it was not reversed because the optical illusion makes reverse type appear smaller and thinner.

Résumés

How distinctive you can get with a résumé depends on whom you are sending it to, of course. Graphic designers, for instance, can get away with wildly creative pieces because it acts as part of one’s portfolio, but many other fields are more conservative. Regardless, based on the number of résumés I have seen that were created in Microsoft Word or the ones shown in some books of examples, all you need to do is use the four basic principles to have a résumé that stands out from most others.

Try this . . .

This remake of the example on the previous page uses all the same information.

Check out the many templates on CreativeMarket.com for résumés that go beyond Times 12-point centered.

or this . . .

As an actor, Matt’s face is what often lands the job so we included several extra images. You can see that the text is better aligned (learn to use your tabs and indents!) which helps to clarify the information. You can also see proximity in use, repetition, and contrast.

If you’re sending your resume digitally, try a horizontal layout to match the shape of most screens.

Tips on designing résumés

These tips are for the visual presentation of your résumé, not the content! It is your responsibility to study up on what is expected to be in your bio and C.V. for your particular field. Find out how adventurous you can be within the limits of expectation. Visually, here are some suggestions.

Contrast

As you can see in the previous examples, the Principle of Contrast is critical in making the important elements of your resume stand out. Even in the most conservative of pages, you can be subtle yet firm in your use of contrast to clarify the information.

Repetition

Be consistent. Repeat the basic structure of information; that is, if you set the dates in the left column for one area, use that same format for the other areas. If you use an alignment for a certain sort of item, repeat that alignment in other areas. If you use color to indicate something in particular, perhaps pull that color into something else such as a ruled line or bullets.

Alignment

As you have noticed, the Principle of Alignment is crucial to the overall presentation of neatness and professionalism.

Proximity

Position the headings closer to the related information so the structure is clear. Keep bullets close to their items.

Match the design to the medium

You will have to make different decisions if the resume is to be handed or mailed to somone, posted online, or perhaps posted online but you expect someone to print it. Each of these variants will impact your layout, font choice, page size, color choices, and more. Oh, our world is getting so complicated.