How to Design a Brochure in CS5

Learning to design a brochure with Photoshop CS5 lets you apply this program's Text and Paintbrush tools, along with its guidelines, to place text and graphical content exactly where you want them. If your images require tweaking, the Adjustments sub-menu under the Image menu has abundant commands for this task. Before starting this project, observe how other brochures are designed to guide the design for your brochure.

Instructions

1. Fold a piece of 8.5-inch by 11-inch paper in three equal sections, then unfold it and label the sections as follows: 2, 4, and 5 from left to right. Flip the page over and write 3, 6 and 1. These are the page numbers for your brochure. Use the paper as reference while navigating your brochure in Photoshop.

2. Click Photoshop's "File" tab, then click the "New" item. Click "U.S. Paper" from the "Preset" dropdown list. Type "11" for the "Width" textbox, and "8.5" for the "Height" textbox. Click "CMYK" from the "Color mode" drop-down, as printshops prefer this over RGB color.

3. Drag the vertical ruler from screen left onto the canvas at 3 5/8 inches. Drag a second vertical ruler to 7 3/8 inches. These guidelines will help you place text and graphics.

4. Click the Paintbrush icon from the tool palette, then drag on the canvas to write the numbers 2, 4, and 5 at the same places as those on your folded paper.

5. Click the page icon at the bottom of the Layers palette to create a new layer, which will hold pages 3, 6 and 1. Use the Paintbrush tool to label these pages in the order just given, with page 3 on the leftmost page and page 1 on the rightmost.

6. Use Paintbrush to sketch your page layout for page 1 as follows: sketch a rough image for picture placeholders. For text content, click the "T" icon from the tool palette to run the Text tool, then drag on panel 1 to create a label. Type a list of the items you want to write about for page 1, and a list of images to illustrate your items. Write text items indicating headline text that grabs reader interest. Keep sentences short. Write image notes describing vibrant, eye-catching images.

7. Open Windows Explorer on the folder containing the images you want for page 1. Drag images onto this page from Explorer, aligning their edges with the guidelines you placed. Use the Text tool to replace your list text with the actual text content you want for page 1.

8. Click the eye icon of the currently highlighted layer in the Layers palette to hide the current layer. This reveals the layer with page 2 so you can design that page.

9. Use the instructions from Steps 6 and 7 to create page 2's layout. However, use longer sentences to elaborate on the headline text from page 1. Write image notes describing images that clearly illustrate your text items.

10. Use Step 7's instructions to replace your placeholders with the actual content.

11. Click the eye icon for the top layer, then click that layer to enable you to design page 3, the leftmost panel on that layer. Create the layout for page 3, then install its content. As with page 2, page 3 should elaborate on your page 1 headlines.

12. Repeat the previous step for the remaining pages, using the instructions from Step 8 to display the correct layer holding the current page you're designing. Make Step 6 summarize the points you made in pages 2 through 5.

References

• "Design Basics"; David Lauer; 2007
• "Photohop CS5 for Dummies"; Peter Bauer; 2010