How to Make a Free Brochure for School

Brochures frequently fly around school campuses promoting everything from politics to events to health care. People use them because they're a quick way of getting a lot of information into a lot of hands. They aren't difficult to design, and if you keep them to a standard size, not difficult or expensive to print.

Things You'll Need

• Computer Photo manipulation software such as Photoshop or Photoshop Elements Desktop publishing software such as QuarkXPress or Swift Publisher Printer

Instructions

1. Use graphics---art or photos---that will draw in the casual viewer quickly with warm, inviting feelings. What brings you to pick up a brochure? These are the things a brochure will need to invite the browser to pick it up and read it. No matter how serious or frivolous the theme of a brochure, use graphics and use fonts and colors that are warm and friendly. Use humor, wit and charm. All these elements are important to get the reader reading.

2. Choose images that will tell your story. If the brochure is about a band that plays on campus or around town frequently, use photos of the band, both playing music and having fun. If you don't have images of the subject of the brochure, use clip art. You can purchase packages of clip art or you can use the images that come within programs such as Microsoft Word or Swift Publisher. Swift Publisher as an extensive clip art library that is worth the cost of the program alone.

3. Limit yourself to concise text. One way to do this is to write the text directly into the desktop publishing program you will use to design the brochure. This way you can see exactly how much room you have for your message. If you feel more comfortable writing in a word processor, do that, but be prepared to cut for space in the brochure. You don't want a lot of small text, but bigger concise, pithy text there.

4. Start the desktop publishing program and set up the page. You can use QuarkXPress, Swift Publisher or even Microsoft Word or Pages. In QXP, go to File>New. In the popup window that appears, set the width to 11 inches and the height to 8.5 inches. Select three columns with a gutter width of 0.167. In the Margins, select 0.25 inches. Uncheck the Auto Text Box item at the lower left. Click OK. This will set up a "landscape" or horizontal page with the three columns needed for one side of the three-fold brochure. Go to Page>Insert and add one page after the one you created. You're designing this to fold in three equal parts, so it's important to remember which section will be where when folded. Do this by taking a blank sheet of paper and folding it in equal threes. On the right front mark "1." On the center front, mark "6," and on the left front, mark five. Turn the sheet over and mark the sections from left, 2, 3, 4. Pick up nearly any brochure and you will see it is designed to be read this way.

5. Use graphics big and prominent on the first page. This is the page most people will see first and it's important to draw them in. Put your best, most dynamic graphic here. You can repeat it smaller inside if you need to. Page two should have another graphic and a bullet-point outline of what the brochure is about. Page three will have the bulk of the text. Page four should have another graphic and a continuation of the text. Page five can continue the text and should have another graphic. Page six will be the back of the brochure, so here is where you can put contact information such as address, phone number and website.