How to Make a Company Brochure

Companies publicize themselves many ways, with everything from pop-up banner ads on the Internet to skywriting. For a quick, portable and lasting way to put information into potential customers' hands, consider a brochure. While brochures may be as simple as a single piece of copy paper printed on two sides and folded into thirds, they offer prime real estate for sharing company information, images and contact details with a target audience.

Things You'll Need

• Digital camera
• Graphics editing program
• Desktop publishing program
• Digital company logo

Instructions

1. Meet with company executives such as the president, chief information officer, head of the sales department and human resources administrator to discuss the brochure's direction and information to include in it. Decide the purpose of the brochure--whether it is to advertise the company's products or services, recruit employees or provide general information about the company.

2. Take pictures such as company products for sale, products being used, team members performing services, your offices or close-up head shots of executives. Open the images in a graphics software editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Windows Paint and clean up the photographs to adjust lighting and crop background.

3. Open a desktop publishing program such as Microsoft Publisher or Adobe InDesign and select the software's "Brochures" option. Review the available templates and double-click one to use for your company brochure.

4. Scroll through the brochure's two pages and type over the placeholder headlines with ones about the company, such as sections on products, personnel, history and contact information.

5. Replace placeholder text throughout the brochure to echo the headlines in each section.

6. Replace placeholder images throughout the brochure with images specific to your company and products. Take advantage of the software's stock artwork to add additional images.

7. Highlight and type over the brochure's placeholder contact information text boxes to include the company address, website, phone number, email address, hours of operation and any direct contacts such as sales representatives or customer service personnel.

8. Insert the company logo onto the brochure through the program's "Insert" or "Picture" function. Position the logo on the brochure's cover or along with the contact information.

9. Review the brochure for typographical errors or any potential legal issues. Ask someone else in the company to proofread the brochure to get a second pair of eyes, which may catch something not so obvious in the design process.

10. Save the brochure to the computer. Load regular copy paper into the printer and turn it on. Click the program's "Print" option and select how many copies of the brochure to print. Print the brochure.

Tips & Warnings

• Some company printers can handle double-sided printing, which is the way desktop publishing programs set up their brochure. If your organization's printer only prints one side at a time, simply print the first side, flip over the paper and run it through the printer again to print page two. Another option is to save the file to a disk or portable drive and bring or send it to a print shop, where they'll be able to print double-sided brochures on a variety of paper styles.

References

• University of Washington: Working with Images
• Windows: Using Paint
• Microsoft Office: Publisher Features and Benefits