Designing
Your Newsletter Yourself? Follow These Rules for Best Results
If the task of designing your newsletter —choosing typefaces and colors,
placing copy and photographs, and creating graphics —has fallen on your
shoulders, make sure to follow these common sense rules for best results.
Use Restraint
Just because your computer can produce thousands of typefaces and
millions of designs, don’t use them all in a single document. Jumping from typeface
to typeface and design to design makes the finished product hard to read.
Choose the Correct Typeface
Different type styles are best for different jobs. An informal type style
on a formal document diminishes the impact, and readers are less
likely to take the
work seriously.
Always Use Appropriate Margins
Consistent margins give finished pages a neat, clean appearance.
Strive for Uniformity
Keep a document’s appearance uniform throughout an entire work. Three columns
on one page, two on the next and four on another makes a finished piece appear
haphazard.
Balance Your Spreads
For side-by-side pages —called “spreads” —make sure that
each page balances the other. Often what looks good on a single page doesn’t
look quite as good placed beside a similar page. Balancing spreads is easily
accomplished when you design facing pages as a single unit, spreading graphics,
titles, or art across both.
Use Headlines
Strong, powerful type attracts a reader’s attention. Use descriptive
headlines and a type style that’s larger than the text, which attracts the reader
to the body of the text.
Overuse White Space
Avoid the tendency to overfill pages with text, designs, and artwork.
White space makes your pages more appealing and readable. By adding
more white space to your
documents, important elements such as headlines and designs stand out even
more.
Highlight Important Points
Add illustrations, graphs, artwork, and pull quotes to emphasize
important points. Important facts, quotes, and results can be highlighted
using a text block inside
a border, reversing the text (white on black instead of black on white, for
instance), or setting text in a larger type style
Add Descriptive Captions
Add captions to graphics, photos, and artwork when appropriate. It’s
also a good design idea to add subheads or captions to long blocks
of text.
Don’t Overlook Color
Adding color to your finished product adds interest and appeal.
Proofread Everything
No matter how good a graphic designer you become, failing to correct
obvious mistakes distracts a reader. Misspelled words, grammatical
errors, and missing
punctuation stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.
Be Willing to Experiment
With a computer, you’ll probably have all the tools you need to experiment
with graphics. Don’t be afraid to explore —you may discover some
great alternative designs.
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