A brochure or pamphlet is a leaflet advertisement. Compared with a flyer or a handbill, a brochure usually uses higher-quality paper, more color, and is folded.

View more brochure examples at:

• Some cool brochures at direct-axis.net
• A variety of brochures and booklets examples at smashingmagazine.com
• Various brochures at bj2design.com
• Some brochure samples at conferences.dce.ufl.edu
• A bunch of brochure samples at kriskiler.com
• Cool brochure design samples at niyati.com
• Various brochure designs at gustinadvertising.net
• Brochure samples at helena.com

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Things to consider:

• Size – you want the folded brochure to fit in one of the international envelope sizes for cheaper mailing.
• Fold – Usually folded into bi-fold, tri-fold (Z-fold or C-fold).
• Bleed – add bleed area.
• Resolution – use high resolution images.
• Looks – make it visually appealing.

Size

There are quite a few sizes standards for brochures and it’s up to you to design the folding style. Since brochures are often mailed, a good choice is to pick a size that will fit in a standard envelope size after folding.

Dimensions (mm)	Dimensions (in)	Folded, mm (inches)
139,7 x 107,95	5,5 x 4,25	bi-fold 69,85 x 107,95 (2,75 x 4,25)
215,9 x 139,7	8,5 x 5,5	tri-fold 71,97 x 139,7 (2,84 x 5,5)
279,4 x 215,9	11 x 8,5	tri-fold 92,075 x 215,9 (3,625 x 8,5)
285,75 x 158,75	11,25 x 6,25	tri-fold (3,75 x 6,25)
355,6 x 215,9	14 x 8,5	tri-fold 118,618 x 215,9 (4,67 x 8,5)
406,4 x 228,6	16 x 9	8-Page map 101,6 x 228,6 (4″ x 9″)
431,8 x 279,4	17 x 11	French fold 215,9 x 139,7 (8,5 x 5,5)
644,525 x 279,4	25,375 x 11	12-Page Letter 214,83 x 139,7 (8,458×5,5)

Fold

The most common types of single-sheet brochures are the bi-fold (a single sheet printed on both sides and folded into halves) and the tri-fold (the same, but folded into thirds). A bi-fold brochure results in four panels/pages (two on each side), while a tri-fold results in six panels/pages (three on each side).

Other folder arrangements are possible: the accordion or “Z-fold” method, the “C-fold” method, etc. Larger sheets, such as those with detailed maps or expansive photo spreads, are folded into four, five, six or even up to 16 panels (pages). View the common folding methods here.

Bleed area

Add a bleed area. Brochures are printed in large number of copies with a digital press or offset. This process requires trimming the edges of the paper after it’s printed. The standard bleed size can vary from one printing company to the other but generally is 3mm (0.125 inches). Read more about bleed here.

Color space

In order for the colors on the final printed product to look as close as possible to the colors you chose on your PC display, you should work in 4 color CMYK mode. RGB color space may print off-color, which may be unacceptable for the customer. Spot colors are OK if they can be converted to CMYK or are absolutely required for the design.

Image quality

Just like in most templates for printing purposes, the image placeholders should have high 300 DPI of resolution.

Content

The most common features of a web-to-print brochure template are:

• Large text fields for the titles, topics, headlines.
• Multiline text fields for the content of each topic (maybe text columns).
• Text fields for the email address and website URL
• Text fields for the Phone/Fax/Mobile numbers (some may need to be optional). Learn how to do that here.
• Replaceable images for photos on most pages and for the company logo. Learn how to do that here.

Other usefull articles on this subject

You can view some more guides and articles about designing business cards at:

• Link

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