13 Creative Brochure Ideas To Inspire Your Design
By: Payman Taei
Tags: Brochure, Design, Brochure Design, Marketing, Brochure Printing

Brochures are an excellent tool to spread the word about your offerings, upcoming events, promotions or conferences. In today’s post, I gathered 13 of the best brochure ideas to help you design clear, beautiful and useful marketing assets.

Let’s get started!

Brochure Idea #1: Blend Bold Fonts and Colors

A top graphic design trend is the use of bright colors and bold fonts. These colorful alternatives to the popular minimalist design is a great choice for a brochure that needs to get your audience’s attention.

Brands can use extremely eye-catching color schemes and typography that stands above other content. It’s hard to resist opening brochures that utilize this idea, making it an excellent approach to highlighting your message.

In the above brochure example, an art and music school uses bright, bold fonts and colors to develop a cohesive feel. The designer was able to accomplish this by framing the content inside eye-catching color choices.

This choice allows the writer to amplify the key messages the school wants to communicate to their audience.

Brochure Idea #2: Use Color To Organize Your Copy

One of the core challenges of designing a brochure is space. You have a limited amount of space to communicate your important message.

To achieve optimal clarity, it’s crucial to organize your content effectively. This way, you can include all of the information your reader needs while not overloading them with too many words.

An effective way to achieve this clarity is with color design.

When you use contrasting backgrounds for various sections in your brochure, the reading experience becomes more enjoyable. You can use a tool like Visme to make sure all of your visual elements are balanced properly.

The travel brochure in the above example achieves clarity by using color effectively. The designer uses a clear color scheme to highlight photos of the destination.

Additionally, the contrasting colors in various sections makes the reading experience less taxing.

These choices allow the brochure to contain a lot of information without overwhelming the reader with blocks of text.

Brochure Idea #3: Use Typography as the Brochure Centerpiece

Font choice will often depend on the topic of your brochure. For example, if you’re raising awareness for a serious cause you might choose a heavy font.

Conversely, a light or minimal font may be a better choice for brands that want to express a sense of joy or fun.

Fonts are a powerful design element that can influence your audience’s behavior. It’s a great idea to take some time to make a strategic choice.

The designer who created this trifold brochure brought a number of elements together into a harmonious design.

In particular, the interesting typography choice dominated the centerfold and blends nicely with the color schemes. It looks awesome as a brochure for a coffee shop.

Brochure Idea #4: Use Photos and Illustrated Icons

Illustrated icons are a popular design element. They are also a great addition to try out on your brochure.

Icons can help make brochures seem genuine. Additionally, when there is a significant amount of content you need the reader to observe, icons and photos alike are great ways to add personality to your design.

Take a look at the brochure above. Many real estate brochures have industry standard requirements. Because of these limitations, illustrated icons and photos are an excellent way to include visual elements in a design.

In the above example, the design team uses an illustrated house icon to emphasize an important section of marketing copy, as well as incorporating high-quality photos throughout each page.

Brochure Idea #5: Use Statistics as Crucial Visual Elements

Emphasizing statistics as a crucial visual focal point is a great choice for your brochure design. Large numbers are always eye-catching, and can easily be used as a central design element.

Statistics are helpful for stopping readers who are casually flipping through in their tracks. Because of this, they should be used in conjunction with the important messages you want to communicate.

The designer of this corporate business brochure uses stark lines and interesting angles to highlight the statistics in the brochure. Additionally, using a more bold color underneath the statistical message draws the eye directly to the central section.

These choices highlight the importance of designing a brochure to amplify the most important messages.

Brochure Idea #6: Use Contrast to Highlight Content

The use of color contrast goes a long way to help a particular message stand out.

Through the use of intelligent design, you can create a sensible hierarchy that guides your audience to the content they need the most.

In particular, the use of complementary colors creates a visual impact that makes a great impression on your reader.

When you’re designing a brochure, you know you’re onto something when the color choices jump off the page.

In the above example, the blending of purple and white with a splash of red helps communicate the most important value proposition of this spa.

Brochure Idea #7: Use Consistent Visuals In Your Brochure Design

The use of inconsistent visual themes is one of the easiest mistakes for a designer to make. With the endless customization options available to you, it’s possible to layer on element after element without settling on a consistent theme.

For this reason, it’s crucial to make sure your visuals as a whole add up to a bigger idea.

For example, be careful about using images of your product as the centerpiece of one page while using animated icons on another.

When you mix and match design elements, it’s easy to confuse your reader.

A brochure for a small business is a great way to make sure customers are aware of your company’s offerings.

The brochure designer uses consistent visuals to create a sense of competence and clarity. Additionally, the use of a sharp color palette helps to emphasize this clarity.

Brochure Idea #8: Highlight Calls To Action With Bright Colors

A strong call to action is a critical element of your brochure. Your audience needs a strong call to action so they know what action you want them to take.

There are plenty of options for emphasizing calls to action on brochures. For example, you can use strong copy, bold colors or an icon to make sure the call to action stands out.

The designer for this pizza restaurant demonstrates how to use calls to action effectively.

This trifold pizza brochure draws us in with striking images. It’s call to action stands out because of the star icon and the use of white as a color contrast.

Brochure Idea #9: Increase Clarity With Data Visualization

The efficient use of space is an essential consideration while you’re developing brochure ideas.

Because this constrains how much content you can use, you need to make sure each element communicates a message.

This is why data visualization is a good idea when you’re designing a brochure.

Data visualizations are both engaging and concise. Because of this, they’re a great choice for communicating information with limited space.

The above brochure, designed for a university initiative, uses data visualization to tell a story. The graph clearly shows that the metric being tracked isn’t moving fast.

This stark image communicates the importance of their mission. Paraphrasing the message contained within the graph via text would take up valuable space.

This is why the skillful use of data visualization is a great way to improve your brochures.

Curious about the basic steps you can take to create a data visualization? Check out our short video on how to make them with Visme.

Brochure Idea #10: Incorporate Clear Calls To Action

Earlier, we talked about the importance of emphasizing calls to action with color.

Hopefully, this has helped you understand how crucial it is to have at least one call to action on your brochure.

In this section, I’d like to review how to make calls to action clear. Far too many calls to action are not clear or persuasive. If your reader is not excited to take action after reading your copy, then your call to action needs some work.

For example, listing a website or phone number is contact information — not a call to action. You need to give your reader a clear reason to act when you’re using call to action.

If you want to learn how to make clear, persuasive calls to action, this brochure for a marketing agency is a great example.

The designer showcases the main value proposition right above the contact information. This shows the reader that if they want to grow their business efficiently all they need to do is call.

Brochure Idea #11: Improve Brochure Organization With Clear Sections

Keeping your brochure neatly organized is a fantastic way to improve its design and readability.

In particular, numbering the various sections is a good organizational strategy.

Clearly delineated sections help your readers scan for information. Plus, clear sections can help with reading comprehension.

Marketing consultants need a brochure that creates impact for their audience.

This designer used numbered sections to keep the brochure neatly ordered and aesthetically pleasing. They also added sharp images and beautiful color schemes to take it to the next level.

These decisions make this brochure an excellent example for your brochure ideas.

Brochure Idea #12: Use Quality Visual Assets

Brochures are made to be printed. For this reason, it’s crucial that each of the logos, icons and graphics that you use are high quality.

In particular, when it comes to any images or photos, make sure you have nice images that won’t become pixelated upon printing.

For creators working with a budget, Visme provides a library of brochure templates that you can customize with millions of icons, graphics and photos for free.

In the above example, a travel agency commissioned a beautiful brochure. The designer utilized high quality photos of travel destinations to showcase the travel experience.

Blending these high quality images with content, a nice color scheme and icons creates an eye catching brochure. The layout choice uses the space effectively without creating clutter.

Brochure Idea #13: Improve Brochure Readability With Visual Cues

Visual cues are an important part of our life. For example, a big red stop sign is certain to get our attention. The bright red color directs our eye while the word stop warns us that there may be danger ahead.

Using this insightful psychological knowledge can help us create an impactful brochure.

Utilizing well placed design cues throughout our brochure helps our reader have a great experience.

Our design choices will often be far more subtle than the use of a red stop sign. However, using an element like subtle lines is a great way to direct your readers’ eye.

Without them, it may be confusing what section of your brochure to read next.

The above brochure provides an excellent example of visual cues. On the back of the brochure, the designer uses icons and a subtle white line to show us the best order to read the back page.

Conversely, they use pictures on the center page to guide our eye from section to section.

This demonstrates the optimal order to proceed through the brochure, and creates a high quality reading experience.

Bring Your Brochure Ideas to Life With Visme

I hope that these creative examples inspire some incredible brochure ideas for your business. To create your own brochure with Visme, all you need is our brochure maker that has plenty of design options and templates.

Simply add your individual content, information and brand assets to get started. Get started with a template, and dive into the world of brochures.