To develop printed materials that are eye-catching and will attract the kind of support you wish for, you need to think about your target market. While the background of your material can be a bright color to attract attention, it should not make the type hard to read. Make sure the background color is lighter than the font color. Yellow, green and orange make good contrasts to the type. Keeping type color to black will ensure that it is easy to read
The font should be New Times Roman or something similar that is easy to read, with a font size of 12 or 14. Don’t use italics or any other fancy font with lots of curls and squiggles. These are too hard to read. Use bold for those details you want to stand out.
Use bold CAPITALS for your headline to catch the eye of reluctant readers and make it a hook so that they will want to read on. A question often makes the reader scan the rest to find the answer. For example if you are selling cookies, instead of
COOKIE SALE
You could have
WHO BAKES THE BEST COOKIES?
Or even,
HOME-BAKED COOKIES?
If your cookies are not home-baked, they are the next best things, so bring that out in the rest of the text. After the main headline, you can have a sub-headline that is done either in bold to make it stand out or a larger font size than the rest of the type.
Don’t use single spacing, as that is also hard to read. 1.5 is better - double spacing will probably limit the amount of information you can fit. Lines should be short with the use of columns to facilitate this. People are used to reading in this manner due to it being used for their daily paper.
The type should be broken up into paragraphs with plenty of white space. Subheadings are good to use with each paragraph, as people like to skim down, reading only the subheadings before they read the smaller text. Bullet points or numbered lists are good too as they make the task of reading easier.
If you are using graphics, make sure they are appropriate and never typed over. There should be a margin around the graphic to set it apart from the text and make it stand out. Make sure the image is crisp and clear for a professional look. People don’t want to read lots of small print these days so keep information to the minimum. Don’t skimp on what is necessary, but neither should you waffle on with lots of unnecessary detail.
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