I work with a lot of entrepreneurs. Someone with an amazing idea turns it into a small business and then that business starts to grow. Most of the time, when they started out, they did everything themselves out of necessity. I get that – I do the same. I’d like to give a suggestion to elevate your visuals by employing a single concept: Love the one you’re with.
In other words, write for the space you have.
One of the most common design mistakes I’ve noted with home grown collateral is too much text for the chosen vehicle. This inevitably leads to choking the margin – the border of white space around the edge of a document.
Your goal is to effectively and efficiently market your service or product. You’ve decided to print up a sell sheet, which you want to keep it to one page or at the most two. However, in an effort to provide useful and complete information, you write up too much text. So, to fit it all in, you violate the margins. Understandable, sure. But I’m here to say, that’s a mistake.
Your brand should always reflect professionalism. Running out of space – which is what it looks like when you don’t respect page margins – is a visual cue that reflects poorly on your company.
The content should be written to fit the space. If you want a 2 page document, no more, then you need to write the content to fit that space. Remember that any good marketing vehicle will include ways for your target audience to get in touch with you for more information – you really needn’t squeeze everything into a single document. If you need to say more, then consider expanding your document to a different size – a brochure with a few pages perhaps. Or a case study, or a white paper, or any number of other solutions.
Compare and contrast the sample below. The layout on the left has too much content for the amount of space available on a standard letter sized document. In order to fit it all in the margin space is being utilized.
The document on the right uses less text and retains standard margins, immediately reading as more professional.
Hire a professional
Do-it-yourself can take a new business quite a long way. However, if you’re at a place in your business where you need more time to run your business and can afford to hire professionals to help out with things like design and copywriting (and lots of other services), please consider getting in touch.
