Newsletters are a quick and easy way for organizations, community groups, or businesses to get information to a specific audience.

For a clean professional message, hire an experienced printer to produce a newsletter for you.

Before you can engage a printer, however, you may want to draft a rough layout to help in discussions with your professional printing company.

The plan and the information you want to present is entirely your decision, but there are a few pointers that can help maximize the efficiency of your newsletter, and keep it interesting for your readers.

By keeping a few design ideas in mind, you can present a coherent and attractive newsletter to your readers.

1. Needless words – Words like “the” and “newsletter” don’t really serve a purpose in the title. If you’ve presented the material correctly, those concepts will be understood.

2. Icons and symbols – Icons and symbols representative of the company or organization can be distracting when they’re near the title. Separating them from the title allows the reader to focus on the words and begin reading.

3. Distortions and effects – Stretching, compressing or otherwise altering the typeface can be off-putting. Those effects are fine for a child’s class project or party flyer, but if you’re trying to present a polished and professional image, keep text effects to an absolute minimum.

4. Poor use of white space – White space allows the reader a clean section of the page. Allowing for adequate white space has several effects. It sets off the text you do have – contrasting blank and filled spaces. White space can also function as text separation, a resting spot for the reader’s eyes, and a way to emphasize headlines, subheadings, or graphics such as photos.

5. Too many graphic “frills” - These frills, also called accents, include borders, shaded backgrounds, horizontal and vertical lines and other decorations. Many times, these accents are unnecessary. If you use your white space to greatest advantage, you’ll find that your newsletter doesn’t need the trimmings and varied color schemes.

6. Wraparound text – Sometimes it’s necessary to include graphics on your pages. The text surrounding these images (pictures, graphs, etc.) should be captions and text pertaining to the picture. When text wraps around a graphic, you’re likely to end up with over hyphenated lines that disrupt normal reading pace. That can be frustrating for readers and encourage them to skip the story or put the publication down altogether.

7. Upper and lower case type – Reading text in all caps can be difficult because of the way our brains process information. Upper case letters disrupt our normal word recognition patterns and can sometimes convey the wrong meaning. Consider SEAL and seal. The difference between these two words has all to do with the spelling. You don’t want to confuse your readers nor make reading your articles difficult for them.

And let’s not forget, in our web friendly, e-mail filled world, all caps is considered shouting and can be offensive to some readers.

8. Underlined text – When you underline text, generally, your intention is to draw the reader’s focus to those words. However, be careful with underlining. As with graphic accents, it can be distracting, unprofessional and unnecessary. Underlines also make words harder to read.

With your newsletter, you’re trying to appeal to your audience and keep them interested. Staying away from the above mistakes can make your bulletin that much more effective.

Professional Metairie printing company, H & H Print Service, Inc., can save you time and effort. With our experienced staff, we will arrange the layout for you. We know how presentation of the finished product will be most effective - polished, professional and attractive to your audience.

Instead of worrying over the design details, let Metairie printer, H & H Print Service, do the designing for you.

Customer Service
To request an estimate, place an order, or talk to one of our customer service representatives, contact us at

504-828-0347
http://www.hhprint.com/
H & H Printing Service, Inc.
3646 Airline Dr. #1
Metairie LA 70001

Posted on May 13th, 2008 by mandevilleprinting
Filed under: Printing Service, offset printing, printer