Printed brochures have long been an effective means of advertisement and information dissemination. These days, with the Internet community still growing rapidly, electronic media is quickly becoming as important as printed media. Books, magazines and other forms of media once confined to print are now being published electronically. E-brochures have become more popular today than at any time during the technological revolution, and make up a large portion of the electronic advertising world. E-brochures look and work like traditional print brochures with the added benefit of versatility.
Instructions
1. Decide what desktop publishing software you want to use to create you e-brochures. If you own Microsoft Word, you can use it to create e-brochures. Word comes with a large number of templates for brochures. If you want to use a desktop publishing program, Microsoft Publisher is an affordable alternative to Adobe's desktop publishing products. You can also use Serif PagePlus, which is a free desktop publishing program (see Resources).
2. Open the brochure template right for your project. All of the programs mentioned in the first step include templates that make it easy to design and produce e-brochures. If you don't find a brochure layout exactly like you want, you can select the one nearest your idea and make changes to the template to suit your needs by removing or inserting text and graphics boxes.
3. Modify the brochure template by deleting the template text and graphics and then replacing it with your own. The templates are already laid out for you. To delete template text, select the text with your mouse and delete it; then type in your e-brochure text. To replace a graphic with your own, select the template graphic box, use the "Insert" menu and choose "Picture." This will replace template graphics with your own.
4. Use the same design rules for your e-brochure as you would a print brochure. If you start making modifications, try not to add too many additional graphics and avoid changing the template fonts to something hard to read. Effective e-brochure design is the same as printed brochure design.
5. Save your e-brochure as a PDF file. This is Adobe's Portable Document Format. This format is cross platform and can be read by anyone with Adobe's free reader, so this is the best format for e-brochure distribution. Microsoft Word 2007 has the capability to write as PDF with a free plug-in from Microsoft. If you're using an earlier version of Word or a desktop software not capable of writing to PDF, you can use an online service to save your file as a PDF for free. Another option is Cute PDF, which is free and installs on your computer as a virtual printer for creating PDF files.
Tags: desktop publishing, with your, your e-brochure, brochure template, create e-brochures, desktop publishing program