Printing Travel Brochures

When you visit a travel agency, a ticketing office, the arrival area of airports, or tourism outposts, you will find rows and rows of informational travel brochures. These reading materials are very attractive and could be about international or local destinations. Sometimes, the brochure is just small with some listings but others are very big when opened because they contain maps. These fact sheets are published by many different offices, like the department of tourism, travel agencies, airlines, ocean liners, and the like. And most of them put good thought and money at their brochure printing because that could mean the effectiveness of their campaign to promote certain destinations.

A travel brochure may be considered well prepared if it features local places of interest, contact information, and of course, photos. There should be short but apt descriptions of landmarks, hotels, and restaurants so that tourists could easily decide their destination.

If you are in the travel industry and would like to prepare a travel brochure without having to hire a designer, below are some things that you could do. You can actually design your material by just using Microsoft Word. The important thing is that you know what you want to put in there in order to promote your intended destination.

1. Determine the size you prefer. For example, if you want to make a four-fold pamphlet that will be 3.5" x 11" inches when folded, then you have to create a document that is 11" x 14" in size. Make two files for the front and back part so that you can print it back to back.

2. Choose the template that you like or is appropriate to the featured destination. Once you have set the template, you will find boxes where you can input your own texts and photographs. Simply click on the text box in order to key in your own copy. Do the same for the photos. You can adjust the size of the photos and the text box by dragging the corners. To make sure that the photos do not look stretched, hold the shift key while distorting the photos. You may want to change the style, color, and size of the font. Do not use too many kinds of fonts in the same page.

3. Follow the same procedure for the back page and save your files.

Some people find it easier to create a brochure by first making a dummy using a legal size bond paper. They will fold it in the same way that the final material will look and then they will assign the contents to each page, including titles, subtitles, photos, and others. That way, you will also know where a page will go when folded so that you will not make a mistake during printing.

You can actually print your brochures in the office if you only need a few copies. As long as you have a good quality colored printer, you can do brochure printing yourself. You can just buy some photo paper at the local supplies store for your material. Do not use plain bond paper because it is easily damaged. But if you do not have a printer or if you need many copies; it is best to bring your file to a professional printer. You can then choose a good quality material there; preferably the coated glossy paper.