Utilizing a Grid in Newsletter Printing

A newsletter has many purposes and is used by many organizations. Clubs use newsletter printing for updating members on events, projects, and providing educational articles. Businesses connect with customers or employees with newsletters by including success stories, information on new products, and articles on utilizing products. Although newsletters may vary greatly in content, one element that they have in common is the use of a grid.

Many people who receive a newsletter do not have the time to read the entire contents. A grid helps to break up the information for easy skimming. The layout of a novel, in contrast, is only conducive for reading in its entirety, which is fine because this is the purpose of a book. The purpose of a newsletter is to connect with the audience on a regular basis so that they feel involved in and a part of a community. Organizing the text and images into a more readable layout allows even the busiest member or consumer to feel that connection, even if for a brief 5 minutes. That 5 minutes can do a lot for encouraging more involvement from employees when they scan over the success stories.

A newsletter usually contains two to five columns. How many per se does not necessarily matter; what matters is that the text is readable and the images can be positioned either above or beside the information to which they are related. Often, newsletters that contain many short articles utilize more columns, while longer articles can be skimmed easier when broken into two-column grids.

Grids provide many opportunities within newsletter design. One key to effective grid use is to include headers and subheaders for the text. Another technique is to place the photography comments directly below or beside the picture in a separate grid from the article. To save space, many newsletters place the table of contents in the far left column on the front page. Although grid consistency is important for easier reading, some designers choose to break up the monotony by using a different layout or fewer columns on one of the pages.

A newsletter that is both informative and readable will be the most successful in any organization. A grid supports this need in that it provides the organization necessary for newsletter printing that readers look forward to each mailing.