Blog Response #2 Part 1

            For my first part of this week’s blog I am looking at a brochure that was designed by one of the realtors that I worked with at the real estate company.  As I mentioned inn an earlier post, while reading the chapters in white space is not your enemy I was bought back to my days working as a receptionist.  We made hundreds on brochures, flyers and postcards and as I look back committed quite a few sins. I have attached some pictures of the brochure, I tried to scan it but my scanner refused. 

Sin 1- Incessant blinking, does not apply to a brochure.

Sin 2-Warped Photos- Well there are not warped photos, but in an attempt to get a great shot of the front of the house, which they did, they turned the front page of the brochure on its side.  The whole rest goes up and down, this may not be listed as one of our “sins” but it is not aesthetically pleasing to me, so it should be.

Sin 3-Naked photos and Sin 4 Bulky Borders and Boxes- I think these two sins go together for this particular piece.  All the photos have borders, but they are bulky for sure.  Here is why I don’t think these bulky borders are a sin; they appear to be picture frames so it makes each photo look like a tiny picture you would see hanging in a house. 

Sin 5-Cheated Margins-no, all the margins fit, nothing has been cheated to make things fit.

Sin 6- Centering Everything- This one is two fold, each description is centered in its own little text box but the boxes themselves are not overly centered.  For the most part this is ok but in one or two blurbs the centering makes for hard reading, it just doesn’t flow. 

10 ft ceilings through-out 1^st floor

Breathtaking Brazilian

Cherry Hardwood Floors

Decorative Crown Molding

Actually when I look at it the sin is in the wordiness, if you take out the breathtaking Brazilian, which to me sounds like a painful waxing procedure, it works.

Sin 7- 4 Corners & Clutter-No sin committed here, although there is tons on information and pictures they, “group items together that belong together!” Golombisky and Hagen refer to this as the clumping effect. 

Sin 8 & Sin 9 Trapped Negative Space and Busy Backgrounds- there is no negative space on this brochure, no white space either for that matter. Practically every inch of the inside of this brochure is covered by text or photos. 

Sin 10- Tacky Type- On my example there is no Reversing, or Stroking, they don’t use all caps but they do capitalize key words for emphasis like Hardwood Floors in the middle of a line.  His is what I would consider a minor sin.  They don’t underline things.  The thing they do which falls into this category in my mind is they use very ornate handwriting font.  In order to give the brochure and in turn the house the feel of being expensive.  I find this type of font hard to read. 

Sin 11- Bad Bullets- this example contains no bullets, but when I made brochures or flyers while working for this company I was crazy about aligning the bullets and the text. 

            Now that I have picked this flyer to bits time to start creating my own to improve on!