Knowing what to put in your designs can be a tricky thing if you don’t have a lot of experience with designing advertisements. There are a lot of different details that can have a large impact on the final product and the affect it has on people.

Here are some print design tips to help make sure that you’re advertisements are the best they can possibly be.

For this article I’m going to focus more on the actual text and layout of the advertisements rather than the images that you use. The text is going to be the message you’re trying to convey, and one of the most important details to consider.

The first tip deals with grids. Most longer forms of advertising are going to have a grid of some kind for the images and text. Pick up nearly any brochure, newsletter, booklet, or even the shorter forms of advertising like postcards and you’ll quickly notice a set grid that the ad follows.

Text is boxed in and images compliment the text in similarly sized boxes. The reason this is used so often is because it helps keep the advertisement organized and it gives people an easier time figuring out what the advertisement is supposed to say.

By making the advertisement orderly people can glance through it and know what is most important to look at based on the structure of the grid. Try to find some basic grid layouts to begin with and see what kind of finished products you can develop.

Next, make sure that the font you choose is the right one for the job. Getting too creative with the font may end up backfiring on you if you use something people have trouble reading. Times New Roman and Courier became standards for most printing programs because they’re easy to read and they get the job done.

You don’t need to completely avoid using interesting fonts, just be sure that everyone will be able to understand what the words are and don’t have any trouble reading it. A poorly chosen font will quickly get your ad dropped in the trash.

Remember too that people are willing to read what your ad has to say if you give them a good reason to. Don’t shy away from having the needed amount of text to explain what you need to. Of course, you still need to be sure that you don’t bore them with unneeded details, just don’t sacrifice information out of fear that people won’t bother to read any of it.

As I stated earlier, these print design tips are meant to help you get a feel for the kind of text you need to convey the right message. A great image won’t help you at all if people don’t walk away with your marketing message in their minds.

Resource Box: Katie Marcus writes about print design tips and everything about the printing technologies used by businesses for their marketing and advertising campaigns.