Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

Ideas For An Engineering Brochure/document Folder

Posted by Anonymous on 5/10/2011 at 9:16 PM ET 250 Points
I would appreciate any ideas or feedback for the design of a brochure/document folder for an engineering firm.

The idea I have thus far is to use a 3 panel folder. The inside left hand panels are an animated version of our workshop layout and the machines and equipment contained inside. The righthand side panel will have a pocket to contain other product brochures or proposals.
The 'back' panels of the brochure panels will have company information, logo and address details.

Can you suggest any engineering related ideas to include in the brochure? I.e a cut out of a bolt as part of the document folder pocket.

Ideas?? I'd appreciate your feedback!

Regards,

Sheree
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by michael on 5/11/2011 at 11:05 AM Member
    Sheree,
    You've been doing this for a while, right? How do companies decide which engineering firm to choose? You don't want to waste valuable space talking about things everyone does. You want to fo talk about how you're different.

    Michael
  • Posted on 5/11/2011 at 11:14 AM Accepted
    Don't ask a bunch of marketing folks. Ask the people who will actually use/receive these folders. What would THEY find helpful/useful? Prepare a mock-up and watch your target audience discover what it is and what's inside.

    It won't take long to figure out whether you're on the right track or not. The right design is the one that will make it easy for the target audience to get what they need.

    If the actual meat of the package isn't what I want, I'd probably toss the whole thing regardless of the design. And if the content is important/valuable to me, I won't care nearly as much about the design.
  • Posted by lathans on 5/11/2011 at 11:18 AM Accepted
    Less is truly more. Do you have three pockets worth of material to contain? How many are you going to run? If it's small, you certainly don't want the cost of a frivolous die cut pocket if it doesn't add value. You must have a budget to be conscious of, right? Plus, the more you customize the pocket folder, the less uses it will have down the road. See if you can design something that will multipurpose for everyone in the organization, from sales to finanace. You already have a brochure, so I wouldn't design another brochure to put it in. Utilize other elements of company style (font, image, layout grid, etc) so you have immediate cohesion with any purpose. Michael is right: answer the question about what makes you different, and that will dictate what your focus should be.
  • Posted on 5/11/2011 at 4:53 PM Author
    Thanks all for your feedback - this was the first time I've used this site and can see it will be of value in the future.

    Michael - yes you are right, we do need to focus on our competitive advantage- i.e our large machines and heavy lifting capacity, but don't want to omit the other intrinsic sectors of our business.

    Mgoodman- thanks for your suggestion. I currently have a mockup of the folder- are we permitted to upload graphics on this site?

    Lathans - Yes I have produced several brochures which are tailored to the various industries we service - ie defence, pulp and paper, marine etc. The idea of this general brochure/document folder is to encompass some or all of the industry specific brochures, and also any proposals or documentation. I will probably print 2000 as a first print run.

    Thanks for your help!

    Regards,

    Sheree
  • Posted on 5/11/2011 at 5:23 PM Accepted
    There is no way I know of to upload material to this site, but you can put it up on YOUR site and provide us with a link/URL. Others have done that in the past.
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 5/12/2011 at 9:39 AM Accepted
    How will you get the brochure in their hands? A trade show? Direct mail? Might it be better to have a segmented email list with a targeted message for each of your groups instead?
  • Posted on 5/12/2011 at 5:26 PM Author
    Hi Jay,

    We have a full time Sales Engineer who regularly makes domestic and international sales visits to potential customers, who distributes the brouchures.
    They are also distributed at tradeshows and industry events.
    Some customers prefer to recieve a hard copy of our proposals, so they would be sent by post also.

    We currently have an e-newsletter which is sent to targeted customer (and potential customer) groups.
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