The Typography of Brochures and Printed Marketing

The Brochure Is Read Differently Than a Poster

A brochure is picked up, held, and read — sometimes briefly, sometimes thoroughly, depending on the reader's interest. Unlike a poster, it's not read at distance. Unlike a book, it's not read linearly. The reader scans, dips in, skips sections, returns.

This reading behavior shapes the typographic requirements. Clear entry points at every spread. Visual cues that guide the scanning eye to the most important information. Body text that rewards closer reading when the reader engages.

The Entry Point Problem

Every spread in a brochure needs at least one clear typographic entry point — a visual signal that says "start reading here." Without these signals, the reader doesn't know where to begin and may not begin at all.

Entry points are created through typographic scale: a headline, a pull quote, a callout that's visually dominant enough to catch the scanning eye. I design each spread with one primary entry point and a clear hierarchy from there.

Size Ranges for Print Marketing

For printed marketing materials at standard reading distance, I work within these rough size ranges:

• Headline/chapter openers: 36–72pt depending on the layout and the amount of content
• Subheadings: 16–24pt
• Body text: 10–11pt for standard reading; 8–9pt only when space is critically constrained
• Captions: 8–9pt
• Legal/fine print: 7–8pt minimum; smaller becomes practically illegible on most print stocks

These are ranges, not rules. The right size depends on the typeface's x-height, the viewing distance, and the layout context.

Column Width and Reading Comfort

Body text in brochures should be set in columns of approximately 55–75 characters per line. Too narrow and the reader's eye is constantly jumping to the next line. Too wide and the eye has trouble tracking from the end of one line to the beginning of the next.

For A4 brochures, this usually means two or three columns of body text rather than one full-width column. The multi-column layout also allows images and supporting information to be positioned alongside relevant body text.

The Single Most Ignored Detail

The single most ignored typographic detail in printed marketing is paragraph spacing. Designers who set no extra space between paragraphs force readers to rely on indentation to identify paragraph breaks — often at sizes where the indent is too small to read clearly. A small amount of extra space between paragraphs (typically 50–75% of the body text leading) dramatically improves readability.

This detail costs nothing to implement and makes an immediately visible difference in how professionally produced the typesetting reads.