How to carefully design an effective newsletter.
Photo from Sendinblue.com
So, Why are Newsletters Important?
Newsletters are an integral part of communication for any company. Whether the audience is employees or your target public, designing an effective newsletter takes large amounts of time and effort. Newsletters should serve to inform your target public about ongoings or future plans within your organization. As for most things in Public Relations, creating a design requires understanding and researching your audience, and implementing design elements best suited for that group. After identifying your audience and their preferences, designing the newsletter requires you to understand photos, balance, proportion, spacing and other design elements. Recently, I created a newsletter for Disney World where I had to implement important parts of design specifically for this purpose.
Here is a video I found useful in understanding the research you must do before embarking on a newsletter design.
The Creation of my Newsletter for Disney World
Recently, I created a newsletter for current and future guests of Disney World. For this newsletter, I wanted to utilize some of Disney's brand elements, while also appealing to my target audience: mothers in the United States. Through my research, I learned my target audience values simplicity and attention to detail in their media. I used this to create a design focused on easy-to-read design elements. I included simple black lines to break up the body copy for each story. This is important when thinking about balance and proportion in design. If a newsletter is overloaded with copy, it can be confusing for your audience to read and understand what photos go with what story, or why the story is even in the newsletter.
Another large piece of any newsletter is photos. Photos should be used to complement each story in the newsletter. For each of the stories for Disney, I included one photo that fit the newsletter page in design and color. Also, the pictures I chose reflected key points in the story that may attract my audience. Photos should reflect the brand's image and Using the right pictures is essential to making your newsletter design balanced and effective.
Similar to effective pictures, fonts are important when designing a newsletter. You should choose font styles that compliment your company's brand while also being effective in the newsletter. For example, the font used in the title and headers shouldn't be the same as the font for the body copy. You can also utilize bold and italics when designing to reflect emphasis or balance in regards to the other type in the newsletter.
Here is an interesting graphic about newsletter typography. Photo from ThoughtCo.
Overall, designing a newsletter is not for the faint of heart. Newsletters take careful research and design strategies to communicate your organization's message to a target audience. It is important that any PR professional understands these specifics about newsletter creation and can learn to apply them to their own work.
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