Newsletters that stands out from the rest

Create a newsletter that's outstanding

Newsletters that stands out from the rest:

By Thomson Chemmanoor

Newsletters provide an effective means of staying in touch with key constituencies, and in building brand and organization loyalty. It is a great means of keeping your employees, members and customers informed of what’s new in the organization and to promote products or services.

Most of the newsletters have a flat, finished size of 8 ½” x 11”; however, you can also create additional folding options to create self-mailers for distribution. To make your newsletter stand out from the rest, it is advisable to use 2 or 4 colors in the newsletter. The formats of newsletters most frequently used are the two-page newsletters and four page newsletters which have both sides printed. The fold could be a half fold that provides 4 pages, a tri fold with left and right flaps opening to reveal a message or a Z fold where the piece opens up accordingly.

The content of the newsletter comes next on the agenda. The quantity of material required for the newsletter depends on how much you spend on the newspaper and the number of newsletters you intent to publish. Single-sided newsletters running to a few hundreds can be done on an inkjet printer while thousands of newsletters should be printed with litho printing as this is cheaper and makes the newsletter look better to stand out from the crowd of newsletters. Use pictures having higher resolution for the newsletter. If you intend to use pictures from the web for your newsletter, it is advisable to have them enlarged, as they are too small to make an effect on the newsletter.

As newsletters with ragged right text have more space on the left side of a graphic, than the right, the text wrap has to be adjusted so that the text on the left side of the graphic is closer to the graphic. One of the ways of making readers enticed to read a story, and to make the newsletter stand out from other newsletters is by using pull quotes in the newsletter. The pull quote has to be placed within paragraph, and not between paragraphs. This is because the reader may get confused between the pull quote and the subhead! It is also better to avoid placing the pull quote too close to the text the quote it is taken from, as the reader is most likely to get confused by reading the same text twice. To make the pull quote stand out in the newsletter, you could use different sized points and font style, use larger quote marks, place the pull quote in a ruled or screened box, or use a horizontal rule above and below the pull quote.

It is always better to make the most important visual the largest, as readers tend to associate size with importance. If you place visuals of the same size next to each other or on a two-page spread, there will be no difference between the two visuals, and both will get the same level of importance. If there are several photos of the same size, group them together to create one dominant visual from the multiple small photos.

Of course, the main thing that makes a newsletter stand out from the rest is the content and the presentation of the newsletter. Make the content as interesting as possible, the layout as attractive as possible and the presentation as unique as possible, and you are bound to get a newsletter that stands out from the rest!