Create a Professional Looking Newsletter

If you don't want to use the preset templates in your publishing program, here are some tricks of the trade to help you create professional looking newsletters on your computer. (This assumes you have a working knowledge of your computer and publishing software.)

Steps

  1. Set up a template for your newsletter starting with page size (US letter size or A4 are usually best).
  2. Develop a layout grid which sets page margins, divides your page into columns, and establishes horizontal lines on which to "hang" your text and pictures. For example, page margins of .5" all around, a simple 4 column grid, with .125" gutter, and horizontal divisions every 1". Note that a grid simply organizes your elements, columns and art can be more than one column wide but don't overdo it.
  3. Design a simple masthead ["publication title"] with a logo, newsletter name (try 30 to 36 point type), business name, issue number and date. Proportion the masthead to take up a little less than a third of the depth of the front page, e.g., if your copy area is 7.5 wide x 10" deep, a 7.5 x 2" masthead with about an inch of white space below will be about right.
  4. Learn to use your style sheets--they'll save a lot of time in the end. To begin, keep the number of styles to a minimum. For example, Body text, Headline, Subhead, Caption, Bulleted List, Contact Info might be all you need.



Tips

  • Serif types, such as Times or Garamond are easier to read in text so try starting with a Body text style of 9 point Times, with 10.5 point line spacing.
  • Keep your fonts to a minimum. Choose one serif type family (e.g., the Times family) for body text and captions, and one sans serif (e.g., Helvetica family) for headlines and subheads. Each has a series of fonts with similar characteristics, too many different fonts looks "bitsy" and unprofessional.
  • Resist the temptation to make the fonts too large. 9 point body type is elegant, 10 point body type begins to look amateurish. But consider your audience, 11pt is better for a retirement village.
  • Use the best copyright-free photos and clip art (check the web for dozens of free clip art sites) you can find and again, resist the temptation to make them too large.
  • Boxed text or quotes -- the white space surrounding any boxed quote should at least equal, but preferably be 2x or 3x the space between lines of text.

Warnings

  • Don't feel you need to fill every inch of space. White space allows the eye some rest and contrast, and will better show off your content.
  • Don't go overboard with special effects. A drop shadow or other effects, if used appropriately, can give a professional look to your project; but doing too much looks cheap.
  • Only ONE space between a period and the start of the next sentence, not two.
  • Control hyphenation by setting your body text style to no more than two consecutive hyphens.
  • Spell check, spell check, spell check.
  • Avoid text widows and orphans, i.e., words left by themselves at the end of paragraphs or single lines left at the top of columns. It's usually easiest to do this with editing, but you can also tweak the character width or tracking. Don't go overboard with this though or your text will look inconsistent.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

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