Google Docs is a great tool for creating and editing documents online. Features like Drawing with Stylish Plugins add versatility to this humble word processing tool. You can also use Google Docs to design brochures when needed.
The great thing about designing brochures and brochures is that you can create custom brochures from scratch. This is not rocket science and is pretty easy to do. All you have to do is get quality, high resolution, eye-catching images and create a nice color palette. Looks pretty interesting, right?
So, let’s see how to create or design a great brochure in Google Docs.
How to Design a Brochure in Google Docs
A standard tri-fold brochure is a single sheet of paper folded into three. It usually consists of three parts – the first flap, the core content, and the back cover. Needless to say, the first wing usually has an attractive and eye-catching display with a small summary of the content. The second column or second flap has all the details, while the back cover has the contact, address and similar details.
There are a few things to keep in mind when designing a brochure. The first is the color palette, and the second is the design theme. Both of these need to remain consistent across all three flaps.
Now, we’ve got everything set up, let’s get down to business, shall we?
Stage 1: A standard brochure is usually about 8.5 x 11 inches and yields a neat trifold brochure. To set the dimensions, open a document in Google Doc and click File > Page Setup.
Now change the orientation to Horizontal. Also, click Page Color to choose the background color for your brochure. This ensures that the brochure is printed in the same color all the way to the edge. Still optional.
Now set the Margins of the pages to about 0.25. This allows you to build the design down to the edges.
step 2: Now comes the interesting part. We’ll take the help of tables, as Google Docs doesn’t have the ability to create individual boxes. We will create a standard 3 x 2 table.
To do this, click Insert > Table and select 3 columns and 2 rows. When finished, drag the table border to the bottom edge.
The idea is to color the bottom row in a different hue for an interesting look.
Stage 3: To add a color, right-click the table cell and choose Table Properties > Cell background color.
Repeat the above steps for the remaining two cells.
Step 4: Now that we’ve looked at the color of the brochure, let’s fill the columns with images and text.
Click Insert > Image to insert an image directly. At this point, make sure this is a high resolution image to ensure minimal pixelation.
note: All images must be the same size. Otherwise, the table may overflow to the next page, which is something we do not want.
Interestingly, you can also crop images into shapes. To do this, select a column and go to Insert > Drawing. Then click the Image icon to upload an image from your computer.
Once loaded, click on the Crop icon and choose a shape to your liking. Needless to say, you will need to scale the boundaries of the image.
Google Docs does not allow you to move the picture freely. But you can still play around with the vertical alignment inside the cell. Move the cursor over the picture and press Enter.
step 5: Now that the brochure color and images are processed, it’s time to add some text. Again, there are two ways to do this. You can place the text directly inside the second line and align the text to your preference.
Or you can explore a more elegant way by including text inside a shape.
To do this, go to Drawing > Shapes. Now all you have to do is add the text inside the shape and insert it wherever you want.
In our case, we had the background color disabled and our finished brochure looked like this. Is not it beautiful?
Once the rough draft of the brochure is ready, print a copy to see if it gives the right mood before continuing to print the entire batch.
unleash your imagination
It goes without saying that Google Docs isn’t the best place to design brochures, especially if you’re looking for some flexibility. But if for some reason you can’t access tools like Canva, Crello (see Canva and Crello), or Adobe Spark, this humble word processor proves to be a successful backup plan.
