Case Study
Twelve Brochures, One Tight Budget
MARCH 2010 — Armed with a grant from the Centers for Disease Control, the Pulmonary Hypertension Association chose to partner with an experienced design firm to give life to two brochure series, one aimed at patients and one aimed at health care providers. The PHA hoped for fairly wide distribution of the series of 12 brochures, and MillerCox worked with their project manager to figure out how best to allocate their budget among printing, mailing and design. Key issues included how the brochures would be reproduced and distributed, how long the shelf life should be, and what tone was appropriate for each series in order to deliver the message effectively.
Back at the studio, the MillerCox team reviewed the near-final text and brainstormed appropriate layouts. PHA wanted to be able to print the brochures on an office printer and mail them in a standard business envelope. This goal proved unworkable based on the amount of text, and we learned that editing was not an option. MillerCox kept asking questions, and we learned that the brochures would probably be handed out as singles, or mailed in batches. In no case would a single brochure need to be inserted into a standard business envelope.
We recommended an 8-page booklet format that would pace the information comfortably and attractively, allow some room for imagery, and be easy to print from a home or office printer if pre-printed copies were not available.
As always, MillerCox submitted a simple but comprehensive written agreement outlining design fees, deliverables and deadlines, working backward from the finish deadline of early March.
The next few days included a lot of creative brainstorming, research and exploring before we completed a creative brief describing the primary message of the brochure series, the audiences and design, budget and deadline parameters. Our goal was a design that would tie all of the brochures together, yet still allow each brochure to stand alone. With ample time for design, some really interesting ideas can emerge, so MillerCox always requests a couple of weeks in the production schedule to let design concepts percolate.
Once the creative brief was approved, MillerCox created two design directions and presented them as PDF documents via email. PHA selected one of the designs, and after some minor tweaking, production was underway. The design was applied to all 12 brochures, with layouts delivered by email. Each was printed out at PHA, changes were marked, and the corrected PDFs were emailed back to MillerCox. After a few rounds of minor edits, we finalized the files to ensure they would run well on press and sent them to the printer.
Meantime, MillerCox requested competitive printing bids from our trusted printers and three printers that our client recommended. We sent sample “dummy brochures” on the paper we had chosen so that the client could feel the weight and texture and make an informed decision.
MillerCox selected the printer that offered the best value, and supervised printing of 12,000 copies of each of six brochures. The other six brochures were provided as web-friendly PDFs. We also provided PHA with a web-friendly and print-friendly PDF of each printed brochure for in-office printing and downloading from the PHA website. The printed brochures delivered on time and looked terrific.