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Creating a Brochure using MS Word

April 16th, 2008
by John Moore
in How Do You Do That?

There are few things that bug me more than bad margins. Not sure if this obsession came from my design background or if it goes much deeper to my 3rd grade elementary school teacher who was the Gestapo of writing…and bad margins drove her nuts. Regardless, we see more and more small businesses trying to save a buck and “design” their own brochures using tools readily available to them. By default, Microsoft Word is often the program of choice.

Microsoft Word is a program printers both love and hate. We love it because it has substantially improved the quality of the documents our customers bring us. And we hate it because if the document happens to look crummy, it’s potentially a reflection on our business.  I cringe at the thought of someone asking, “who printed your brochure?” and it being one of those “masterpieces” with horrible margins. So, the purpose of this page is to address one aspect of the brochure—the margins and how to properly set them in MS Word.

  1. Launch Microsoft Word.
  2. From the menu bar, select FILE > PAGE SETUP.
  3. While still in the PAGE SETUP window, change the paper orientation to LANDSCAPE. Click OK.
  4. From the menu bar, select FORMAT > COLUMNS.
  5. In the COLUMNS window, select 3 columns and set the spacing to 0.75″. Click OK. By the way, columns are were most people take a wrong turn.

Here is the golden rule for columns: The spacing between your columns should be DOUBLE what your page margins are set for. If you choose 0.5″ page margins, your column spacing should be 1″. If you choose 0.25″ page margins, your column spacing should be 0.5″. It’s that easy.

(Note: these steps are applicable to all versions of MS Word. Your version might have the menu located in a different place but the principle is the same.)

There it is. A little adjustment like that will make a world of difference in your brochures. They will look more professional because they will be better balanced. They will fold in thirds properly and which will make them look great. And most of all, they won’t be screaming whatever it is bad brochures scream.