Many clients think that making sales and marketing collateral available online in pdf format ensures that they are more accessible as an organisation.
They also see it as a way saving money, by not having to pay for printing and distribution. Added to that, the content can be relatively easily, quickly and cost effectively updated. All good reasons, you might assume, to put even more design for print online.
Right? Absolutely wrong!
What works in print doesn’t work online. By the time you’ve magnified the text enough to be able to read it on screen, you have to scroll across or mouse click to view the next page.
Images fill the screen. The context is lost. It’s a generally cumbersome and unsatisfactory experience for the reader.
Moreover, few customers want to print out full colour pdfs locally, because a) they cannot read them as they were meant to be read, b) they use up a lot of ink and c) it’s not environmentally friendly.
Don’t put pdfs of brochures online. Make the content of those brochures the content of your web pages.
For those customers who do want a printed version, by all means show them a front cover in pdf format and link it to a mailout request.
The brochure can then be posted to them with a personal covering letter, thus affording you the opportunity to develop a closer and even more meaningful dialogue with those customers.
By all means put interactive pdfs (i.e. those with embedded hyperlinks) on the web, as long as they're accompanied by printer friendly versions.
Interactive brochures (you read them as you would a newspaper supplement, using your mouse to turn the pages) are also the flavour of the month in some circles. Here again, make sure they're accompanied by a printer friendly option.
The pdfs you can see in the examples of our work do not perform the same function as the documents discussed in the left hand column of this page.
They're not designed to be read in detail. They simply show, in portfolio mode, how our copy and the design work together.
We don't provide the design, although we can make best-fit agency recommendations based on your requirements.
Alternatively, we would be more than happy to work with your preferred agency to help ensure that:
Business benefits drive the words
The words drive the need for images
The words and images drive the design.