BROCHURES
& FLYERS!
The Letter tri-fold brochure template: the outside and inside spreads, with fold guides. ⋯ › Brand kit… opens the brand kit dialog and the Nonprofit & community example kit is added; Apply to document recolours all six panels and fills the tagline and contact lines.
The community garden needs paper
Our example: a volunteer-run community garden. Forty raised beds, a polytunnel, a shed full of donated tools and a committee of seven who all have opinions about fonts. This spring they need a brochure for the library rack, a flyer for the plant sale, a handbill to give out at the gate, and in June a programme for the fundraising concert in the orchard.
The usual way: a word processor, a text box that wanders off the page when someone adds a comma, and a brochure that folds straight through the middle of the phone number. Then the print shop emails back: “Can you resend with 3mm bleed?” Nobody knows what that means. Somebody's nephew is called.
Here is the week in PopCraft instead. One volunteer, one brand, five templates, no nephew.
Monday to Friday, one job a day
- 01MONDAY
The brochure
The Letter tri-fold, branded with the garden’s kit. Story on the flap, contact on the back, three seasons inside. - 02TUESDAY
The plant-sale flyer
A DL flyer: “Spring plant sale”, a date, a place, a website. One for every café window on the high street. - 03WEDNESDAY
The handbill
A5 for the noticeboard, A6 for handing out at the gate. Same words, one file. - 04THURSDAY
Preflight, then proofs
Every file checked, then printed at home with crop marks to fold and cut a test copy. - 05FRIDAY
Off to the printer
CMYK PDFs with bleed and marks, sent to the print shop. The concert programme follows next month.
The brochure, in the garden’s colours
New › File, search “tri-fold”, open the Tri-fold brochure. It is a Letter sheet on its side, two pages, with the fold guides already drawn. Every panel is a component with a heading and body, so the six panels share one look and you only type words.
Then ⋯ › Brand kit…. In the clip it is the Nonprofit & community example kit: deep green, a warm yellow, a friendly sans. Apply to document and the cover turns green, the tagline and the “Find us” lines fill from the kit, and all six panels take the new fonts. The garden's name on the cover is a field you type once.
The Letter tri-fold brochure template: the outside and inside spreads, with fold guides. ⋯ › Brand kit… opens the brand kit dialog and the Nonprofit & community example kit is added; Apply to document recolours all six panels and fills the tagline and contact lines.
Which panel is which
The question that ruins more brochures than bad fonts: when it's folded, what's where? Here is the Letter tri-fold, opened flat. The template puts things where people look for them.
Folds in first. “Our story” lives here: the first thing seen when the cover opens.
“Find us”: address, phone, email, website. The panel people keep.
Name and tagline on the brand colour. The only panel a stranger sees.
Revealed when the cover opens. Breakfast, or the first thing you do.
The heart of it. Lunch, or the main event.
Under the flap. Evenings, the finale, the call to action.
The dashed lines are the fold guides the template draws on the canvas. Print page 2 on the back of page 1, fold the flap in, fold the cover over it.
A DL flyer for every café window
The plant sale gets the DL flyer: 99 × 210mm, a colour header, the copy, and the date and place as detail lines. It's the size that fits a standard envelope and the narrow slot in a leaflet rack. The words are real ones: “Spring plant sale. Perennials, herbs and heritage vegetable seedlings grown on site. Bring a box.”
For the print shop: ⋯ › Export › Export as PDF…, CMYK, Full bleed off so the page carries its 3mm bleed, Crop marks and Registration marks and color bars on. The notes under each box say what the file will be, in plain words.
The DL flyer template, 99×210mm. ⋯ › Export › Export as PDF… opens the PDF export. Colour is switched to CMYK (uncalibrated), Full bleed is turned off so the page carries its 3mm bleed, and Crop marks and Registration marks and color bars are ticked.
A handbill in two sizes, one file
The Handbill template carries the same flyer at A5 for the noticeboard and A6 for pockets. What, when, where and a line at the bottom: four fields, typed once, shown on both.
In the clip it takes the Wellness & spa example kit: a serif heading in terracotta on cream. Point being, a kit is a whole look, not a recolour. The garden used its own green one, and the handbill matched the brochure without anyone holding a colour chart up to the screen.
The handbill template: an A5 flyer and the same flyer at A6. ⋯ › Brand kit… opens the brand kit dialog and the Wellness & spa example kit is added; Apply to document recolours the flyer and sets its fonts: a serif heading and the spa’s colours.
Five templates, five jobs
print-brochure-trifold2 folds, 6 panels
print-trifold-a42 folds, 6 panels
print-bifold-programme1 fold, 4 panels
print-flyer-dlflat
print-handbillflat
All of them are real Print files: fixed pages, bleed and a safe margin drawn on the canvas, text you click into. Need a size that isn't here? Page setup has A6 to A0, Letter, Legal and Tabloid, postcards and posters, or type your own.
Check it, then proof it at home
The Preflight tab checks every page before it leaves: words crossing into the safe margin, art that stops short of the bleed, hairlines that vanish on press, low-resolution photos, missing fonts and text that has outgrown its box. Each problem says where it is. (Here it's checking a business card; a brochure is the same click.)
Then ⌘P for a proof on the office printer. Turn on Crop marks and fold a real copy. Nothing finds a typo like a folded brochure in your hand.
The bold business card template. The Preflight tab opens in the right panel and Run checks both sides: image resolution, safe margins, bleed, hairlines, overflowing text, fonts and transparency, each issue listed with where it is.
Off to the printer, and the big night
The PDFs go to the print shop. A month later it's concert night and the Bi-fold programme comes out: cover and a thank-you on the outside, the running order inside, piece by piece and composer by composer. Its thank-you line is already the right kind of warm: “To everyone who lent a music stand, a car, or an evening.”
A bi-fold is one Letter sheet folded once: two pages, printed double-sided. Making a stapled booklet instead, with more pages? The Print dialog has Booklet, which puts the pages two to a sheet in folding order and tells you how to print and fold them.
The whole-issue comic template: covers, eight pages and a centrefold. Command-P opens Print. Pages on the paper is changed from single pages to Booklet, and the dialog counts the sheets of paper and says how to print and fold them; then Four pages per sheet, for a proof of the whole run.
An event poster. Command-P opens Print: what to print (every page), how the pages sit on the paper (single pages), and Full bleed, already on for a print page. Crop marks is turned on; the dialog says what each sheet will be.
The whole-issue comic template. ⋯ › Export › Export as PDF… opens the PDF export. Color is switched to CMYK (uncalibrated), Full bleed is turned off so each page carries its bleed, and Crop marks and Registration marks and color bars are ticked; the notes under each control say what the file will be.
The week, the old way and this way
| THE USUAL WAY | IN POPCRAFT |
|---|---|
| A word processor and a text box that wanders | Templates with panels as components and fold guides drawn |
| Folding through the phone number | Panels laid out for where they land when folded |
| The committee’s green, slightly different on each piece | One brand kit, applied to every file |
| “Can you resend with 3mm bleed?” | Bleed set in the template, checked by Preflight |
| A booklet in the wrong page order | Booklet imposition puts the pages in folding order |
| Five different apps for paper and posts | One app, one brand, each size its own file |
We fold the file. They fold the paper.
PopCraft doesn't print, fold or post anything. It makes the file: the right size, real bleed, fold guides, crop marks, fonts embedded, CMYK if you want it. The CMYK conversion has no colour profile, so for a brand colour that must match, send RGB and let the shop convert. Posting about the plant sale too? That's social media, and the whole event is on plan an event.
Questions, answered
What brochure and flyer sizes are there?
Page setup has tri-fold brochures at Letter (11 × 8.5in) and A4 (297 × 210mm), a bi-fold at Letter, a DL flyer (99 × 210mm), and A6 to A0 plus Letter, Legal and Tabloid. Folding presets draw their fold guides for you. Any other size can be typed in.
Is a tri-fold one page or six?
Two pages: the outside of the sheet and the inside. Each is one piece of paper with two fold lines on it, so exports keep it whole instead of cutting it into panels.
How do I print a double-sided brochure at home?
Press ⌘P and print both pages double-sided. Which edge to flip on depends on your printer and how it feeds a landscape sheet, so print one test copy and check the inside isn’t upside down. Then fold along the guides.
Does PopCraft print or post the flyers?
No. It makes the file: your own printer with ⌘P, or a PDF for a print shop or online printer. Paper, folding and delivery are theirs.
Is the CMYK PDF colour-accurate?
It is converted without a colour profile, and the dialog says so. For an exact brand colour, send the RGB PDF and let the print shop convert it with their profile.
Can the same words go on social media?
Yes, but as a different file: social posts are pixel sizes, not paper. Apply the same brand kit and they match. See the social media page.
FOLD! YOUR TURN.
Tri-folds, DL flyers and handbills, folded and bled right. Free to start, in your browser or on your Mac.