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When it comes to effective branding materials, there are a number of effective ways to tell the story of your business and get it in the hands of your audience. Successful brand awareness doesn’t have to be boring - printed marketing materials that communicate your brand are a great way to not just deliver a useful product for your customer or client, but also subtly and effectively strengthen the visual impact of your business.
Journals and Notebooks To Communicate Your Brand
Branded journals and notebooks are an effective way to spread awareness of your business, no matter what you’re selling or who you’re selling it to. By creating a product that offers both a daily use for your audience as well as a space to communicate your brand, you’ll be getting the word of your business out there without your audience even realising it.
Tell Your Brand’s Story From Cover To Cover
By placing your brand on the external cover of your branded notebooks and journals, you’ll be placing your business front and centre of these high-traffic marketing materials. Start with the front cover and keep it simple. All you need to include is your business’ name, logo and your slogan or year the brand was established. Complement this design with a back cover that includes more information about your business, like an email, postal address, phone number and your brand’s logo and name again. Having these subtle indicators of your brand in the constant eyeline of the user of the notebook or journal means that they’ll unknowingly be absorbing your marketing each time they go to use your printed product.
Simple But Effective Branding
It’s the everyday use of these products - thanks to their resourcefulness and professional simplicity - that subtly communicates your brand to the user without having to force your message. The best kind of marketing materials are ones that aren’t so obviously marketing something - understated branding is extremely effective if the product is used frequently. To keep things simple, design a front and back cover with minimal distractions - basic shapes that complement your logo and the colours of your brand are enough to turn this piece of marketing material into a sleek product your client will want to keep and use.
Journal and Notebook Print Specifications
As for print specifications, A5, A6 and A7 are recommended for sizing your journal or notebook - this way, your user can carry it around with them and have it on the go, which means more eyeballs on your brand. A colour cover is effectively eye-catching, while a gloss or silk paper finish keeps the design professional. If you’re wanting your marketing materials to stand out, consider adding a matte or gloss laminate to grab your client’s attention, along with a spot UV or foil stamp accent to accentuate your logo’s impact.
The internal pages can either be designed as blank or with lines for writing - think about how your client may use your branded notebook or journal and make a decision about the pages based on that. You’ll want to consider greyscale for printing the internal pages on uncoated paper. The same idea can be applied to the binding method you opt for. Will your client benefit from spiral binding that lets the notebook or journal lay open flat, or is the chic, modern equivalent of wire-o binding more appropriate, or is your marketing product more suited to perfect binding to create a sleek square, flat spine?
Incorporate Your Logo Into A Branded Diary
Just like journals and notebooks, diaries are another great source of spreading brand awareness in subtle, simple and useful ways. While a journal or notebook can be picked up and put down based on usage, a diary is an everyday source of information, allowing your brand to penetrate your client’s daily tasks with constant but understated messaging.
Design A Diary For Everyday Use
A physical diary offers a great means of marketing your brand thanks to its daily application and opportunity for professionalism. A printed paper diary is filled with space to incorporate your brand into the story of your client’s year, with subtle messaging and reminders of your business’ calendar of events and important dates.
Build your branded diary with a foundation of daily pages that give your user space to fill in their schedule and events according to the dates. For this, you can opt for weekly spreads or daily spreads, and even include monthly grids or a yearly grid to offer your client options of how they prefer to use their diary. You’ll want to incorporate your brand with your logo, business name, slogan and contact information on the front and back covers like you would for a branded notebook or journal - plus the year that the diary is for on the front cover - however the internal pages also offer you room to illustrate the story of your brand.
Consider several pages before the dates begin to introduce your brand and reflect on the upcoming year. Then, fill in any events throughout your business calendar on the corresponding dates in the diary. For example, dates when collections are available to buy, important client events or open showrooms, or notable periods of sales. These easy insertions of your brand’s happenings throughout the year will serve as easy reminders for your client, without them having to do any of the remembering themselves.
You can also consider including bonus material like lined pages for taking notes, budget planners to help your client stay on track of their finances throughout the year, and even some reflection pages that include question prompts and space to jot down ideas. The more features you add into your branded diary, the more versatile it becomes, encouraging your user to incorporate it into all parts of their daily life.
When considering the printing specifications of your branded diary, follow the guidelines outlined above for journals and notebooks. While the design of a diary's pages will differ, the print format will remain the same.
Branding is more than just slapping a logo onto something. When it comes to printed marketing materials, there are a range of different ways that you can share the story of your business through effective products that don’t just serve as brand awareness, but also as handy materials your client will want to keep and make use of, again and again and again.
To learn more about our printing services for marketing materials and get started on your printing journey, get in touch with our team today. We're here to help you navigate the evolving world of printing with confidence.
