Does anyone know of a good simple idiot-proof template for a newsletter? As corresponding secretary of the Columbus Cottonmouths (hockey) Booster Club, one of my duties is to write a newsletter. Writing the articles isn’t the difficult part - I’ve done that before. I just don’t know how to assemble the articles into some sort of decent looking format.
I use Word, if that is any help.
Most of what you want to do can be done in Word. Here is a site from which you can download a templates for books and pamphlets.
If you want something a bit more advanced, Microsoft Publisher is another common tool for this purpose.
OpenOffice.org has freely available tools for this purpose as well.
Professional newsletter editor, publisher, and layout artist here.
I think the key isn’t necessarily finding a template, or using a particular program, but learning and applying the basic principles of graphic design. Pick up some books or visit some Web sites on the subject. Look for newsletters you find attractive and emulate (i.e., steal from) them.
It’s getting late, so I don’t have time for a full-blown master class right now (not that I’m really a master designer, anyway), but here are a few basic rules to apply and beginner’s mistakes to avoid.
Pick a handful of attractive fonts that work well together and stick with them. One or two body fonts and three or four display fonts for headlines are all you need. DO NOT use a different font for every article or every headline. Absolutely nothing screams AMATEUR DESIGNER more than a four-page newsletter with 16 different fonts.
On the subject of fonts, your main body typeface should be a proportionally-spaced serif font. Except for short pieces, sans-serif fonts are hard to read. You can use them for sidebars or other short pieces, but don’t use them for full-length articles. Just don’t!
Conversely, headline and display fonts should be sans-serif. Avoid overly ornate or script faces, except for those rare occasions where it is appropriate to the subject matter. And even then, be careful. Using all caps in most script fonts is virtually unreadable.
Leave enough white space in margins, between columns, and around pictures. A page crowded full of text appears daunting and discourages readers. If you don’t have an image to go with an article, use pull quotes to break up the page.
Page layout within each issue and across issues should be varied, but consistent. Simple and functional is much preferable to flashy and unreadable. (Would that more Web designers followed this precept!)
There are several million other “rules” but this will do for now.
It’s rare for me to use more than three or four typefaces in a document.
Times Roman or Book Antiqua for body text. Maybe Bodoni or Garamond once in a while for a change of pace.
Heads in Arial, Helvetica or Trebuchet.
Pull quotes and little squibs of text (e.g.: stand-alone things like “General Meeting October 3rd” that are used as much to pad out empty space as anything else) can be just about anything you want. Depending on what I’m doing, I’ll generally use one of the “typewriter” faces, a “black” face (such as Gil Sans Ultra or Arial Black) or a “hand lettering” (not Comic Sans!) face.
You definitely don’t want to use, say, Book Antiqua for one article and Times New Roman for another. The effect is as if you ran out of type halfway through when you have two different but generally similar faces on the same page.