English 420Y - Business Writing Online

The brochure I found was for a golf benefit 4-player scramble tournament at the Colovista Country Club in central Texas. The first thing that caught my attention is the context. I feel I was bias toward this brochure because I am a big golf fan. Another aspect I found visually appealing was the background. It was an image of a golf ball rolling just short of the cup on the green. I feel this was a perfect choice for a background because even if the texts was sub-par, the reader would know the brochure's main focus was on the game of golf. The next piece that caught my attention were the unique pictures of the course. Again, this may just be a bias of mine because I work at a golf course, but I am fascinated in the layout of golf course's designed, and the brochure include exquisite views of the signature holes on the course. Finally the last visual aspect that I found to be very appealing was the alignment of the whole brochure. I was taught in a class I took previously at Purdue that the eye naturally views visuals in an "X" pattern. The eye starts in the upper left-hand corner, down to the bottom right-hand corner, then to the lower left-hand corner, back up to the upper right-hand corner. The brochure does a good job of including the information where it would benefit the most. If a viewer took the approach I mentioned, the first text they would read would be "Win a Convert Car on the 15th Hole." This alone may grasp the attention of any viewer because people aren’t faced with an opportunity to win a car everyday, so it is very unique. As you continue to follow the pattern the next thing you see are the specifics of how to enter the tournament, and how much it will cost to play. Visually I found this brochure to be phenomenal. One thing I would change, however, would be the color of the text. As the book suggests, a designer should try to utilize the use of the color wheel. This brochure seems to only use supplementary colors, when complimentary colors may make it visually more appealing. I say this because the text is a lighter color on a fairly lightly colored background. So, instead of using the light colored white and yellow, they could have tried a darker style that would jump out more. In my mind, I visualize this as easier to read, but it is always good to try a number of different styles. Granted it is readable, but one almost has to strain the eye to read some of the text in the lower left-hand corner.

After viewing this brochure, I think it is important to make the visual aspects jump out at the reader. One way to assure this is to have a strong background color or image. I'm not sure what may to the best choice for this project, but the golf course background was definitely the right choice for this particular brochure. Also, I feel our brochure would benefit most from taking this "X-shaped" layout. We need to try to include the most important or unique information in appropriate spots to the reader does not overlook them. It is also important to provide appropriate pictures, and put those pictures in appropriate spots. As indicated in the text, one should place the pictures aligned with the text that describes the content of the picture. When I first read over the assignment, I initially felt we would benefit most from the three page foldout brochure because the organization will have a lot more information to be included, so we will have to change the way everything appears to accommodate the new structure. Overall, I really liked this particular brochure, and I feel if we mimic some of the aspects from this brochure, we have a visually appealing document.

http://www.tsd.state.tx.us/parents/documents/GolfBrochure.jpg