Reading Response (5)
The brochure I chose to post is for the Minnesota State Patrol Summer Camp. The site is: http://www.dps.state.mn.us/patrol/employment/HS_Cadet_Brochure07.pdf The brochure is both informative and persuasive. It gives information about the camp but also persuades students to attend. This brochure definitely utilizes the saying that people judge a book by its front cover. The front cover of the brochure catches your eye immediately and keeps your attention throughout. It uses a comic theme with state troopers throughout the entire brochure. The theme helps give it consistency. The brochure uses proximity in text by putting information that has a relationship closer together. It also utilizes alignment by indenting with bullets each main point under the headings and left alignment with the headings. The spatial layout is nice because it is not overwhelmed with words because each page has at least one picture interrelating to the text on that page. The brochure obviously displays contrast with its complementary colors (colors on opposite sides of the color wheel). The brochure's text size and font choice are very legible.
The document is an excellent example of what an effective brochure because it “presents content so that visual, design, and textual content work in harmony to convey information and create desired effect” (Thomson Handbook Ch. 25). It utilizes the different methods and techniques to developing a professional and effective document. I will use this brochure as a template to the one our group has to make for the Service Learning Project. I like the use of themes with both the images and colors. Both stay consistent throughout the entire brochure. It is well organized answering first questions such as what, where, when and then goes more into detail. That is the organization that I would like to see my group take.
Comments
Comment
I think this is a good brochure, it has some good images and the front grabs attention. I think it is effective at the start getting kids interested in attending. It shows pictures of guns and explains it would be an exciting career rather then being stuck in a cubical. It also provides a person to contact for information. It is good on the inside that it is white where the text is, this makes it easy to read. I agree that this is a very organized brochure and will keep it in mind as a template for our groups. Although I would like to change the colors up, I think something could be better than the maroon.
Group Reply
I think you picked a good brochure as template. The theme was eye catching and relevant to it's intended audience. For our brochure I think it is important to create a theme, and keep it consistent throughout the brochure, like this one did. I agree that the layout was not overwhelmed with words. This is something that I think is paramount for our brochure. The sentences were concise, to the point, and the use of bullets was effective. I also liked how the brochure used the same background color for their bullet points. This made it look organized and professional. Most importantly, as you stated, the brochure answers the questions of what, where and when. We should definitely make sure our brochure addresses these questions.
Reply
The fact that the brochure that you selected is persuasive is a good observation. That feature is something that we are going to need to use in our brochure. We are going to need to make people willing to volunteer. But the tone of our brochure has to be friendly. We want people to be willing to help out, however, we do not want this to sound like a charity case. We do not want the people who are coming to this dinner to feel less important then the people who are attending the dinner. I think this is something that we should keep in mind when we are writing our brochure. The tone is very important.
Comment Reply
"We do not want this to sound like a charity case." “The tone is very important.” That is a very significant point to make especially when you consider your audience. Many of the volunteers could be people who are going to attend the Christmas Dinner Event or families and children that attend the CRFC. I think our biggest appear for persuasion is emotional appeal. Christmas time is all about giving and this would be an excellent event to give towards. It seems to me that this organization is doing wonderful things for the south side of the community. I think people should feel humbled and honored to help such an excellent organization.
Group Reply
I thought that the comics mixed in with the pictures were good because it caught the eye of the reader right away and related to the topic. I think their text was easy to read and they used good fonts and font sizes. I like how they had the titles in a different color so that it was easier to find where each section began. The bullets were good as well because they helped break up the information so that it was easier to read. The theme was kept consistent so it made it flow pretty well. It was well organized and would be a good template to use for organization in help making a brochure.