Re: Mixed capitalization for marketing brochures - what do you think?

[Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com>]

Hi Debbie,

Marketing materials are all about carrying your company brand while
promoting products. It's not as simple as finding an industry
standard, but determining what your company's, product's, and market's
personality is and tailoring all messaging to that personality.

Part of reviewing this particular piece you received should be looking
for brand resonance. Never mind that capitalization varies. Does it
make sense visually/emotionally? Does it draw the reader in and
immediately catch their eye and interest? Is it uniform not unto
itself but how it carries your company brand?

Now, about hierarchy... Are the capitalization conventions uniform for
the level and type of information being presented, or is there a mix
per content type? This is the most important thing to look for. You
should have a strong degree of consistency among like content types.
That the conventions are different is merely a tactic for engaging the
reader differently based on the content type.

My advice is to step back and look at the whole piece first to see if
it visually fits your brand and product positioning. Then, look at the
individual elements to see if they do their job to engage the reader
appropriately and call attention (and make memorable) the highlights
of the piece. Finally, look to see if it's doing this consistently for
like content types.

Hope this helps.

Bill

2012/3/5 Debbie Hemstreet <D_Hemstreet -at- rambam -dot- health -dot- gov -dot- il>:
> Hi All,
>
> Long time since I've written, am writing from my new job in Israel...
>
> I'm working on a marketing brochure and would like to know if there are any standards when it comes to how capitalization is used in marketing brochures.
>
> I have a proposal from a graphic artist which, in general, I am pleased with, but I'm a bit disconcerted by the following:
> This is an 8 page brochure that has two inside folds, when opened, it looks like this
>
> Unopened: Page 1 (flip and see back, page 8)
>
> First opening: Page
>
> Second opening:  Page 2 and page 7
>
> Flip open page 2 and page 7 and see: page 3, 4, 5, and 6 in one large spread
>
> My problem is the use of capitalization, but the artist says that since its art, it's OK. I'm not sure.
>
> Referring to above page numbers
>
> Page 1: all small letters - looks very impressive though
> Page 2 and Page 7 - First letter caps for nouns, verbs, etc. in titles, standard capitalization for paragraphs.
>        Again, looks very impressive
> Pages 3,4,5,6: Headings are ALL CAPS
> Page 8 - One heading is all caps, and then a sentence is presented as a heading but it is first letter caps throughout the sentence.
>
> ---------------------
>
> I think this is just too much different capitalization. For simplicity, I'd rather have it all be one style throughout, but then differentiation throughout becomes a bit of a problem if we go with the no capitalization style (already done in another brochure which looks quite nice).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Opinions?
>
> Ideas?

-- 
Bill Swallow
Content Solutions Manager
GlobalScript, a division of LinguaLinx
http://globalscript.com
http://lingualinx.com

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