Creating a marketing brochure with CorelDRAW® Graphics Suite

Source

1. Preparation

The first step is to collect all your images in a folder and then make sure that they are all in the CMYK colour mode, which is the mode that is used for professional printing.

1. Open Corel PHOTO-PAINT
2. Select all the images in the folder by selecting the File menu | Open
3. For each image, select the Images menu | Convert to CMYK Color
4. Select the File menu | Save as
5. Choose Tif as the type of file format
   

All the images are now ready for the printing process. As a later check you can always get information about the colour mode when you click on an image in CorelDRAW. You can then see the information about the image in the Status Bar at the bottom of the screen.

If the image is in RGB bitmap mode, select the Bitmap-menu | Mode | CMYK Colour. The second step is to draw the graphics:

• The door
• The light bulb
• The starburst offer symbol
  

2. Drawing the background (a door)

The door will look like a modern, simple metallic door with glass. Open CorelDRAW. Start by setting up the page size:

1. Create a new document by selecting the File-menu | New.
   
   
2. Edit the page size in the Property Bar:
   
   
   

   The document will be a handy size, a little wider than an A5 page.

3. Create a rectangle that covers the whole page, by double-clicking the Rectangle Tool.
   
   
4. You now need to create the illusion of a metallic surface with the Interactive Fill Tool.
   
   
5. Drag horizontally across the rectangle with the Interactive Fill Tool, and you create a gradient fill that needs to be edited. As default it will be black and white, and linear. You can edit the fill type in the Property Bar.
   
   
   
6. When you have changed the fill to a Conical Gradient you need to change the colours of the fill.
   
   
7. Select the Interactive Fill Tool once more, and you will see a half-circle with dotted lines in the rectangle.
   
   
   
   
8. Drag a medium grey from the colour palette, which is located at the right hand side of your screen, to the first square in the dotted half circle. This way, you change the start colour. Drag a darker grey to the opposite square. And finally drag a white colour on to the dotted line. You should end up with a result like shown above.
   
   
9. Experiment with more colours in the gradient fill by dragging more colours on to the dotted line.
   
   
10. Create a copy of the rectangle by selecting the Edit menu | Copy and then the same menu and Paste.
    
    
11. Change the size of this copy by clicking on it and dragging the left line to the right, the right line to the left and the bottom line upwards, creating something like this:
    
    
    
    
12. Change the gradient fill to a dark grey to white linear gradient fill, by deleting all the colours you have inserted, until you have only two colour handles left. Select “linear” from the property bar.
    
    
13. Create another copy of this rectangle, apply a dark blue colour by clicking on the colour in the Colour Palette, and change the width and height to make it like shown below:
    
    
14. Finally you must create the door handle:
    
    
15. Select the rectangle tool, and create a rectangle.
    
    
16. Edit the size in the Property Bar to 5 x 35 mm.
    
    
17. Round the corners by changing the corner radius in the property bar to 50:
    
    
    
    
18. Apply a linear gradient fill to the handle.
    
    
19. Apply a shadow to the handle by selecting the Interactive Drop Shadow Tool and dragging from the middle of the handle to the right.
    
    
20. Remove any black outline on the handle by right-clicking the cross field in the Colour Palette.
    

This drawing of the door will be used as a basis for all the following 7 pages, but in slightly different ways.

3. Working with multiple pages and backgrounds

1. Select the Layout menu | Insert Page and add 7 pages to the document.
   
   
   
   
2. Select all on the first page by selecting the Edit menu | Select All Objects and make a copy of this.
   
   
3. Click on page 8 in the page-section in the bottom of the screen.
   
   
   
   
4. Paste the copy by selecting the Edit menu | Paste and the click on the Top Mirror Button in the Property Bar.
   

The second page will have the metal background only.

1. Click on the background rectangle on page 1, copy it and add it to page 2.

   Page 3 will have almost the same background, but as this page will contain text that might be difficult to read, you must maintain the middle rectangle. So copy all rectangles from page 1 and paste them on page 3. Delete the top rectangle and apply a white colour to the remaining middle rectangle.
   
   

   
   
   
2. Fill pages 4-7 with the same backgrounds as the front page. Just change the colour of the top rectangle to white.
   
   
3. Delete the door handle on these pages, as we are already inside the shop.
   

Now you have created the basic layout of the brochure and only need to add content to the pages, which can consist of product pictures, informative text and graphic elements.

4. Drawing a starburst offer symbol

In this section, you will learn how to create a starburst symbol, which will be used on page 2:

How to create the starburst symbol:

1. Select the Star Tool in the list of drawing tools.
   
   
   
   
2. Drag with the tool to create a star that is twice as long as it is tall.
   
   
   
3. Edit the star by changing the settings in the Property Bar.
   
   
   
   
4. Apply a yellow fill to the star, and a red outline with a width of 2 mm. You change colours on the outline by right-clicking a colour in the colour palette. You change the width in the Outline Width field in the Property Bar.
   
   
5. Select the Text Tool and write some text, and place the text on the star.
   
   
6. Place the star in the middle of page 2.

5. Drawing a lightbulb

Now we will create the light bulb to illustrate the generation of ideas.

Creating the light bulb:

1. Start the drawing of the light bulb by drawing a circle. Select the Ellipse Tool
   
   
2. Drag with the Ellipse tool across the page.
   
   
3. Edit the size of the ellipse in the Property Bar:
4. Apply a radial gradient fill to the circle, starting with white and ending with yellow.
   
5. To create the bottom part of the bulb, you need to create some rounded rectangles.
   
   
6. Select the Rectangle Tool and drag a rectangle on the page.
   
   
7. Set the size to 12 x 3 mm in the Property Bar.
   
   
8. Apply a linear grey to white gradient fill to the rectangle.
   
   
9. Round the corners by editing them in the property bar.
   
   
10. Copy the rectangle 4 times and place them like shown below.
    
    
    
    
11. Create a smaller black rectangle, and place it at the bottom of the light bulb.
    
    
12. Place the light bulb in the middle of page 3.

6. Converting a drawing into a silhouette

1. Make a copy of the light bulb, select it and click the Weld button in the Property Bar. In this way you connect all the shapes into one symbol. Change the colour of this symbol to nothing, by clicking the Cross field in the Colour Palette.
   

Use this silhouette in different places in the brochure.

The basic elements are now in place. You just need to add photos and text to finish the brochure.

7. Adding photos in random and standardised sizes

You can add photos in different ways:

On page 2 we will add images of random sizes.

1. To place the photos on the page, select the File-menu | Import, and select all the photos.
   
   
2. Click on the page, and the photo is placed in the original size. Drag before you click, and in this way you can manually determine the size of the photo.
   
   
3. Resize the photos by dragging in a corner handle. Resize the photos in a randomly order.

   On page 1, 4, 5, 6 and 7 the photos will be placed in equal sizes. The easiest way to do this is to place the photos in placeholders:

1. Create a rectangle of your desired size. On the first page the size is 35 x 22mm. On the other pages the size is 55 x 40 mm.
   
   
2. Import the first picture to the first page, and drag the cursor around the rectangle, so it is just a little bigger than the rectangle.

1. Select the Pick Tool and move the picture so you can see the rectangle again.
   
   
2. Select the Effects menu | Powerclip | Place inside Container, and a big black arrow will occur.
3. Click on the rectangle and the picture is placed inside the container.
   
   
4. Continue with all the other pictures.

8. Creating text areas and defining style templates

There are two ways to insert text in CorelDRAW: Artistic and Paragraph text.

You can create Artistic text by clicking somewhere on the page with the Text Tool. This is mostly for headlines or single lined text like on the front page and back page of the brochure.

You can edit the text like in all other programs by selecting the text and editing the font, the size etc. in the Property Bar.

When you need multi lined text you must drag the Text Tool across the page, and you will create a placeholder for Paragraph text.

Or you can draw a rectangle of a specific size, and then click inside the rectangle with the Text Tool.

On page 3, the text container has a size of 145 x 160 mm. This container should have 2 columns in the text to make it easy to read. The light bulb is placed inside the text, with the text floating around the bulb.

Two column text

1. When you have filled the container with text, select the Text menu | Columns and 2 columns in the Column Settings dialog box.
   
   
   
   
2. Place the light bulb on top of the text, select the bulb and click the Wrap Paragraph Text button in the Property Bar. Select Straddle Text and 5 mm in the Text Wrap field.
   
   
3. Continue with the text on the other pages.

The text on page 4, 5, 6 and 7 contains product descriptions.

In order to maintain a common look in your marketing materials, it is a good idea to create standard text styles that can be reused. In the product description we have used 4 styles: a headline, body text, paragraph header, bullets and a price style.

To define these styles, select the Window menu | Dockers | Graphics and Text Styles. One of the many dockers appears to the right of the document.

The docker already contains several styles. You apply a style to the text by first selecting the paragraph with the Text Tool, and then by double clicking the appropriate style.

To define a new style, you can right click in the white area of the docker, and then select New | Paragraph Text style. Immediately hereafter you can change the name of the style.

To change the look of the style right click the new style and then select Properties in the list of choices.

Make sure to select the new style, before you click the first Edit button. Now a dialog box opens.

Under the Character tab you can change the look of the characters, e.g. font, size and style.

Under the Paragraph tab you can change the appearance of the whole paragraph, e.g. alignment, spacing between paragraphs and indents.

In the “Effects” area, you can define bulleted text by selecting “Bullet” in the Effect Type dropdown.

To save the style as a template, you must right click in the docker once more, select Template | Save as, and you are now able to place this style file on your computer or the company intranet. To use the style, your colleagues need to load the template into their documents.

9. Preparing the brochure for print

The first times you send your brochure to a service bureau, it is propably best to let the people there do the prepress work for you.

1. Select the File menu | Prepare for Service Bureau, and a small Wizard opens to guide you along in the process.
   
   
2. When you have followed the Wizard, you will have created a folder with copies of all the files.
   
   
3. Send this folder to the service bureau.