Services > Publication Design

A look that says, "read me"

Every communications message you create needs a design that attracts attention and projects the image you are striving for. But is that enough?

At The Business Word, we recognize the need for superior publication design. That's true whether we're designing our own publications:

• Twins(tm) Magazine
• Financial Advertising Review
• Healthcare Advertising Review
• Health Care Strategic Management
• Hospital Materials Management
• Profiles in Healthcare Marketing

Or clients' publications such as:

• Buzz in the 'burbs
• Dog Days
• Best Practices
• eHealth Coach
• Contract Health Care
• Aventis's Managed Care Digest
• Lamaze Parents' Magazine
• Building Systems Magazine
• MGMA's Update
• Marion Merrell Dow's CLIPPERS Newsletter
• Pfizer's Facts & Figures for Hospitals
• Destination Hotels' Destinations Newsletter

A good design should:

• Encourage readers to pick up and read the publication.
• Portray the image your corporation wishes to convey.
• Appropriately identify the sponsor.
• Effectively combine text, photos, illustrations, charts and graphs
• Convey the message that this is a publication to be taken seriously-worth spending time with.
• Help simplify complex data, text and concepts for the reader.
• Allow flexibility in page make-up.
• Fit budgetary and printing constraints.
• Honor the printed word.

We believe that design should enhance, not override, editorial content. We've noticed a trend in recent years to jumble up design gimmicks on pages, rendering the text unreadable. Stilt-like typefaces appear everywhere, even though they can't be read, because designers think they look neat and clean. But we don't agree. Design for the sake of design alone doesn't cut the mustard, in our book. Typefaces have to be easy to read, and graphics have to serve the reader, not the designer. We like good, contemporary design that avoids throwing unnerving curve balls to the reader.

The Business Word's philosophy is that design should be fresh, clean and serious-appealing for the reader and used to help get the message across comfortably.

Our company is owned by voracious readers who are information-sponges. So our philosophy is shaped by our desire to communicate information very clearly-especially detailed and complex information-so that it is easily understood and can be used by the reader.

An attractive design is useful in its own right, yet it's critically important to deliver readable, timely and essential information in order to command readership.

Call Donald E. L. Johnson, Chairman, at 303-967-0129, or Susan Alt, President, at 303-967-0128.