Use Caution When Using Two Colors In Your Promotional Material

If you choose to use two-color (or more) printing for your ad or other marketing material, be sure to use the second color only to highlight a few key points.

Reason: A second color, particularly a bright color like red, attracts the eye like a magnet. Thus, it give you an opportunity to attract a reader to the key selling points (benefits) in your ad. But when you overuse color and try to make too much stand out, you dilute it's value. In fact, I've seen ads where so much of the second color was used that the black stood out as different. The result, the reader's eye was attracted to the less important copy printed in black.

Here's a rule-of-thumb regarding attention-grabbing devices (of which color is one):

The more *things* you try to make look important,
the less important each will be perceived.

So, be selective with what you choose to highlight.

Also as a general rule ... two color ads will increase readership and response when compared to a single color ad, BUT, not usually by enough to justify the extra cost. However, there are other attention-grabbing devices you can use with a single color ad. For example ... bolding, italics, CAPS (BUT USE SPARINGLY BECAUSE ALL CAPS ARE DIFFICULT TO READ), underlining, font type (use with caution because misuse of fonts can be very distracting, which is never a good thing),

Font Size,

white space, centering,

------Tabbing, etc.

White space around copy can really make it stand out. And, of course, you can combine one or more of the attention-grabbing devices ... as I've done above. But, as you can see, when you combine too many it's very distracting. And again, distractions are not a good thing.

Copyright 2007 by Galen Stilson