When it comes to marketing materials like business cards, brochures, and custom postcards, design can be intimidating—especially if you’ve never had these items printed before. What makes an effective design? How much information is too much? Too little? There are two ways you can go when designing brochures, marketing post cards and business cards; one is to simply turn the design chores over to the expert designers in the customer service department of the printer or take their advice. But if you are determined to come up with your own designs, you can make the job much easier.

Start by studying the marketing materials you get on a daily basis from other companies. Do you notice how the most effective brochures include the most important information and avoid cluttering up the space with distracting copy? You’ll also see a trend in the most successful brochures; sticking the central message of that item and repeating it. Marketing brochures are like an advertisement for your company, but they should really be an advertisement of a single features or group of related features. Don’t try to sell the entire company in a single page. Whatever you need to promote in that brochure should be given all the focus.

The same goes for marketing postcards, where you have even less space to deal with. Keep the message simple, the logo prominent and don’t forget to include the vital data. If your postcard advertises an event, include the time, date and phone number. If there’s a service you need to promote, include hours of availability and whether an appointment is needed. Postcard printing is easy if you stick to simple, easy to read design.

Business cards are the simplest designs to tackle since everyone is so familiar with them. What makes an effective business card? Take a look at the business card online samples to get an idea of what you think works best. You can always order a small batch of cheap business cards as a prototype and try them out with your favorite clients and get a second opinion. When ordering cheap business cards, try to get cards that come in the same color scheme as your basic company graphics or logo for consistency’s sake.

In the end you may decide that designing these materials isn’t for you after all, fortunately help is available with the design process. Just be sure to give your printer plenty of time to get the job done. If you have a rush order, it may be too time-sensitive to try experimenting with your own designs.