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Ashleigh,
Here's a copy of the email I sent, with a draft of the brochure attached.
You are the greatest...I admire your energy and initiative on the conference and the brochure. It's great to have something to work with. Here are my comments on the brochure--some general comments in this email and editing comments on the brochure copy itself.
1. If we can focus on images as much as words, we're better off. Too many words tend to make people not read them all. So wherever we can, it helps to reduce the verbiage. The brochure is most useful as a selling/outreach tool to get people interested. Our purpose should be to get readers to talk to us, call, email or attend a meeting. So we don't need a lot of detail; just enough to tell readers the benefits of their involvement. People need to know right away why they should participate; what they can get if they give some of their time and energy to this. Photos or other graphics will help a lot, as long as we keep this fairly simple.
2. Particularly because we appeal to older people and those with disabilities, it's important to make this easy to read. Althought the script is pretty, it's a bit hard to read. The most recent font you picked is better, but the reading experts will tell us it is also hard to read. The brochure should feature at least 12 point type, if not larger. It's probably better, too, to avoid abbreviations and acronyms like CFGN. Hard to remember, not nearly as "friendly" and warm as full words, and not very informative to people who aren't familiar with the Community Food and Gardening Network.
3. Since we want this brochure to be useful for as long as possible, it's helpful to avoid anything that dates the brochure. So...I suggest putting it all in the present tense and listing accomplishments as though they are still occurring or will occur.
4. Unless you think there are compelling reasons not to use the slogan "Plant, Grow...and Share What You Know" I think we should have it on most things the group uses. People seem to like it. It communicates the flavor of what this is all about, and it can be an important part of the identity of the group. It attracts attention and offers both graphic and verbal identity.
5. We don't want to imply that the groups listed are the only ones who can be part of the network, or people will wonder why (as they already have) they or their group is not included. For many reasons, we need to be open to more participating organizations, associations, agencies and community groups. Listing them also communicates the flavor (diversity, partnership, public and private) of the whole endeavor.
6. Finally, a key objective of this brochure is to get more people involved. So we have to have an action line; an invitation and suggestion about what readers can do to take advantage of the opportunities provided. It's always good to try to get people to act, so I tend to put in several action lines.
More specific suggestions are on the document itself. For editing purposes I have changed the typeface from script to a more readable font. If we paid a graphic designer for the design, she would probably pick the font. Some form of serif makes it easier to read.
Hope this helps. Again, thanks for your work on this.
Rick
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