Brochure maker: an illustrated booklet from one paragraph

What a brochure is here

A brochure in Chapbook is a booklet with one idea on each page. There is no title page, no introduction and no conclusion: it opens on the first thing you want someone to know, says it in at most two short paragraphs or one short list, and shows one picture. The last section is always for finding or contacting you.

That shape comes from how a brochure gets read. Someone holds it for a minute, in a queue or between emails, and decides whether to come, call or forward it. The sample here, World Book Day, does this for a bookshop: a story to start the day, a book to make and keep, the shop’s history, the open evening, then where to find it.

Who it is for

• Shops, studios and venues announcing an event, a season or an open day.
• Service businesses that need something to send after a first call: what you do, who it suits, how to book.
• Marketers who need a downloadable asset for a campaign this week, written as well as laid out.

Your details stay yours

A model will happily write a plausible phone number. So the address, dates, prices and contacts you give the assistant are saved as details the book must carry word for word, and the drafting instructions tell it to copy them exactly and never to make up a detail of that kind. They land on the last page, and you can correct any page by hand.

Give it a link and the brochure also ends on a Next step page, unless you turn it off: a button to that link, and in the PDF a QR code for printed copies, so a paper copy still leads somewhere.

How it works

1. Write the brief. What the brochure is for, who reads it, and every detail it must carry.
2. Approve the outline. Planning uses 10 credits. Each section’s line names the picture it will carry.
3. Choose the look. It sets the type, the colors and how the pictures are painted, or describe your own.
4. Draft, edit, export. Each section uses at least 4 credits of writing and 5 for its picture. Export a typeset PDF, an EPUB, a Word document and a cover.

What it does not do

Chapbook has no canvas: you cannot drag a block across the page, because the layout follows from the look. It does not make tri-fold or gatefold panels, adds no bleed or crop marks, and has no paperback interior for this kind, so it is not the tool for a press-ready print run. If your pages are already written and you only need to arrange them, a design tool is the better choice. Pictures are generated, so they show the idea of your shop, not your actual shop.