Before they begin to read your newsletter, your clients and prospects will be judging value of your ideas by your newsletter’s design. Effective design pre-sells your competence and makes it easy for readers to understand your message. Design also helps set your newsletters apart from competition.

Here are five of 12 most common newsletter design mistakes that are made.

1.)Nameplate clutter: Design begins with nameplate, or newsletter title set in type at top of front page. Nameplate problems often include:

* Unnecessary words. Words like ‘the’ and ‘newsletter’ are rarely needed. Readers will unconsciously supply a ‘the’ in front of a title, if desired. It should be obvious from design and content of your publication that it is a newsletter and not a business card or advertisement.

* Logos and association seals. Your newsletter’s title should not compete with other graphic images, such as your firm’s logo and logos of trade or membership associations. These can be placed elsewhere on page, allowing nameplate to emerge with clarity and impact.

* Graphic accents, like decorative borders and shaded backgrounds, often make titles harder to read instead of easier to read.

2.)Lack of white space. White space – absence of text or graphics – represents one of least expensive ways you can add visual impact to your newsletters, separating them from competition and making them easier to read. Here are some of areas where white space should appear:

* Margins. White space along top, bottom, and sides of each page help frame your words and provides a resting spot for your reader’s eyes. Text set too close to page borders creates visually boring ‘gray’ pages.

* Headlines. Headlines gain impact when surrounded by white space. Headline readability suffers when crowded by adjacent text and graphics, like photographs.

* Subheads. White space above subheads makes them easier to read and clearly indicates conclusion of one topic and introduction of a new topic.

* Columns. White space above and below columns frames text and isolates it from borders and headers and footers – text like page numbers and issue dates – repeated at top and bottom of each page.

A deep left-hand indent adds visual interest to each page and provides space for graphic elements like photographs and illustrations, or short text elements, like captions, quotes or contact information.

3.) Unnecessary graphic accents. Graphic accents, such as borders, shaded backgrounds and rules – design term used for horizontal or vertical lines – often clutter, rather than enhance, newsletters. Examples of clutter include: