Electronic Brochures: Add Versatility to Your Marketing by Scott Weinberg, Associate Editor/Digital Information Imagine having the opportunity to send information regarding your firm to a client in just minutes, either by e-mail or over the Internet. Further envision being able to target your information to the client's exact needs, be it site planning, hardscape development, or planting designs. Wouldn't it be great to be able to change your photos as easily as changing a light bulb? Well now you can do all of this-- and it's not too difficult! The last time your firm prepared a brochure that showcased your work was, when? Two years ago? You probably still have another 500 sitting in a box in the corner of your office. Go take a look! It most likely cost you only $600 for 1,000 brochures. How long will it be before you invest in another run to update your work and really target the market as it appears today? By utilizing either of two programs that were initially designed as presentation tools, you have the flexibility to create your own presentation to showcase your firm's talents. The programs are essentially free. Both PowerPoint and Corel Presentation come bundled in other software packages. (PowerPoint comes with Microsoft Office 97, and Corel Presentation is included in Corel WordPerfect Suite 8). Both were originally developed to help add a professional flare to your presentations. Words flying in from left to right, pictures and charts fading on and off the screen, really add a sense of interest to what normally would be a straight forward and usually dull presentation using an overhead projector. You can now use these programs to produce a slick and very visual presentation about your firm. PowerPoint takes only several hours to be able to use and a few more hours to master. All this can be done with on-screen help and very little or no hard copy documentation. It helps if you can see an actual presentation in order to understand what some of the program's capabilities are. Once you have a basic understanding of the program, it is simply a matter of manipulating the effects to do what you want. The first time you try to use the program, practice with a presentation of just two or three slides. This will make your first endeavor manageable and hopefully successful. The Corel Presentation program is almost identical to PowerPoint, with one major exception-- it does more! Since I have used PowerPoint in many of my presentations, I decided to use Corel Presentation to produce a real life "electronic brochure." The firm DixNance in Orlando, Florida was selected to be used as the "test" firm. The firm specializes in multi-family housing design. They supplied me with slides, photos and copy that they use in their information package. With all that in hand, it was time to begin. The most important step was to develop a story board, sort of a slide by slide idea of what the brochure should say about the firm. With the completion of the story board, the remaining task was to put each idea onto an individual slide ready to be viewed. Here is where the fun started! Each program allows you to create text and drawings together, or separate for each slide. The presentation can be run manually or can be fixed by the use of a timer for each slide and transition. The program has the ability to import just about any format when it comes to scanned images and drawings. Once the presentation was completed it became a fairly large file (about 36 MB). The presentation was compressed and put into the format that you can see on landscapearchitect (www.landscapearchitect.com), and was reduced to 3.4 MB. The presentation runs two minutes. The ability to have music and voice is also possible. Remember that the presentation you can view on line was done purely for demonstration. With a little creativity, you can easily create an electronic brochure that fully explains all the great projects that your firm is capable of handling! Give it a try-- the software is probably sitting somewhere on your hard drive, waiting to be discovered. The Corel Presentation program can create an "electronic brochure" to help add professional flare to your presentations and fully explain all the great projects your firm is capable of handling. The brochure can also be customized to include music and voice.