Design a Newsletter Postcard in Photoshop

When you work freelance, you are constantly looking for new ways to do old things. Give yourself an edge on the competition. One of the most common freelance tasks I perform for clients is marketing - advertisements of all sorts, newsletters, brochures, etc. So when I discovered this concept of a postcard newsletter, let's just say that I was playing in Photoshop for hours trying to deal with the flood of ideas it gave me.

Newsletters have a proven track record - they keep your name in front of prospects and loyal customers. This develops branding, which is worth its weight in gold. The problem is that newsletters take a lot of time to produce, to read, and cost a chunk of change to print and mail.

Postcards also have a proven track record, as long as you ditch the sales pitch. So why not combine the two and create a postcard newsletter that can be compiled quickly, printed cheaply, and mailed for pennies?

This guide will walk you through the steps of designing a postcard newsletter template in Photoshop which you can use over and over again. These same steps can be applied to similar print designs like full newsletters, e-zines, and e-postcards. All you need is a copy of Photoshop (I'll be using CS2 in the illustrations) and some patience.

Step One: Gather Inspiration & Resources

The first step in any design project is the same: get some ideas, and get "stuff" to make those ideas possible.

In our case, we're going to hunt down examples of postcards and newsletters that we like the look of. Try doing a Google Image Search for "Postcard" and "Newsletter". What we're hoping to find are 3-5 designs that really have the right look for our needs.

For the example I'll be doing, I'm going to focus on an imaginary coffee shop. This coffee shop wants to market people who will buy their coffee beans, coffee/cappuccino/espresso makers, serving ware, etc. And this coffee shop also wants to focus on the "sophisticated" - a clientele with plenty of money to spend. These needs tell me exactly what I'm looking for in a design idea - something sharp, something clean, something that focuses on (what else?) coffee.