Chanel, Mercedes-Benz, Apple, Cartier, Burberry. These are the brands that set the bar and that own their market segments. There are many lessons we can learn about designing luxury property brochures from the world’s most iconic luxury brands.
1. Design
Design is a critical capability that sets every luxury brand (and luxury property brochure) apart. Luxury may look simple on initial inspection, but as any designer will tell you, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication… and the hardest to achieve.
Brochures designed for luxury homes or apartments require a certain restraint in terms of design. Luxury brands stand strong, tweaking their logo, or typeface only occasionally. Like great oak trees, they grow and develop slowly over time. Consistency is the hallmark of a truly great luxury brand.
2. Typography
Luxury property brochures (in fact all brochures that we design) use a carefully selected range of typefaces. When we design luxury property brochures, we think more about how the font will look in print (of course), but also pay homage to the time-tested font selections of many of the world’s greatest luxury brands.
Serif fonts are the most commonly used fonts for luxury marketing, simply because they tend to look, and read better in print, and generally, because they tend to be older, they convey a sense of timelessness for a brand. Where newer online brands lean towards sans-serif fonts due to the readability of these cleaner, more streamlined typefaces on a computer screen – luxury brands lean more towards classic typefaces. That is not to say that luxury must always have a serif typeface, the times are changing and so too must the typeface – but simplicity and classiness are always at the heart of luxury typography.
Sticking to 2 or maybe 3 fonts will ensure the luxury brochure maintains it’s elegance, simplicity and of course, remains on-brand. Many property developers have brand guidelines in place that the brochure will align with.
3. Colour
As a rule when you design luxury property brochures, colours must be kept under control. Monochrome (black/white/greyscale), or simple 2-3 colour palettes will ensure the finished brochure is both stylish and oozing the luxury feel you need.
4. Paper
Paper selection can really set a brochure apart and convey the sense of luxury needed for your property. Working closely with a specialist print company, we carefully select only the best quality paper for our luxury brochure designs. The tactile nature of printed brochures still creates that lasting impact on a potential buyer the moment they pick it up – your paper is instrumental in creating just the right impression from the outset.
Everything must be carefully considered, from the weight of the paper (GSM), to the treatment of the paper (glossy, matte, or even untreated for a more natural eco-friendly effect). For luxury brochures, a heavier paper will almost certainly be a must – somewhere in the region of 250-400 GSM.
Printing
How the brochure is printed will also have an impact on the overall quality of the finished product. Litho printing is still considered by many as the highest quality form of printing, just slightly over digital printing (despite advances in quality in recent years). For luxury brochures, litho-printed letterpress gives that really opulent feel to the brochure (see example below), where the letterpress indents the paper slightly. Foil stamping with gold or silver can be used to give the finished brochure that extra-special feel.
5. Brand
Finally, but not least, the goal of any marketing activity is to build a brand. Brands sell. They help companies defy recessions and downward price pressure. A great brand shortens the sales cycle, and keeps customers coming back for more. Every aspect of the customer experience is refined and perfected, delivering the quality and vale that buyers expect.
Property is no exception.
Think of the buying process for a car. According to Google, the process goes something like this:
- Thinking (26 days)
- Researching (Google, dealer websites, review sites etc) (19 days)
- Buying (12 days)
The process takes a long time! There’s a lot of thinking involved, and it’s only getting longer for many purchase decisions. But would the process be the same for a Ford Focus as a classic Porsche? Or a Microsoft PC vs. an Apple Macbook Pro? Clearly the answer is no. The Porsche and Apple create the “desire” factor through their brand, which is built primarily through better design. The luxury buyer may skip most, or all of the research phase. For newly developed luxury properties, however, we may not have a well-established brand to work with. However, using the hallmark luxury branding tactics above, we can emulate the essence of luxury in our marketing collateral, brochures, websites and advertising.
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