: What should a designer consider when deciding on the print size of promotional materials? When it comes to creating printed promotional materials such as leaflets, brochures and any other print

@Murray976

Use. For example direct mail has Postal restrictions. You can't just arbitrarily create a size you want. Well, you can, but mail costs increase dramatically for custom sizes. Sticking to standard postal sizes greatly reduces mailing costs.
Audience. A six-color, spot varnish, gold-foil piece is not going to be received well if your target audience is monster truck viewers. And at the same time, a distressed, retro-inspired, "rugged" design will not be received well by Fortune 500 companies. (Generalizing a bit, but you get the point.)
Standards. This may fit under your Familiarity headline. But some pieces are expected to be a specific size, for example, business cards. Over or under sized business cards, or cards on unique materials such as steel or wood, can be cool to look at but as soon as you try and file them in a Rolodex or other standard card file system they become a problem. If they are a problem for the recipient, they are often tossed.
Bindery. Pieces which require die cutting (non-rectangular pieces) or custom folding will increase costs.


I don't know that I agree with your price sentiment. While exceptionally oversized pieces can drive production costs up, if a design fits on a standard size of stock, there should be no cost increase. For example, anything that fits on an A4 or 8.5x11" sheet should be the relatively similar in cost. It doesn't matter if it's a 6x9" or 10x4" or 2x3" piece. Obviously the more individual pieces you can gang on a sheet of stock, the lower the cost will be. Heck, online printers utilize gang printing all the time to offer lower prices.

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