Brochure design that sells when you are not there.

In Dubai, yes. Property advertising requires a Trakheesi permit from the Dubai Land Department, the permit number has to be displayed on the marketing material itself rather than held on file, and since 24 April 2023 the Madmoun service has required a scannable code on print and audiovisual property advertisements. In practice that means the block is a layout element with a reserved position, not something added at the printer. To be clear about our part: we design the artwork to carry what it has to carry and we will tell you what is missing. Obtaining the permit is your brokerage or developer’s to do, with your own compliance advice. How the licensed name that appears on the piece is settled in the first place is argued at branding in Dubai.

A second layout, and whether you need one depends on who receives it. Right to left mirrors the object rather than only the words: on a folded piece the panel order reverses, so the cover moves to the other end of the sheet and every crease has to be re-reckoned. A translated file poured into the English layout produces a piece that opens backwards, which nobody notices on a screen and everybody notices in a hand. Where Arabic is in scope we draw both on the same fold template so they stay one object, and we say plainly when an engagement does not include it.

The reader, and therefore the length and the order. A brochure is handed over in a moment, at a stand, in a showroom or after a meeting, and it has seconds to earn being kept. A company profile is requested, and it is read against a list by someone checking whether your licence, your registrations and your record are all there. If what you are being asked for is a document that will go into a vendor registration or a tender file, you want the second one, and that is argued at company profile design.

Decide by how long the reader holds it, not by how much you have to say. A bi-fold gives you four large panels and suits a piece that will be studied on a desk, like a specification sheet an Al Quoz fit-out contractor on a DET mainland licence leaves with a client comparing three suppliers. A tri-fold gives six narrow ones and suits a sequence read standing up, which is why it survives an exhibition hall. The wrong choice is usually a tri-fold carrying content that needed room, and the tell is type set below ten point to make it fit.

We hand over press-ready files and work with whichever printer you use, and we are happy to manage the press if you would rather not. The files are built so they are not tied to one supplier: bleed, trim, fold marks and colour set for the stock, and preflighted against the specification of the press that will actually run it. A file that only one printer can accept is a file that costs you a negotiation every time you reprint. How print sits alongside every other surface the brand has to appear on is argued at branding in the UAE.

Yes, and it is built for that. You receive the editable source and the press-ready files in your own name, with the fields that change most often, a price, a date, a permit number, set as text rather than baked into artwork. Two things are worth a short pass from us rather than a self-edit: a new language and a change to the fold. A price change is not one of them.

Work backwards from the press slot, which sits well before the show. Printers here run their own queues around the exhibition calendar, and a hall at the World Trade Centre does not move for a proofing round, which is one of the things that makes Dubai a print market with a season, so the real deadline is usually a fortnight earlier than the date in your plan. In that situation we settle the format and the regulated content first and release the press file for the piece that has to exist, then finish the secondary items while the first is on the press. Tell us the show date on the first call and we will say what fits.