The design of a brochure or any other graphic media is a process that needs to be carried out by experts. Professional designers have been trained to make use of the Elements of design -shape, texture, line, value and color- and combine them in order to get results that are efficient and that satisfy the needs of the audience. In every design discipline, design Elements and Principles are the main tools the designer will use to maximize the final product. If the designer is familiar with the Principles of design -balance, rhythm, emphasis, and unity- he will create a design that is visually appealing and that attracts the attention of the audience. Graphic design seeks a balance between visual sensation and graphic information in order to create designs that are interesting and attractive.

Texture, which is one of the Elements of design, can be physical -the texture you can actually feel with your hand- or visual -the illusion of texture that is created with paint or other materials, but which is not real. Texture is particularly important in the design of brochures, since these are a design medium that is printed and therefore can be touched. In contrast to other design media such as website design or e-book design, brochures are handed out to audiences on the street. The fact that people can actually touch the material from which brochures are made places a lot of importance on physical texture.

There are many aspects the designer must know in order to create a design that is efficient. If the expert is familiar with color psychology and the principles of perception he will be able to produce results that please the audience. Color psychology and the principles of perception are elements that have a great influence in the way the human eye perceives and understands an image or a design. Colors carry a lot of meaning and they produce an effect in the minds of people. If used correctly, they are very useful tools to convey meaning and to produce unconscious associations between ideas and graphic elements.

According to some psychologists, there are many factors that have an influence on the way the human eye perceives objects and images. Perception plays a very important role in the understanding of messages, since the way in which we perceive an image is paramount to the correct conveyance of the message this image transmits. A German school of psychology called The Gestalt postulated some principles that prove that the human mind configures elements using perception and memory. This school dates from the beginning of the twentieth century, and its most important exponents were Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka and Kurt Lewin. These theorists postulated that the elements that make a composition are affected by where they are and also by what surrounds them. They developed the Principles of Figure and Ground, Similarity, Proximity, Closure and Symmetry.

The Principle of Figure and Ground deals with the tendency of the human eye to contrast figures (those elements that are similar) and ground (those that are dissimilar) to perceive figures as a whole. Similarity is the Principle through which we tend to organize elements according to their similarities in shape, color, size, etc. Proximity is the tendency of the human eye to perceive elements that are close to one another as belonging together. The Principle of Closure explains that it is easier to perceive lines when they are joined than when they are opened. The last Principle, Symmetry, postulates that we perceive wholes rather than individual parts.