Stepped Accordion Fold: Create Enviable Marketing Brochures

Part of Smartpress’ exclusive Designer Folds collection, the Stepped Accordion unfolds easily to reveal panel after panel of your content. A custom fold with custom options, this creative collateral forms a stepped border when folded, allowing you to easily organize your content and recipients to pick and choose where to open it.

Stretching to over 28 inches wide on durable 80# cover stock, Stepped Accordions give you lots of space to work with, whether you’re printing event programs, promotional pamphlets or brand guides for your business.

For Lauralee Végvári, brand designer at Black Button Distilling, ample real estate was crucial when designing advertising brochures for distributors, potential partners and branded presentation packages.

“[It] provided plenty of space for imagery and messaging in a compact product. The fact that it was different from the usual tri-fold or gate fold was also appealing,” she said. “Very crisp, clean colors printed on quality paper make this a useful sales piece that is not ignored.”

What do you like most about the Stepped Accordion fold?
Trish Witkowski: “What I like the most is that it’s really quite simple. Take a classic accordion fold and shift the placement of the scores so that the zigzagging panels create a stepped effect. It’s both brilliant and practical. You get the style and flexibility of an accordion, combined with the organizational benefit of a stepped format.”

What makes this fold truly unique and noteworthy?
“The visual texture of the steps makes the Stepped Accordion unique, but what I think makes it noteworthy is its linear nature. The panels can be viewed two at a time in smaller spreads and as one long layout when opened. It’s basically a long rectangle. Your content can connect from left to right in a linear flow, which makes it easy to organize, design and envision a layout. It’s also easy for the recipient to read and process the content.”

What are some ideas for how to best utilize the Stepped Accordion?
“The Stepped Accordion is endlessly versatile. In its most common form, [it’s] outstanding for informational brochures where the steps are labeled with categories and each tab carries a section of information.

“However, I’ve seen contrasting imagery and texture wrapping blank tabs to provoke curiosity and interest. I’ve seen oversized typography cropping off the edges of the tabs and playful experiments with tab depth.”

What advice do you have for people designing print for the Stepped Accordion?
“This format will help you determine how to organize your information. It’s intuitive, which is a real benefit, and each side can be designed independently of the other. It’s also easy to mock up because it’s just a rectangle with uniquely placed scores.

“With that said, I would never design a Stepped Accordion without printing a mini version to trim and fold to check placement of content and user experience. Also, be meticulous with placement of text on the tabs. Even a minor misalignment will magnify itself because the tabs are the visual focus.

“If you want to have color breaks at the folds, make sure you extend your color box a hair past the fold guide to ensure you don’t have a sliver of color from the next panel showing on the edge of your tab – this is to accommodate for the width of the score and subtle variations in machine folding.”

Anything else you’d like to add about this fold?
“The Stepped Accordion is a great way to step into experimenting with unique formats for print marketing. You really can’t go wrong with it. Everyone is drawn to the unique stepped profile and the ease of navigating content. [It’s] intuitive to design, easy to mock up and standard in size and proportion.”

The Wrapped Stepped Accordion takes a different approach to this design. How should you choose one versus the other?
“The Stepped Accordion is the perfect entry point to unique format design. Consider the Wrapped Stepped Accordion to be more of an intermediate format. It has an impressive but complex centered step configuration (stepping left and right) and utilizes two of the panels as cover panels. Unlike the Stepped Accordion, both sides of the piece must be considered at all times when designing.

“An additional benefit of the Wrapped Stepped Accordion is that it can mail without an envelope. The Stepped Accordion would need an envelope to mail, [so be] strategic. How will the brochure get to the recipient? What do you want the viewer experience to be? What is the content journey of the brochure?”

What do you like most about the Wrapped Stepped Accordion fold?
“The Wrapped Stepped Accordion keeps its steps a secret, cloaked behind the wrap of a cover, and offers more of a surprise when opened. In contrast, the Stepped Accordion’s steps serve as part of the cover view.

“It’s really a design decision: do you show the steps or reveal them upon opening? There’s no right or wrong answer. As the designer, it’s up to you to decide which approach works for your content and your desired experience.”

Hint: Get more folds:

• Multipurpose Marketing: Do It All with an Accordion Fold Brochure
• Unveil the Unexpected: Marketing with Designer Folds
• The Big Reveal: Advertise with the Square Folded Cross