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If you're the owner of a small business, the thought of creating a company newsletter or ezine can be a little scary. If you have little or no graphics design experience you may not know what to do to create a professional looking ezine or newsletter, and not one that screams, "I DID THIS ALL BY MYSELF!"

One way around this it to hire someone to create the newsletter for you. But not every small business owner has the funds for this. Still, a company newsletter is one of the best marketing tools you can create for your business. So try the following tips and develop a professional looking newsletter you'll be proud of:

1. Pick one font for headlines and subheads, another for text. A good combination is a bold sans serif headline font (like Futura ExtraBold Condensed or Helvetica Heavy or a modern-looking font like Meta, Moderna, or Officina San Serif) paired with a simple serif font (Times, Garamond or Garamond Condensed, Galliard, etc.) for text. Use a smaller italicized version of text font for photo captions.

2. ALL text should be the same size (12 point usually, or sometimes 10 or 11 point, depending on the font); use uniform sizes for heads and subheads--larger headlines for more important articles. Most page layout and word processing programs let you set up style sheets. Set up a style for text, headlines, subheads, captions, etc. This is a very easy way to lay out the newsletter, making sure all fonts and sizes are uniform.

3. Flush left/ragged right text looks best. Justified columns can leave weird looking spaces between words, and centered headlines, text, and ads tend to give the newsletter an amateur appearance.

4. Look at some newsletters. Find a design you really like; set your newsletter up the same way - same number of columns, same size margins, and same size sidebars on each page. Don't try to make each page have its own design. Pages should have a uniform look.

Follow these tips to create a short, simple newsletter at first. Over time, you can develop additional topics and columns for your newsletter. First, just learn the basics of creating a professional looking publication that can be used to help create a closer, ongoing relationship with your customers and clients.