How to create a sell sheet?

[Anonymous]

Hello,

I have an idea that I want to license and I’ve learned the best way to communicate it is through a sell sheet. The problem is, I know the theory but I don’t know how to put it into practice. I can sketch it on a paper but that’s pretty much it. I’m not sure how to actually create it on a computer, what tools to use, which of them are beginner friendly and don’t cost a fortune. I want to keep it as simple as possible.

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

[David Kull]

I highly recommend Photoshop, it’s so versatile and it’s pretty easy to learn the basics of it just by watching a good tutorial. And those basics cover everything that you need for a sell sheet and even more. The downside is the subscription but you should be able to find it at a library or reach out to your contacts and ask if they can help give you access to theirs. It’s very popular so I’m sure you won’t have trouble finding a way to do it. Good luck!

[Adam]

This sounds interesting, can someone explain briefly what a sell sheet is? I mean, I get what its purpose is but how should it look like? I’ll have to do some googling on this as well.

[Theresa]

Sell sheets seem to work really well indeed. The goal is to fit everything that you want to communicate about your idea on a single sheet of paper, hence the name “sell sheet” (or “one sheet”, as I’ve seen many people call it).

I mainly use Fireworks for the graphics, it’s very similar to Photoshop. But there are free tools out there, like Gimp. You could also use Paint but I find it so time consuming! Also, I recommend printing on glossy picture paper, looks much more professional.

[Anonymous]

Hi Lucy,

My best advice is practice! The process I follow is pretty simple once you get the hang of it. First I sketch something on a piece of paper, just the basic look of it. Figure out how many images and how much text you want, and how to organise them on the sheet.

Then I start googling images about what my idea represents. For example if your invention is an upgrade to an existing object, like a tool, you will type in the name of the tool and pick some images that would look good on your sheet.

For the text, you never want to have too much text because it makes it clustered and will make people not want to ready any of it. Like you said, keep it simple. Having to describe your idea on one single sheet of paper, including images and everything, really makes you stick to the most important stuff.

I hope this helps, good luck!

[Maia]

Since you mentioned sketching, I think another way you could do it is to make a nice sketch on a sheet of paper and scan it. Then, you can use Photoshop or Paint or any software to manipulate it, add or change colors, text, images.

[Author]

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