Putting together a newsletter can be lots of fun. Your creative juices get flowing as you begin your layout, with such a wide variety of choices for fonts, article placements, graphics, even paper types and colors. It can be easy to sometimes get carried away.

But let’s suppose you already have a good handle on how overusing font types can be a negative for your newsletter. You know that too many graphics can crowd out your message. You strive to keep it clean and simple. These are steps on the path to a great looking newsletter. You cannot, however, forget consistency.

Someone who uses a template to design his or her newsletter each issue has faced the issue of consistency head-on. Recognizing that it is a time and work saver to reuse common elements each issue allows a newsletter to be recognizable and consistent issue to issue. If you find that you are starting over each issue, you may have lost the benefits of remaining coherent in your design.

For example, you may decide that in your upcoming issue, you’d like to try a new font for headlines. You assure yourself that this is a minor change and that by changing every headline to a single new font, you haven’t broken any design rules. It may seem minor to you, but you have lost a chance to further cement your relationship with your readers. People like the familiar—and even though it may not be on a conscious level, your readers eventually come to recognize the look and feel of your newsletter and associate that look with your message. If that look changes each issue, you have sacrificed uniformity for your sense of creativity.

This isn’t to say that your newsletter design cannot change over time. Every newsletter producer should reevaluate his or her newsletter from time to time to allow for improvements and changes. Rather than introducing changes each issue, limit your upgrades to an occasional revamping or an entire makeover, explaining to your readers what improvements you’ve decided to make. Thus, you will reap the full benefits of remaining consistent and your readers will come to enjoy a consistent, quality product from you.