Would You Trim the Trees From This Brochure Redesign?

2nd Featured Brochure Makeover & Challenge: Marketing With Trees? Each Thursday I'm featuring one of the redesigns of the Keystone Consulting brochure that have been attempted by our readers. I'm also challenging you to tell us what small but significant changes would you make to the redesign if you weren't allowed to do a complete overhaul.

First, here's what the original brochure looks like:

Original Keystone Consulting brochure

The second redesign of this marketing brochure was posted in May 2006 by Brocolli (the person, not the vegetable). While there have already been and continue to be comments and critiques posted in the forum for various redesigns, feel free to post your own observations there or in the comments section of this blog post for this particular redesign. Keep in mind as you view these redesigns that some of the makeovers have been attempted by those with very little design experience and knowledge. Others will stand out as being quite professional and obviously done by someone with a great deal of talent. However, it takes more than just design sense to do these makeovers right. Each project begins with project specifications. While some of the redesigns may be really cool, ask yourself "Does it meet the design parameters as set out by the client?"

Brochure redesign by Broccoli
PDF of outside and inside of brochure

Critiques of This Redesign

My observations about this redesign:

• While I'm not clear on the tree/marketing connection, I think that colorful fall foliage photo accompanying the Confucius quote is nice. And in my mind I can tie the two together -- beautfil falling leaves that reappear fresh and green in the Spring...
• Addition of the map with the contact information. Great!
• The inside of the brochure is very simply done but quite nice. The details of what the client offers are set apart from the pricing information through the use of color (green for money, perhaps?)
• Good use of repetition (color blocks, font styles, the fade along the bottom edge) to tie together elements from the inside and outside.
• "Marketing that makes Sense" -- as a title I'd rather see "that makes" also capitalized.

Overall, I like this redesign. My biggest concern is the tree. I'm not really seeing an obvious tie-in between that tree on the front panel with what the client is selling or who the brochure is targeting. Am I missing something obvious?

CHALLENGE
If you were handed this brochure (the featured redesign, not the original) and told to not make siginicant changes to the overall layout, what specific smaller tweaks would you make that could significantly improve it? Last time the challenge said not to change the choice of photos. With this challenge, I'm inviting suggestions on a different photographic choice -- or tell us how you might work with the tree photos that were used. In the comments, below, tell us what improvements you would make (and why) without totally redoing the entire brochure. Yes, you might prefer to scrap the whole thing and start over, but that's not the challenge.