How to Design a Flyer

A flyer gets about two seconds between the hand and the bin. Almost everything that makes a flyer work happens in that window, and most flyers lose it in the first line. The flyer designs here are laid out around that window; what goes in them is the part below.

Do not lead with your business name

This is the commonest mistake and the most expensive one. Nobody is looking for you yet - they do not know you exist. Lead with what they get: the offer, the event, the problem you solve. Your name belongs at the bottom with the phone number, where somebody who has already decided will look for it.

One message

A flyer listing eight services communicates that you will do anything, which reads as desperation rather than range. Pick the one thing you most want to be called about and build the flyer around it. If you genuinely have two audiences, print two flyers - it costs very little more.

The three-second test

Hold the flyer at arm's length and look at it for three seconds. If you cannot come away with the what, the where and the how to act, the hierarchy is wrong - usually because two things are competing to be the largest. Only one thing can be the largest.

Give the details their own space

Address, hours, phone, and one web address. Set them small but not tiny, and group them at the foot with room around them. This is the part someone photographs on their phone, so it has to survive being read at an angle in bad light.

Printing

• A5 for handouts and letterbox drops, A4 for noticeboards and windows - though for a board read at a distance, a poster carries further than a flyer.
• 130-170gsm - light enough to carry a stack, heavy enough not to feel disposable.
• Matt rather than gloss unless there are photographs, and there are none in these designs.
• Print a proof of one before you order a thousand. Screens flatter, and typos survive every reading until they are on paper.

How many to print

Fewer than you think, first. Response rates on letterbox drops are commonly well under one per cent, so five hundred is a test rather than a campaign. Print five hundred, see what happens, then change the offer rather than the design if nothing does.

The same flyer usually wants a second life in a feed, which is a different set of constraints and a different set of dimensions - the interface sits on top of the design there, so the middle of the frame is the only safe place for anything that matters.