The church group you belong to is organizing a bake and rummage sale and you get elected to design the flyer. Finding volunteers to provide the food and goods is easy but advertising the event is harder. Church members will come and support the sale but to make money you need to entice as many people as you can to come. Using some simple flyer design tips and inexpensive tools, the sale can be successful.
Content
Begin the process by writing down all the information that comes to mind about the event. Don’t worry that you will have a lot of text at first. You will edit it and organize the content later.
Write a catchy headline. Use action verbs and keep it short. This, plus an image, will be the first thing people read so make it simple and interesting.
Next, organize and edit the text you wrote earlier. Flyers are printed on standard 8 ½ by 11-inch paper so cramming everything you can think of to produce a striking flyer design is counterproductive. No one will read it, finding it too complex to wade through. Start with the basics, what are you doing, what can people expect, then add the date, time and any cost at the bottom. Contact information such as a phone number, email address or website is also helpful.
Images
Since the finished product is not very big, using a lot of images will make it hard for the reader to quickly register what they are looking at. Choose one image—either a photograph or illustration—that is strong and simple. For this event, a large picture of a cupcake would be a colorful and unusual choice for the flyer design.
Many avenues are available to find images. Ask a friend or family member who is a good photographer to help out. Agree the photo can be freely used for this one event. If this is not an option, turn to the Internet. Many online sites offer free images. Search to find a good picture but find one that is large enough to cover the entire flyer. You may not fill the entire page in the end but start with the largest file available. Picking a low-resolution image will result in a grainy, pixilated image when printed.
Clip art is also readily available and can be used effectively in flyer design. Tread carefully with clip art. Some of the free stuff is very amateurish and will degrade the overall look of the flyer. But there are many, many images to find on the web so keep searching until you find the perfect one.
Layout
Expensive desktop publishing or image editing software is not necessarily needed for this project. Common software like Microsoft Word or PowerPoint can be used to make the flyer. And, if nothing creative comes to mind, there are hundreds of available templates for flyer designs. Pick one that suits the event, drop the text and images into the layout and you are done.
On the other hand, pre-designed templates can be boring and overused. Producing a simple flyer from scratch is not hard. Set up the page; import the art, then the text. Now, start to play with the fonts and typefaces. But resist the temptation to use four or five different fonts. The end result must be clean, simple and easy to read. Since the flyer has only a few parts, using one font for the headline and subheads, such as when and where, and another complementary font for the accompanying text will result in a winning flyer design.
The product will be displayed on bulletin boards and common areas so make sure the text is readable. Use a light color on a dark background and vice versa. Print out a draft and place it on the refrigerator. Stand back, walk past it, does it catch your eye, can you read it in a glance and retain the important points? If the answer to any of these is no, go back to the beginning and correct the issues.
Printing
Once the flyer is finalized, save it on a CD as a PDF, Portable Document Format, or JPG, Joint Photographic Experts Group file. Take it to a printer and have it printed on a card stock paper. The stiffer, stronger paper is worth the extra money since it will last longer than lighter, thinner paper. If all the elements have come together, the flyer design should help to add to the success of any event.
