As a marketing scheme, promotional flyers have been around for a pretty long time.

Though they are relatively smaller in size, this makes them fast, easy, and cheap to make. This is because they are intended to be mass-produced, handed out, passed around, and posted in public spaces such as bulletin boards.

After all, they are called flyers because they are basically sheets of paper that fly out in the streets!

This convenience makes promotional flyers work especially well for small start-up businesses. They can be easily handed out or posted in local areas near the vicinity of a physical office or shop as a way to introduce new business.

And unlike their electronic counterparts, printed flyers are tangible, which means they won’t go to waste by getting sent directly to people’s spam folders.

With such a small size, however, it can also be difficult for flyers to fight for the attention of consumers.

But you’re in luck. In this article, we’ll be giving you 9 amazing flyer design tips that will make people save your flyers to their pockets instead of throwing them in the trash bin.

 

1. Make it clear

When making custom flyer design, the text they contain should be legible enough so their intent can be seen almost instantaneously even from afar. Even if a passerby just gives your flyer the slightest half-second glance, as long as they saw its headline, then your flyer already did its purpose.

Therefore, you should also put the most important details in your flyer designs before anything else. You can always add supplementary information or assets later on; if needed.

Lastly, your promotional flyer’s call-to-action should be stated clearly.

Sure, it might be okay to just plainly give your business information to people, but what do you want them to do with it? The call-to-action will encourage consumers to satisfy your flyer’s intention and give your business the desired results.

 

2. Keep it short and simple

In line with making your flyer design ideas as clear as possible, the text they contain should also be kept short and simple. Keeping information concise decreases unnecessary visual clutter, further highlighting important details, and therefore making the flyer more effective.

But, because flyers are short, the space they offer for texts is very limited. 

The fewer words you use, the more space you can allow for them. This gives you more leeway to make your texts bigger and more noticeable.

If you think your customers still want to know more, you can use a small portion of the flyer to direct them to your website, social media, or your other contact channels. 

Not only this gives you more space in your flyer, but it also increases awareness and engagement for your brand.

 

3. Use fonts wisely

If your business already has an established brand identity, it’s generally best to align the fonts that you will be using in your flyers with it for consistency.

In case a brand identity has not yet been established, then you can play around and experiment with different font styles to find which ones suit your business the best.

But keep in mind to only use 2 font styles at most. You can opt for a serif font, a sans serif font, or a combination of both as they are known to be the most readable font styles.

If you still want to make font variations to highlight certain details in your flyer while still keeping its visual consistency, you can adjust how your fonts look by making them bold, making them all-caps, or putting an underline beneath them to make them more noticeable.

4. Use an image

Aside from using fonts, you can make your flyers more visually arresting by putting a banner photo. Because let’s face it, some people are just more naturally drawn to images than to a block of boring text. 

Our brains also interpret images much faster than text, making your flyer effective even to people with the shortest attention spans.

Lastly, an appropriate photo also complements the accompanying copy, further boosting the flyer’s effectiveness.

 

5. Use a color palette

Keeping your flyers simple doesn’t necessarily mean it should be plain and boring!

Like fonts, your flyer’s color palette should match with the established branding so it looks familiar and easy to recognize.

Though using fewer colors as possible is generally okay, giving your flyer a distinct color palette of up to 3 colors gives it character and makes it more unique. This will help your flyer pop among the others that are pinned alongside it on bulletin boards.

If you plan on reproducing your flyers through a photocopying machine, then the colors should contrast each other well enough so that it would still look good in black and white.

Tip: If you’re dead set on using black and white, photocopied flyers, try printing them on colored paper to give them more character!

Here’s an interesting article on Analogous colors and their role in establishing a strong brand identity. 

6. Don’t forget your contact info

Since flyers get passed around, you need to ensure that your customers would still be able to find your business. 

You can do this by putting the following contact information on your flyers:

• Office or store address
• Email address
• Social media accounts
• Mobile and telephone numbers
• Website

 

7. Size matters

How you’re going to layout your flyers will depend on the size of your paper.

For reference, here are the most commonly used flyer sizes:

• A4 (8 ¼” x 11 ¾”)
• A5 (5 ⅞” x 8 ¼”)
• A6 (4 ⅛” x 5 ⅞”)

Picking a certain flyer size will give you an idea of how to size your assets and how to layout them accordingly.

 

8. Utilize both sides (fold)

Unlike posters, both sides of the flyer paper can be utilized.

Using both sides of the flyer paper gives you extra room for additional information. This way, you can put the most important details at the front of the flyer and the rest of the supporting details at the back.

Flyers can also be folded, giving you more flexibility with how you can layout your flyers. By folding, your flyers can double as a brochure or even a fold-out book!

9. Give other uses to your flyers

Lastly, you could go the extra mile with your flyer by giving it other uses: 

1. You can make your flyer reusable by making customers return them as discount vouchers.
2. You can transform the bottom half of your flyers as tear-off tabs so people can take a piece of information with them as they go.  
3. You can put a QR code on your flyers so they could access additional content.
4. You can include a promo code that customers can put into e-commerce platforms in exchange for discounts.

 

To conclude...

Every business can benefit from well designed promotional flyers. Flyers can grab the attention of your consumers and inform them about important details and announcements from your business, like a new product, a sale or discount offer, a promotional event, and so much more.

Graphics Zoo’s team of professional graphic designers are equipped to help you in making all types of promotional flyers. Get in touch with us at support@graphicszoo.com.