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Planning is important when creating a flyer you have a few things to consider –

Flyer size – A4/A5/A6/A7 and Business Card size. When i started i went straight for the A5 size, until one day when someone give me a flyer advertising a car wash. This flyer was a5 aswell and i decided to keep hold of the flyer. I folded up, creased it and ripped it trying to get it into my pocket and when i did it went straight through the washing machine, i then had a light bulb moment. Why not make your flyer’s Business Card size? Now obviously this means all text, images and artwork have to be smaller, but if you design them to be double sided you shouldn’t have a problem. When handing out these flyer’s i noticed a lot of people slipping them straight into their wallet and i never changed back to a5. Not only did more people hang on to the flyer’s but they are also a lot cheaper to produce.

Color and Fonts – Lots to choose from, but i suggest you use the principle Keep It Simple Stupid. Nice Bold Text in an easy to read font and nice vibrant colors. I have seen many flyer’s with crazy looking fonts and unusual colors. I have good eye sight but i struggle to read some flyer’s, consider people who don’t have good eyesight if they cant read the text they wont know what your advertising. Another point i would like to make is that when you hand these flyer’s to people you are taking their attention away from their busy lifestyles, if they cant read the entire flyer within 20 seconds and make a decision whether to keep it or bin it, they will just throw is straight in the bin.

Images and Photos – These provide a good summary of what your flyer is about, i highly recommend you add some form of image to your flyer. If nothing else they make the flyer look more interesting. Be careful what images you use, make sure they are relevant to what your advertising.

Design for your Target Audience – If your designing a flyer for a Punk rock night then make sure it’s obvious in the color, font and design you use. Somebody should be able to walk past your flyer and have a rough idea what it’s about within a split second of looking at it.

Themes – Keep it topical! I once generated lots of interest for a gig purely by theming the flyer. The event was taking place next to Portsmouth Harbour used heavily by the navy. The Event night took place the day after the anniversary of D-Day, so i used a military theme. Purely by having a photograph of a navy boat on the flyer, they went like crazy!

Selling Points- Before you start designing your flyer you need to jot down 3 selling points, 3 points that will make people want to come to your event. Once you have these, you need to make sure these 3 points dominate your flyer design and can be clearly seen above everything else.

Include the important information – Once your flyer’s go to print there is no time to correct any errors. Make sure your flyer includes the following information. Venue, Venue Directions, Time, Dates, Participating Bands, Cost and any special discounts that the flyer offers.

Proof Read, Proof Read, Proof Read

Quick Tip: If you have room, always promote your other upcoming Gigs. If someone can’t make this one, they might be able to make the next one!

A simple summary is to use your common sense, make it attractive to as many people as possible and don’t forget people who might have disabilities. Keep it fresh and make sure it jumps out at people. Most people use Photoshop to design their flyer’s, if you don’t have Photoshop then i suggest using Gimp which can be found at gimp.org

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