Knowing how to make an advertising flyer is very simple and can help you optimize your creative skills as a creative professional. New technologies make it possible to speed up the design process of any document, including advertising flyers, fundamental graphic pieces to promote a certain brand .
It is true that marketing and advertising strategies, nowadays, are mostly digital. However, traditional marketing resources, such as classic advertising brochures, are still an excellent tool to leave a mark in the minds of potential customers.
Therefore, whether you are interested in learning how to create an advertising flyer for your business, or you are a graphic designer who needs to incorporate new skills, we will tell you what an advertising flyer is and what it is for. We will also provide you with a list of some of the free platforms to design flyers.
are you ready? let’s get started!
1. what is a flyer?
When we walk down the street and are handed a piece of paper to buy a product, we are receiving an advertising flyer. That is, a type of printed paper, with the purpose of publicizing a certain brand.
Now, is an advertising flyer the same as a propaganda flyer? Although we tend to associate both terms and think that they mean the same thing, there are notorious differences between them:
A propagandistic fly er aims to spread some political or religious ideology.
An advertising fly er has the purpose of buying, selling or exchanging products and/or services.
On the other hand, it is not correct to confuse an advertising flyer with a brochure containing information about a particular event . This kind of flyer is known as an “informative flyer”.
Source: Unplash
2. Characteristics of an advertising flyer
Now that we have clearly explained what an advertising flyer is, we will see what are some of its main qualities:
A. Paper size
If you are wondering what is the size of an advertising flyer, obviously, it is a good idea to have a reference of its size when presenting different design alternatives to your clients .
Indeed, although there are advertising flyers of various sizes, the most popular formats are the following:
A6: although this is a small size, it can be very effective and functional. Especially if you want to promote recognizable products that do not require a large amount of data, so that the potential customer can identify the brand.
A5: this is the standard size of advertising flyers for promotional campaigns, distribution and marketing strategies.
A4: this is the size of a standardized sheet of paper. It is used by commercial and local companies to design their advertising flyers. It allows the incorporation of more information; and can even be folded and mailed.
Source: Unplash
B. Type of paper
As for the type of paper to make advertising flyers, we suggest the following options (in grams and per square meter):
135 g/m2: the most common alternative. It is a light paper and less prone to wrinkling. Therefore, it is ideal for companies with limited budgets to produce their advertising flyers.
170 g/m2: very useful for promoting conferences or trade fairs, its more robust thickness makes this paper an excellent support for making flyers for professional meetings.
250 g/m2: used by retail and hospitality companies.
Source: Unplash
C. Number of sides
When designing advertising flyers, you should know that they can be printed on one or two sides. This depends on the amount of textual and visual contentyou want to print on your flyers.
Usually, printing on one side is much more cost-effective from an economic perspective. However, if you opt for a two-sided flyer design, you will be able to take advantage of the larger spatial layout. For example, you can use one side of your flyer to emphasize crucial details; and on the back of the flyer, add an address map or include contact information.
3. what is a flyer good for?
For customers, a flyer is useful, mainly, to discover information regarding a product and/or service that may be of interest to you.
On the other hand, from a business approach, having an advertising flyer to distribute among your target audience has a number of advantages, which we detail here:
Mass advertising on a reduced scale (hand to hand distribution of your flyer, or segmenting potential customers by zip code).
By means of a promotional flyer, it is possible to expose and make the brand visible. As a HubSpot analysis states, a good brand must work on its brand recall, i.e. the impression you have left on your customers over time.
An advertising flyer allows you to reinforce and homogenize the branding of the business.
Thus, although the world of advertising offers a wide range of online marketing tools, advertising flyers still have wide benefits. That is to say that it is still possible to exploit the full potential of your brand through promotional flyers.
4. how to make an advertising flyer?
There are multiple templates to make an advertising flyer. In fact, there is no single way to make a flyer of these characteristics. Therefore, much of the design work will depend on the type of business, the information you want to present and your creativity.
Even so, there are certain patterns and tips that can serve as a guide to learn how to make an advertising flyer easily. Here, we tell you about them:
A. Create the textual content of your advertising flyer
The information in your flyer should be concise. The reader must understand the message you intend to convey from the first glance. The main thing is to highlight the following elements in your flyer:
The benefits of your product or service.
The contact information.
The call to action (call to action).
Regarding the call to action of advertising flyers and according to Roberto Guerrero, Publicist, Creative Copywriter and teacher in charge of our online course of Creative Copywriting:
“It is the impulse or push that is given to the public at the time of seeing an ad (…) Perhaps, you will not see it in a magazine ad, but you will see it in digital, in some video or spot, in social networks or in other media and formats (…) For example: ‘Learn more’, ‘Buy now’, ‘Take advantage of today, last day’, ‘Run, it’s running out’, ‘Don’t think twice’, ‘Discover more here’, ‘What are you waiting for?
In short, check that the draft of your advertising flyer contains these three elements. And don’t forget to pay close attention to the spelling and grammar of your texts .
Source: Pexels
B. Look for the graphic content of your flyer
To continue advancing in this analysis on how to make an advertising flyer, we must mention the importance of the visual component. That is to say, the illustrations that this flyer will have.
Look for at least one or two good quality images that stand out. Keep in mind that if you use more, you run the risk of saturating the flyer.
It is essential to be resourceful when choosing the elements of your flyer. As a Forbes study states, in any marketing strategy, it is essential to be creative, in order not to go unnoticed by your audience .
So keep this in mind and strategically choose each of the elements that will be part of your advertising flyers, so you can make your target fall in love with you.
Source: Pexels
C. Highlight the name of your business/company
You should also include the brand logo in the design of your advertising flyer. It is essential that you highlight it, if possible, so that people recognize it and you can massify the company’s image.
At the same time, the company’s name must stand out above all the other elements of the flyer. Therefore, try to use a larger font size than the rest of the text in the promotional flyer. This way, you will be able to leave the impression you want to make on your potential customers.
Source: Pexels
D. Insert lines and borders
So that the content of your advertising flyer does not look cluttered, we recommend you to opt for a simple design.
Use geometric lines, as they will help to better segment the flyer design. These will make the call to action and contact information more visible.
E. Check the readability of the flyer
Once you have the flyer ready, you should check that the message is as legible as possible. Share it with your acquaintances, evaluate the promotional flyer from different angles and eliminate anything that distracts from the main message.
E. Choose a program to design the flyer
If you want to learn how to make an advertising flyer, you should know that you have at your disposal several tools that will give you a hand.
Depending on your skills and preferences, choose one of themany programs to make advertisingflyers. And if you don’t know any of them, don’t worry, because in the next section, we will leave you a list of the software that we consider most appropriate for your flyer designs .
Source: Unplash
5. what are the programs to design advertising flyers?
When it comes to making an advertising flyer, you can use different design programs, because technological advances allow you to have your promotional flyers in simple steps .
It doesn’t matter if you have advanced technical design knowledge, because you will be able to make advertising flyers with the simplest resources on the market. These will guarantee you the highest quality in the final product.
So, below, we are going to introduce you to some of the most useful and efficient digital tools so that you can make an advertising flyer without any problems. take note!
A. Microsoft Word
Making an advertising flyer in Word is easy, since it is the most intuitive and simple to use program of the Office package. Particularly, you can take advantage of the different fonts for free Word and all the document templates that this software has.
In short, Microsoft Word is a good alternative to learn how to make an advertising flyer without previous design knowledge .
B. Adobe Photoshop
Adobe’s package offers the best design tools. Therefore, we could not leave it out of this post on how to make an advertising flyer.
But what can you do with Photoshop? Indeed, not only can you edit photos, but you can also create the best designs for advertising flyers .
C. Adobe InDesign
This is another tool from the Adobe package that you can’t miss if you want to make a flyer.
Thanks to this tool, you will be able to design pages and graphics. And also, it is very useful for making advertising flyers of all kinds. And although it is a paid program, you can download InDesign and use its trial version.
D. Canva
If you want to know what Canva is, it is one of the most popular options to design and make an advertising flyer.
With a wide range of templates and a diversity of resources, Canva is the perfect online option if professional graphic design is not your thing.
Note that Canva offers a free version and a paid version with more design features to implement in your flyer design.
E. Adobe Creative Cloud Express
Another platform that exists today for designing a flyer is Adobe Creative Cloud Express .
If you have heard of “Adobe Sparks”, you should know that this is the predecessor design software of Adobe Creative Cloud Express.
In simple words, it is an application that offers users with little experience in graphic design, the ability to create and edit design files, such as an advertising flyer.
In particular, Adobe Creative Cloud Express is an extremely simple design program that allows you to design promotional flyers with a high photographic quality.
It is also a totally free online interface, if you decide to take advantage of the features of the non-subscription version. Indeed, when it comes to creating an advertising flyer, you have a wide variety of design templates to choose from to attract the attention of all your potential clients.
At the same time, as a differentiating element from other types of design platforms to create advertising flyers, Adobe Creative Cloud Express provides you with a complete color palette.
However, one of the disadvantages of using this interface to design an advertising flyer is that it is only available in English. However, it is easy to learn and does not require high levels of demand to be able to use it.
F. Lucidpress
Continuing with our guide on how to design an advertising flyer, we should mention the usefulness of the Lucidpress platform.
This interface is simple and allows you to create advertising flyers in just a few steps. Unlike other flyer design platforms, Lucidpress allows you to layout your flyer in a more detailed way. In particular, it offers the possibility of improving the margins of your design, as well as adjusting the formatting.
However, among its disadvantages, it should be noted the need to hire the paid version if you want to save your flyer document in a suitable format for later printing.
Well, we have reached the end of this article on how to make a flyer. Remember each of our tips and take advantage of the flyer design platforms that we have detailed. You will see how you will be able to captivate the attention of your target audience in each of your promotional flyers.
And to end this post about how to make an advertising flyer, we want to highlight a famous phrase by Frank Chimero, American graphic designer, illustrator and writer: “Design is a connection with the world”.
So, if you want to connect with your audience and convey a message efficiently, don’t forget to optimize the design of your flyers as much as possible.
See you in the next article!