Even if you have years of experience in graphic design, designing flyers can be daunting.
You have to design the flyer and decide which information (e.g., fonts) will be used. You’ll need Photoshop to create it. There are many technical details that you will need help remembering. Most business owners will spend the extra money to hire a professional designer who can manage the entire process from start to finish. It doesn’t have be that way.
We’ll show you how to make an EPIC flyer, even if:
- You are without any graphic design experience
- You have never made a flyer before
- doesn’t need Photoshop
Important!
Although Photoshop is not required to create this flyer, it can be helpful.
We will be providing Photoshop instructions and screenshots throughout this guide. However, if you don’t have Photoshop, don’t panic.
- 1. Get a 30-day free trial of Adobe Photoshop.
- 2. Choose an alternative program to this list.
- 3. Utilise an online image editor like Canva.com
Once your image-editing software (or Canva.com template) is set up, all you need to do is the following:
- Time
- Patience
- Willingness to learn
- Internet connection
- Basic computer skills (e.g., using a web browser, downloading/uploading files, using an image-editing program, etc.)
Step 1: Planning and Organising
Before you start designing your flyer, planning and organizing everything is essential. This will ensure that your design process is simple and free from complications.
Answer the following questions to get started:
- What should my flyer accomplish?
- What information must my brochure include?
Before you begin the design process, you must have a detailed look at the answers to these questions. Keep things simple, and keep everything simple.
These two questions could be answered when creating our food market flyer.
- My flyer should inform people about my event (i.e., The Food Market
- My booklet should tell people when and where it will take place, the cost, and what food will be available.
Simple.
Once we have defined our purpose and content, it is time to decide where and how that content will be displayed on our flyer. This can be done by splitting the information into a heading, subheading, and multiple blocks.
Here’s an example of our food market flyer.
Heading (i.e., Heading (i.e.
Subheading (i.e., slogan): Eat. Drink. Live. Join us.
Text block #1 (i.e., Event overview ): join us for our annual food and drink market. Entry: PS3 after 10am. Before 10 am, it’s FREE.
Text block #2 (i.e., time, date, location): 8am – 6pm. 27.05.2015. London, UK.
Flyer design is all about simplicity. You should have a heading, a subheading, and two to three text blocks. People will glance at your flyer if it needs to be denser in text. They may become confused and then stop reading. It won’t make the desired impact.
We now know the information we want on our flyer. Now, we need to decide how to arrange it.
Step 2: Sketching your Flyer
You will need to sketch the flyer to help you plan how the final result will look and where you want to put your information.
Here is the sketch that I created for our flyer about food markets:
This took only five minutes (I used the Paper app on iPad, but you could also do it on paper). I know exactly where each piece of information will be on my flyer. It also gives me a visual of what the pilot will look like when it is finished.
Here’s a quick list in case you don’t see my handwriting on this image:
The heading is Located in the middle of the flyer, with a circular background.
The subheading is Located in the middle, below the headline, and within the background.
Block #1: Located in the bottom left corner with a black background.
Block #2: Located in the bottom right corner with a black background.
To make the flyer stand out, I also include a background image. Although it is a good idea, photos should be included on the flyers. However, these images should be high quality. Do not use pixelated photos. Using one or two high-quality images is better than many low-quality, cluttered ones.
Step 3: Setting Things up
You must set up your design environment before beginning the design process. The exact steps depend on your application, but you must create a blank flyer-shaped canvas with which you can work. The dimensions of flyers can vary (it is best to order these from a print company), but I will create this example with an 8.5-inch x 12-inch booklet.
Step #4: Finding & Placing Our Image
Finding images to design can be difficult for non-designers. Although it is unlikely that you will have your photos, many stock photography websites provide high-quality images for free.
Here is a list of the top.
This photo will be used for our food market flyer:
This can be downloaded from FoodiesFeed.com by clicking the “Free Download” button. You can place the image in your design once you have it. You can use Photoshop to do this by selecting ” File > Put” and then selecting the image. Resize the image using the free transform tool.
Here is the final result.
Step #5 – Adding the Fill Areas
It would look terrible to put our white writing directly on top of that image. It would be hard for viewers to read, so that we will add our dark fill areas to the idea. This will act as a background to the white text.
Create two new layers, one for the center circle and one for the bottom rectangle. The Elliptical marque tool will be used to draw the areas that you wish to fill. To fill in the spaces, use the fill utility.
Fill them with this color: #23313E
Step #6 – Adding the Headline and Sub Headline
Let’s begin with the headline. This is the easy part. We know exactly what it will say because we did this during the planning phase. To add or place text, you can use the Text tool in Photoshop.
Notice: This design uses two fonts: Pinyon Script and Raleway.
These fonts won’t be available on most computers, but you can get them from Google Fonts or here. Only the headline uses Pinyon script. The rest of this design uses 100% Raleway.
This is how the final result should look:
You can change the font size, spacing, style, etc. You have two options: replicate the design exactly or add your twist.
Step #7: Adding Additional Info (i.e., Text blocks
Finally, add the two text blocks as well as any additional information.
We already know the contents of our text blocks and where they will be located, so we need to drag a few text boxes out and then copy/paste the information.
The only thing left is to add a few content dividers/rulers. The easiest way to achieve this in Photoshop is to combine the Rectangular marquee tool with the fill utility to create thin white lines.
Quick Note on Printing
You will create flyers that are printed. Before you make your flyer, there are some things that you should consider before you hire a professional printer.
Commercial printers often require that you account for trim and bleed in your designs. They usually have templates that include this. However, you will need Photoshop or Illustrator to use them. Ask your printing company for the template files before you create your design.
Also, it is essential that your flyers can be read when printed. People often design brochures on high-resolution computers but find that the smaller text is difficult to read when printed on small A6 sheets.
You can order a test print before requesting the entire batch if you need clarification.
Conclusion
We tried to simplify this guide, but it is still quite complex, especially for those who need to gain experience with Photoshop or graphic design.
We hope you found this helpful.
You can follow the design as it is presented in this guide. You are free to experiment with fonts, colors, and images. Your creativity is yours!
You can find more similar tutorials (e.g., banners, leaflets, posters, etc. Let us know what you would like to see in our comments section. We might even create it!
