How to Make Your Flyers Look Professional (10 Key Tips)

Are you trying to start a business, but struggling to get the number of viewers or clients you want? Many of us have been in your shoes; I have too. I created a web page, emailed relevant people, even designed flyers, and nothing worked! It wasn’t until I consulted a professional graphic designer that I learned what my issue was; my flyer did not have an optimal design! 

So, why is designing the perfect professional flyer so important? 

1) Money: creating multiple advertisements is very costly. You want to create your flyer correctly the first time around.

2) Reaching a Large Audience: You want your flyer to reach and appeal to a vast amount of people across various social media platforms and demographics. 

In the following tips, I will outline the best way to create the perfect professional flyer to help you expand your business in a timely and cost-effective manner. So let´s dive right into it!

Colors

When designing the perfect business flyer it’s important to choose your color scheme very wisely.  There are several elements you should focus on.

•  It needs to catch people’s attention and stand out this can be done by using complementary colors. Complementary colors are opposites on the color wheel, and provide a clear focus and increase attention. One way to use complementary colors, for example, would be to use a yellow background and purple font. 
  

•  Think about what emotion you want to give off; different colors have different emotions associated with them. For example, yellow is associated with happiness, red is associated with boldness, and green is associated with nature and serenity. The color scheme you choose should be based on your business. 
  

•  Make sure your text is easily visible and has high contrast, for instance; if you use a light background you want a dark text and vice-versa.  This will help it be seen from further away and be more legible. 
  

• Your flyer should reflect your brand’s general color scheme: if you already have a color scheme, logo, make sure your flyer reflects this so that people seeing it will know the association. However, contrast and complementary colors can still be utilized to elevate your design. 

If you want to learn more about colors and the psychology behind them, we encourage you to read our article on “The Psychology of Colors and Why it Matters For Your Business” 

Language

Language and how you use it are key elements to designing the perfect flyer. When deciding on what to write, use the following guidelines:

• Be clear and concise:  When making your flyer, make sure you use as few words as possible to illustrate your point. Your flyer will have limited space, and you do not want to sacrifice visibility to make room for words that can be avoided. An idea would be to include bullet points instead of full sentences when applicable. 
  

• Appeal to a Large Audience: In order to get the most bang for your buck, and to avoid needing to make multiple flyers, your business flyer should aim to appeal to every social group you are targeting. To do this I would avoid using slang that is not in the general lexicon i.e., not well known by most people. Unless you are only trying to appeal to one generational group it is best to avoid newer slang to avoid confusion. However, if you are going for professionalism it is best to avoid slang altogether. I would also recommend staying away from any pop-culture, religious, or political references unless they are directly relevant to your business. 
  

• Avoid flowery or sophisticated language: Flowery and sophisticated language should be avoided for two reasons.  First, you want to avoid coming across as pretentious; this will alienate potential clients/ consumers. Second, in order to appeal to the most people, you should use everyday language; this will ensure that most people coming across your ad will understand it. If you’re an accomplished linguist, that’s great, but a business flyer is not the place to showcase this. 

Call to action

A good business flyer should always include a call to action to increase engagement. An example of a call to action would be to include a link to the official website, store-front, donation page, or relevant video.  

The best way to do this would be through a QR code because they take up little space and take you directly to a link without needing to type it in. It also allows people to engage with your flyer even if they are in a rush because they can quickly follow the QR code without needing to stop for more than a few seconds. A Call to Action helps in three ways. 

•   It solves the issue of having limited space on the flyer. If your flyer includes a call to action ( or outside link for more information) you can use your flyer to spark people’s attention enough that they are encouraged to follow the link, but do not need to provide details on the advertisement itself. 
  

• It encourages people to take a second look at your business- by providing them with resources to look further into your business, it keeps you fresh in their minds. It helps too if they forget the name of your company as they will now see it in their search history. 
  

•  It provides an easy way to see stats on engagement. By including an outside link, you can see the number of views and when/ where it was viewed. This will provide key information as to whether the flyer is actively helping your business and by how much. It can also be used to see if the flyer is more helpful among certain demographics. 

Font

When making a flyer, you must choose your font very carefully so that it is easily visible and easy to read. Your font should be easily legible from a far distance.

This is the first thing you should consider. In order to choose a font with the best visibility, you're going to want to choose one that is not extra bold,  italic, or small. Although many of these fun fonts are pretty, they will make your flyer harder to read.

Examples of fonts not to use are Alfa Slab One,  Caveat, and Lobster. Although it may seem boring, your best bets for a professional flyer are the common professional fonts. Times New Roman and Arial are great choices because they will not distract viewers from the actual content of your flyer. 

Depending on your content, you may wish to use another font, but to be taken seriously and for the best visibility, it is best to choose one of these or a similar-looking font. You also want to use a font that is still easy to read when bolded or italicized in case you want to emphasize certain parts. 

Spacing

Spacing is extremely important! The best way to space out your flier is to align everything to the center. By entering your font, you draw people’s attention more because your eyes are naturally drawn to the center. You also want a uniform and even amount of spaces between each section, picture, etc. Your headline should be a few spaces from the top and the bottom should be a few spaces from the bottom to ensure it is not cut out when printed.

For best visibility you want a 1.5 spacing between lines- regular spacing may be difficult to read and double spacing is too far apart. Notice how your eyes are more drawn to this paragraph than the ones above? 

Content

When choosing content it is important to make sure it is engaging, visually pleasing, informative, and not too wordy. It should also stand out and be unique to get people to remember your flyer! To do this always use your own words- plagiarism is illegal and bad for business. Some ways to make your content extra engaging would be to ask a question directed to the readers or tell a joke. Pictures can help as well for engagement and memory! Make sure it is clear what the flyer is advertising, whether it's for a specific promotion or a general advertisement etc.

Size

Generally, your flyer will be the size of printer paper (8.5 X 11). However, if you want to post it as an internet ad or in a newspaper, it may be a good idea to make it half the size as that will reduce costs. When designing your flyer make sure everything will fit on half a sheet of paper!  This helps in two key ways:

• In the event that you wish to advertise on multiple mediums and need to make it a smaller size, you will save a lot of time, energy, and money by not needing to make new flyers. Of course, if advertising on the internet you will need to swap the QR code for a link, but this is minimal time effort. 
  

• By including only what can fit on half a page, you can be sure your flyer will be readable and not over-crowded- it won’t look empty either because you will want to use larger fonts, more spaces, and larger pictures on print business flyers.

Branding

When making a perfect business flyer it is vital that it reflects your business so that when people see the flyer they will associate it with your business! Thus, it is important to make sure your branding stays consistent across all platforms- this means using the same colors, imagery, and voice.

If you are starting from scratch and do not have a brand yet, you can use these tips for inspiration ( colors are especially useful). If you have a logo or theme beyond just your color scheme use that too! Your flyer should be a celebration and extension of your business! 

Image quality

When designing a perfect business flyer it is absolutely vital to make sure you use top-quality images. If you go for a low-resolution image it will look unprofessional and will be difficult or impossible to see. When choosing an image do not choose one that is off the internet (create or take your own images), and be sure to not stretch or shrink the image as both of these will lower the resolution and make it appear blurry.

Always use your own images! Even when using your own logo, be sure that you use the original picture and not a copy from your website for the best possible quality. If the size of the website logo will not look right in the flyer, you can always redesign it so it is a better fit, just do not stretch or shrink the image! 

Order of information

Now that you know how to decorate your business flyer and what you should and should not do you’re likely ready to put it all together! But how should it be assembled on the page? The best way to organize your flyer would be to use this template:

Visual Examples of Good vs. Poor Professional Flyer Designs

In this section, we will review the above tips and take a look at them visually. I will be designing example fliers and have you decide which ones are correct. They will be divided into twos ( one correct and one wrong) out of 8 examples total. I recommend getting a piece of paper or using your phone to record your answers because I will be going through which are correct and why after all the examples.

First pairing: 

Second pairing:

Third pairing:

Fourth pairing:

Results

The correct answers are A, B, D, E, and H. If you got all of these correct you’re on your way to designing a great business flyer! However, if you didn’t guess all of these correctly that’s ok!  I am going to explain the mistakes made in these examples-  

In A, the contact information is too far up the ad, taking away space that can be used otherwise. In C,  the order is switched and everything is too close together leaving a large unappealing blank space near the end. 

In F, everything is mostly aligned to the left instead of centered. In G, everything is aligned to the right instead of centered.

In a nutshell

When designing a good flyer you should use the same colors as your business so as to stay consistent with your branding- if you do not have official branding, when choosing a color scheme consider what emotions you want to invoke. 

Your language should be friendly, professional, and devoid of any slang ( this is unprofessional and will narrow your audience to certain generations). Even if your target audience is solely Gen Z, for example, still avoid using their slang; it will come off as trying too hard and will make you lose credibility as a professional business. 

You should always include a link or QR code to your website or specific page you want your readers to check out this helps you keep track of your ad’s effectiveness and solves the issue of having limited space on your flyer. 

It is best to stick with easy-to-read and professional fonts!  To draw attention and focus you should center and use 1.5 spacing for your text. Your content should be engaging and original- one idea is to tell a joke, story, or ask a question.

The average flyer size is about 8.5 X 11 (printer paper) but for the purpose of not overcrowding your ad, visibility, and being able to easily convert it to a half-page size, you should make sure your content fits on half a page (with full-page ads you can space things out more, use larger images, and larger text so it can be seen from further away).  

If you have branding make sure you stick with it- your flyer should reflect your brand, not be something new. When choosing images for your flyer always take or make your own- using images found, even from your own website, will reduce image quality. Especially when printing, your image will lose some resolution, so it is vital to use top-quality images.

Thank you for reading this quick guide! It helped our business a lot and I hope it helps you too! If you need any more design help or advice, feel free to send us an email or book a call. We’re happy to help you with all your design needs!