How to Create a Free Printable Flyer

Creating a flyer is a common task for businesses, non-profit organizations, and academic institutions. An advertising flyer's primary purpose is to sell consumers on an event, idea, product, or service. A well-designed and thought-out flyer will provide compelling information to convince the person viewing it to attend your event or buy your company's product or services to help solve problems. A flyer uses both imagery and text to get across the primary message of the producing organization and can be used for email, print, and web distribution.

Planning a Flyer - Developing the Call to Action

Prior to the creation phase of flyer creation, developing the 'Call to Action' topic is required to properly purpose a flyer to ensure the best results are achieved. Choose the primary reason for creating the flyer in order to give it focus. This can range from promoting a specific event, product, or service. A common mistake made by organizations is to create a flyer that is too broad in purpose which loses the focus of their target audience resulting in less-than-optimal performance of the flyer. During this stage of the flyer creation process, a draft title of the flyer should be developed that highlights the "Call to Action."

Refining a Flyer's Call to Action

Once a draft "Call to Action" is developed, the draft verbiage needs to be refined in order to properly target the desired consumer-base. Even if the flyer will only be used for print distribution, proper research into refinement of the "Call to Action" title of the flyer through Internet key word and phrase usage will increase the effectiveness of the flyer. Additionally, proper optimization of the flyer verbiage will enable the content created to be used across the various mediums available to organizations without major re-work being required. In order to do this, once the title has been worked into a persuasive means to get the reader to continue viewing the flyer, the words used in the title should relate to the overall event, product, or service being advertised. If the flyer is going to be used for on-line mediums, the relevant keywords that are being used for the organization's website should be considered for inclusion in the title chosen for the flyer.

Convincing the Consumer to Take Action

The remainder of verbiage on a flyer should focus on convincing the consumer how the product or service will solve a problem they have. If the flyer is for an event, then the focus should be on what will be gained by attending the function. When wording the flyer, the message should be presented in terms of "You" so that it is directed at your desired customer. The message should be clear on what you want the reader to do as a result of reading the flyer whether it is to order a product, visit an organization's website, or attend an event. The end-result of the flyer work is to get the consumer to take action and convert to a sale, website visit, or attend an event they might not otherwise do. A maximum of two to three fonts should be used for the text of the flyer to prevent the layout from appearing to be too confusing. The supporting text should also not exceed three sentences to keep from losing the reader's interest.

Designing the Flyer Layout

Sketch the flyer layout before moving to the creation phase. Competitive flyers now incorporate digital photography and/or illustrations to get the consumer's attention and get an organization's message across more effectively. The design should have a visual focus a high-quality image. When planning the design of the flyer, the picture or illustration should be in the upper-half of the flyer. When consumers view flyers or websites, their eyes are naturally drawn to the upper half of a page with emphasis on the left-hand side for people from countries that read left-to-right. If targeted to a population who's language is read right to left, shift the emphasis of the flyer to match. Relevant contact information should be included on the flyer. Space should be allotted for including a company's telephone, email, and/or website so the consumer has a means to follow-up or take action on the content of the flyer. If the organization creating a flyer has a logo it should be incorporated into the design near the flyer's title to ensure proper branding.

How to Use Imagery in a Flyer

Using a single, large image is proven to make a stronger impression on viewers than numerous small pictures. If using small pictures, they should be grouped together so that they are perceived to be a single group of images. A small image can also be juxtaposed with a larger one to give a contrasting appearance on the flyer. The end result of using imagery should be to draw a viewer's interest and keep it long enough to read the "Call to Action" and supporting information of the flyer.

Finding Imagery to Use in a Flyer

Most organizations do not have the funding or workload to keep a photographer on staff. As a result, using photograph stock exchanges is a popular avenue for organization's on small budgets to use for acquiring imagery for commercial projects. Stock exchanges that permit use of pictures for unrestricted use normally require citation of the original photographer when reusing the image. Three large stock exchanges that permit commercial use of imagery are:

• MorgueFile - MorgueFile is one of the largest picture archives available that can be used for commercial projects.
• FreeRangeStock - Over 2000 stock photos with resolutions over three megabytes available for commercial projects.
• BigFoto - A stock exchange that the photos are stored by location and theme that can be used for commercial purposes with attribution to the original photographer.

How to Make a Flyer in Microsoft Word

Step 1 - Open a new document by selecting the File->New-> Blank Word Document from the file menu in Word.

Step 2 - Create the flyer border of the flyer by selecting the Border->Borders and Shading from the file menu. Depending on the version of word, this selection menu choice can vary in location on the File menu. Select the Page Border tab on the dialog box which appears in the application and choose the menu in the art box. Pick a border to put around the flyer being created and adjust the width and color to match your flyer design in the same tabbed options panel

Step 3 - Insert the flyer image by selecting the "Insert->Image" option from Word's file menu. To re-size the image, left click the image on the document and drag the corner of the image inwards or out to meet the desired size.

Step 4 - Insert a text box into the document by selecting the "Insert->Text Box" menu option. Left click the document on the left side of where the text box should be inserted and type the document's title into the box. Highly the text and choose the desired Font Format, style, and size from Word Font menu. After the title is finished, insert additional text boxes as required by the flyer design.

Step 5 - Select "File->Print Preview" from the primary file menu and preview the flyer's look and feel. Make changes as required by the approved design.

Step 6 - Save the Flyer in Word Document format in order to make printed copies of the flyer. To create Web Versions of the flyer, select the "Save As Web File or .HTML" menu option in the "Save As" file menu option. PDF is another option for creating an Internet or email-safe version of the flyer. A PDF burning print driver will need to be purchased or downloaded in order to create the PDF.

How to Create a Flyer in Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Photoshop is one of the premiere tools for creating visual media on the market. It can be downloaded and used for free in trial version for 30 days. Unlike other multi-media tools, Photoshop does not include a "Trial" watermark in work produced while being used in a trial status and is a powerful tool for creating flyers. These steps highlight how to use the basic tools in Photoshop to create a flyer with numerous advanced options available to further tweak the flyer design.

Step 1 - Create a new document in Photoshop and input the following parameters for the document:

• Width - 8 Inches
• Height - 10 Inches
• Resolution - 300 pixels/inch
• Background - White

If the flyer is going to be used for the web or email, decrease the resolution to 72 pixels/inch and the image size to 400 x 600 pixels to ensure that the consumer can view the flyer before closing the web page or email.

Step 2 - Open the primary image that will be used for the flyer.

Step 3 - Select the entire image and copy to the clipboard by selecting the file menu option (File->Edit->Copy) and paste it into the document created in step 1. Photoshop will automatically create a new layer for the image. Repeat this step for each image that will be used for the flyer. Normally a logo image and a background image are used for flyers.

Step 4 - Scale the image to fit the required size of the flyer by using a scale transformation to complete resizing the picture. This size will be no larger than the document parameters entered in step one.

Step 5 - Insert Text on the Flyer by inserting a text box into a new layer. The text can be inserted as one large text box to include the title or by using a separate box for each section of text. Format the text by selecting the text layer and modify the font size, type, and other features in the font toolbar.

Step 6 - Save the flyer in PSD, PDF, and JPEG format by selecting the "File->Save As" file menu option and changing the file type by using the drop-down menu on the File menu.

Using Flyer Templates

Flyer templates are readily available for use in Microsoft Word as well as Adobe Photoshop. Using a proven flyer template can prevent deploying a flawed design and ensure that the proper message is portrayed by an organization. The following are three resources for obtaining flyer templates:

• Microsoft Office Online Flyer Templates - Microsoft provides templates for all office products online to augment those which come with the purchase of the office suite that can be downloaded from within Word or directly from the Office website.
• FlyerTemplates.org - FlyerTemplates offers a small selection of free flyer templates to download.
• Stock Layouts - A great commercial resource for professional flyer templates. The templates generally run just under $100 USD.