Writing a flier is much the same as writing a print advertisement: Some rules remain constant. When you are writing a flier, ask yourself:

1. What do you want your readers to do?

2. What can you offer that is most likely to interest your readers?

If the answer is the same for both questions, you’ve got your headline. Now you need to consider what David Ogilvy said about headlines:

A good headline is written in five words or less

If you can reduce your essential message down to five words (or less) and still interest your reader, then you have an excellent headline. But then, rules were made to be broken and it was actually David Ogilvy who is credited with creating two of the best known, most admired and longest headlines:

1. At 60 mph, the loudest noise you’ll hear is the clock ... was written for Rolls Royce when the Rolls was being introduced to the American market as the ultimate European luxury driving experience, in a time when car and road noise competed to deafen drivers. A Rolls Royce designer is reported to have said when reading the ad “We’ll have to do something about that damned clock”

2. They all laughed when I sat down at the piano, but when I started to play ... was written for a home study service, who found this advertisement worked so well that they used it for decades, just changing the body copy regularly to incorporate new courses. It is rumoured they even continued to use the headline for a short time after they discontinued selling piano lessons by correspondence.

You should use as many words as you need to get your essential message across, but remember that research shows that a short headline does increase readership.

You can do it

By now, you will have noticed what the two long headlines have in common: the you factor. Readers are invited to join in, to imagine driving a Rolls or astounding their friends by a virtuoso piano performance. Once readers believe they can do whatever is imagined, they may even be intrigued enough to read further …

The consumer is not an idiot.
The consumer is your wife.

Another David Ogilvy maxim: first identify your target audience, then make sure you speak their language and talk to them rather than at them. A copywriters’ trick is to identify who you want to read your ad or your flier and then to write to that person.

Now, as well as telling a good story, you also have to consider how much time and/or space you have allocated to your story. Just as it is silly to try to cram 15 minutes of good story into 15 seconds of radio time, you’ll waste your time if you write a good booklet or pamphlet and then try to cram it into a flier because that’s all the budget will allow.

Which brings us to white space.....

White space is the space between individual components of your ad or flier. White space helps to draw the reader’s eye to important information. It also helps to provide a readership route through your page, because readers lose interest quickly when confronted with a sea of grey text. Sometimes parts of your story can be told better in point form, because then you can use white space more effectively.

Editing is the copywriters’ best tool. Sometimes your story is told better by what you leave out. Even multinational advertisers have been guilty of advising an advertising agency to “just reduce the type size to fit the space” because they couldn’t bear to lose a word of their award-winning copy but if a reader can’t read your type easily and quickly, you’ve wasted your time.

Choosing a font

A useful trick when choosing your font size and style is to imagine that your font is like the spoken word.

Do you want to SHOUT AT YOUR READERS TO GET THEIR ATTENTION , or is this message more of a whisper, a way to speak in a confidential manner? If you can change the tone of your communication so graphically using variations of just one typeface in one type size, just imagine what you can do with more! And then, there’s always WordArt …..

One way to identify a novice typographer is by the number of fonts and the sizes of type used in each job. If they stick to one or two fonts used sparingly for emphasis, then you have a professional who knows how to increase readership. An amateur gets enthusiastic, and uses different fonts in different sizes throughout the job so readers are challenged by having to adjust their eyes to identify words in different fonts.

Be aware that changing fonts often means decreased readership, which means you’ve wasted your time.

Research says it’s best to use UPPER CASE sparingly. Our brains are trained to identify lower case letters and words. We read by the shape of the word, not by reading individual letters. Ascenders and descenders give a distinctive shape to words while ALL UPPER CASE can make most words look the same. And if you make it too difficult for your reader to continue, you’ve wasted your time.

If you use lower case, you can even get away with the odd typographical error (or spelling mistake) , because many readers will just read past your error as their brain logically corrects your mistake into what the word should be.

There are some delightful fonts available – but do choose wisely. While a font may look fantastic with one or two words or as a pretend signature, if you use a fancy font for a whole publication it may prove difficult to read, so your potential readers just don’t bother! And if they don’t read it, you’ve wasted your time.

Use of Illustrations

A picture is worth a thousand words

David Ogilvy didn’t say it, but he should have! More people will notice your visual than will ever read your copy. Research shows that ads with large photos or illustrations get higher readership than ads with small illustrations or no art.

If your flier copy says that your Club empowers women of all ages, races, and creeds to enjoy working together for their community, that’s a good story so long as your reader believes it.

Now imagine how your reader will react if you show a photo of a group of women of different ages and ethnic backgrounds joyfully working together to pack Christmas boxes, with a caption of “Four Townsville Clubs join forces to pack gifts for the orphans in Timor”. You have told potential Soroptimists far more:

1. This is a Service organization;
2. We work on community projects;
3. We are international;
4. Individual Clubs work together on common goals,
5. Soroptimists are individual women who enjoy working together, and
6. We have fun.

You have graphically demonstrated all this with one photograph and a small easily-read caption, which your reader is more likely to believe and to remember.

Another copywriters’ tip: don’t put type over a photograph.

The changing colours or grey tones in a B&W photo as a background makes your type difficult to read, and some readers just won’t bother trying to decipher your words.

On the other hand, reverse type (where the type is white on black), ie

This is an example of Reverse Type

can be used very effectively in headlines, captions and base lines, but is best used sparingly as a design element within your total message. If you use huge blocks of reverse type, or use reverse type for copy, you may find that you decrease readability. If you are creating a flier that will be photocopied for distribution, be aware that big areas of black will sometimes distort during the copying process.

Clarity & Readability

Research shows that most people read an advertisement or flier in a reverse S shape, i.e. from the top left across to the right, then swinging back to the left, then down to the bottom right of the page.

If you position your design elements carefully, you can take full advantage of this reverse S reading style - and that's the reason why most headlines are big and at the top of the page.

With reverse S reading, that’s where most readers will look first. Illustrations are often centered under the headline or LHP (left hand page), because the eye picks them up easily (remembering that a picture is worth a thousand words).

However, a LHP illustration position then encourages the eye to travel on to copy that is either centered, or RHP. Logos, baselines, calls to action are usually bottom RHP, because that’s where the eye finishes reading.

People do expect to see certain objects in certain places, so unless you are deliberately trying to catch the reader’s eye with outstanding design, it’s usually safer to follow the reverse S.

Think about your reader: if you are writing for an average Australian, stick to the reverse S designs. If you are writing for a super-bored ADD teenager, you may need to use jump-off-the-page design and an upside down headline to gain your reader’s attention.

If you are writing a flier for people you know and who know you, ie within your Club, you will have far more leeway to be informal, to use quirky designs, pretty papers and humour or Club in-jokes.

However, if you are writing for someone you haven’t met and who doesn’t know you, it is much safer to maintain a formal communication style, rather than risk offending, boring or alienating them.

Using Colour

Dame Edna Everage is correct when she says that colour and movement catch the eye. If you are producing a printed communication you can’t use movement, but you can certainly use colour if you can afford it.

Even stretching your budget to two colours, one for body copy and one for captions and/or illustrations, can measurably increase readership.

Full colour photographs are usually more noticeable than black & white; but it does depend on your photographer. I’ve seen some B&W shots that are compelling and some colour work that was boring.

You have to balance between added impact and added cost: whether the impact from full colour will be great enough to justify the extra cost.

With fliers which are normally printed one colour you can include a second colour easily by paying a little extra to print on a coloured stock.

While it’s always a temptation to choose the brightest colour available to catch the eye, sometimes you can produce a better flier by using a less noticeable colour.

There’s a reason why the majority of copy paper is offered in white, cream and a choice of four pastel colours and it’s not because the majority of users are boring pastel people. It’s because the people who use the most copy paper are professionals, who know that while colour attracts initial interest, readability drops if the colour is too bright or too dark.

Use the bright or dark colours by all means, but it’s best if you limit them to the cover of a publication which has headlines and/or illustrations but no body copy, then move to white or light colours for the main body of the publication.

Certainly it is important to get noticed, but you also have to consider readability. If you choose a bright red or a deep purple for example, these are eye-catching colours which have been used very successfully for years by the Church. But when you try to put black type on these colours, the type becomes very difficult to read especially in smaller type.

If your reader can’t decipher your message easily, you may have wasted your time.

Have you left anything out?

This may sound obvious, but do check your flier or advertisement against your checklist of what you want your reader to do before you print.

1. Have you communicated your main message?

2. Have you communicated why the reader will want to accept your offer?

3. Have you given the necessary time, and date, and venue details?

4. And have you included contact details, a name and phone number for your reader to respond?

While including a contact point to get a response may sound just too simple to ever be forgotten, a major Australian company (who shall remain nameless) actually paid for a blind* recruitment display advertisement in the Melbourne Age on a Saturday which cost thousands of dollars to run. The company happily paid all the extra loadings for display, and for top of column employment section, plus the normal Saturday loadings, to get exactly the position they wanted in order to increase readability, and thereby increase response levels.

Unfortunately, they didn’t include any contact details, so the effort was wasted.