A detailed flyer design brief ensures you do not go off track when those creative juices are flowing and allows you to outline the best possible content and approach for your flyer. Whilst this article is specifically looking at the example of a flyer, the same general rules apply to any piece of printed products be it leaflets, posters, banners, invitations or booklets. Follow these key guidelines and you will ensure that the end design for your flyer is both attractive and functional.
Tone
Ensure the tone of voice is in-line with the ethos of your business. Think about your audience, do you need your flyer to be fun, friendly and easy-going or do you need to get across a more serious tone and a sense of professionalism. Your tone of voice needs to be consistent with the tone you use for your website through to your business card. The tone effects not only the formality of your writing style for your flyer, but also the design elements too, using graphics which reflect the tone you are aiming to get across in your flyer.
Colours
The colours used for your flyer are again often reflective of your tone. More subdued or muted colours or use of black and white can create a more serious look and feel for a business focussed leaflet. Likewise using bright and contrasting colours can be fun and engaging and may be more appropriate for an informal event flyer. The colours should also be reflective of your brand identity to again be consistent with other printed materials such as leaflets and booklets.
Content
A common mistake with design briefs is to provide way too much copy. Whilst it is important to get across your key messages, these should be attention grabbing, easy to read bullets of sentences. Cramming your flyer full of content makes it look busy and stops it making a big impact on the reader. The key to a successful flyer design brief is to keep it simple. Work out your key messages and write these in to clear compact statements, you will then need to work in the following bits of information and work out your hierarchy:
- Company name and logo
- Contact details (address, telephone number, email)
- Website
- Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc)
- Company description (what do you do? what are your selling points?)
- Key services and benefits (it is important to link your services to how they will directly benefit your customers - keep this brief and concise)
- Call to action
- Special offers
This is a great starting point for your flyer, however of course every flyer is different so you will need to tailor the information to suit. The main point is to keep it short and sweet, this allows your design to pull out the main messages instead of all the copy being so small it puts people off reading. Making sure you have a clear call to action on your flyer gives your audience a sense of urgency, encouraging them to act now and get in contact whilst it is fresh in their mind.
You may have to start by writing everything you want to say and then take your red pen to it and get editing. Think about it from the end perspective, if someone was to glance at your flyer for 10-15 seconds, what would you want them to learn? It can be a tough job cutting down your copy but remember the aim of the flyer is to give them a sneak preview of your company, so keep it concise and you will end up with a top selling marketing tool.
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