Designing a leaflet
Designing an attractive and well-crafted leaflet will give you credibility and help you market your project as a cause worth supporting.
Leaflets should stand out
Well-produced leaflets can be highly effective, as they are the first contact many people will have with your campaign. You need originality and creativity to stand out above the daily bombardment of useless information.
What you should consider before you begin writing
Decide from the start what the main goal of the leaflet is, who your target audience are and how you are going to distribute it. These factors will influence the way you write and design your leaflet.
Why do you want to produce a leaflet?
- To raise money for a charitable project
- To advertise an open day, conference, car boot sale or other event
- To champion a local cause
- To encourage more people to worship in your Church
- To raise awareness of a social problem
Define your audience
Be clear who you are trying to reach. Speak their language; share their interests; make your presentation relevant and easy to understand.
But always maintain your integrity. Your prose may be a masterpice of rhetoric, but has your message been carefully and concientiously thought through? Good rhetoric can captivate an audience, but combined with deception, it's simply crass manipulation.
How will you distribute your leaflet?
If you are championing an important local issue, you may decide to print a flier to hand out to people on the street. Maybe you’re raising funds for a charitable cause and you will post leaflets telling your donors and supporters how the appeal is pregressing. Or, you may want to publicise a local event and decide to push your leaflets through letterboxes. These considerations will help you to decide the size, shape and design of your leadlet.
Now you can start writing and building your design. Begin by drafting a leaflet that will catch your readers' eye and best communicate your message.
Use a punchy title
Chose a succinct headline that grabs you reader's attention and conveys the essence of what you want to say. A good title invites reading; a bad title puts your reader off.
Avoid unnecessary words that create clutter and detract from the main message of your leaflet. Search for words that describe the purpose, or chief benefit, of your message.
Try using action words and identify the key verb that best describes your purpose or activity. Then add '-ing' to it. For instance, 'Fighting poverty' is a much better alternative to 'The St Cuthbert's Church programme for the relief of the poor in deprived areas'. And it's easy to remember.
Structure your appeal
- State the issue or problem -- your first few lines should engage the reader and unveil your appeal
- Give evidence and examples -- paint pictures with your words
- Present your solution
- Include a quote from a celeb or other well-known person commending your appeal
- Encourage your readers to take action -- how can they help
- Explain clearly what you want them to do
Make words count
Use plain language. Write so that everyone can easily understand your message. Use natural expressions and common words. People won’t read a long complicated leaflet, so keep your sentences short and clear.
Search for words with news appeal. Alert, challenge, connect, happenings, report, today, trends and update can be combined with another noun that describes your main purpose. For instance, schools update, outreach today, security alert, youth challenge. All are good attention grabbers.
Your leaflet must answer the questions 'who', 'what', 'where', 'when', 'how' and 'why?'. It must tell people specifically what they can do to help.
Use descriptive headings, subheadings, and quotations to get your main points across. Put three or four headings to a page so that if people only read the headlines they still get the message.
Avoid clichés. Create your own short, but memorable phrases.
Keep your leaflet simple, to the point, and easy to understand
- Break up long paragraphs.
- Use sections and headings.
- Use boxes for examples, short case studies, etc.
Blank space is your friend
There is no need to fill every square inch of the leaflet. White space, such as wide margins or space around the title, often improves the design and makes the leaflet more readable and inviting. Take a look at the amount of white space on this webpage.
Design titles in a bold, easy-to-read display font. Use a simple font for your text. Serif fonts (fonts with small decorative strokes added to the end of the letters' main strokes) improve readability by leading the eye along the line of type. Examples of common serif fonts are Times New Roman, Garamond, and Palatino. Limit yourself to two fonts per leaflet.
One picture is worth a thousand words
Start collecting a file of good photographs. Choose eye-catching pictures which speak for themselves and convey your message in a compelling way. Buy a digital camera and start improving your own pictures.
Additional Info
Provide a web address where people can get additional information on the topic as well as contact information for your group. Include a telephone number or email address as a point of contact, with a name if appropriate.
Related Links
- Designing a Leaflet
- Improving your News Photos
- Local Newspapers
- Mind your language
- Radio & Television Interviews
- Radio & Television Stations
- Spelling out words
- What is newsworthy?
- Writing a Press Release