How to Make a Flyer Design Online: A Step-By-Step Guide

Last Updated Jun 3, 2024

You can never go wrong with flyers, whether getting the word out about your newly launched restaurant business, inviting applications to your institution, or making people aware of your home-tutoring service. Even today, you can’t afford to ignore this low-cost targeted tool in your marketing strategy. Consider the design aspects if you’re serious about impacting your business with flyers.

I’ve compiled this step-by-step guide to Flyer design to help you create attention-grabbing flyers that will accomplish your goals. I’ll also share relevant Flyer templates from our DocHipo library that will catch your attention and flood you with more design ideas.

How to Make a Flyer Design Online

Know your purpose: Determine your ultimate marketing goal and how a flyer can help you achieve that.
Understand your target audience: Know their demographics and psychographics to speak to them directly through your flyers.
Clarify your key message: Think about your key message or offer.
Plan your call to action: Be clear on what action you want your target audience to take after going through the flyer.
Plan ahead flyer distribution strategy: You can distribute flyers in person on the street, pin them to bulletin boards, or share them electronically.
Craft the copy: Thoughtfully craft the words to welcome target readers and ultimately persuade them to take your desired action.
Consider brand identity elements: Consistently using brand elements like the brand logo, color, fonts, and imagery enhances brand recognition.
Find flyer design inspiration: Observe the layout, images, graphics, color scheme, font pairings, etc., in other flyers.
Dive deep into the kind of imagery to use: Analyze what kind of style speaks for your brand
Choose color: Choose brand colors or colors that reinforce your flyer’s key message.
Start with a flyer template: Choose a closely aligned template and tweak it to speed up your flyer design with a proven design.

Read further for a detailed guide with customizable flyer templates.

I’ve divided the flyer design process into three phases – planning the entire flyer strategy, ideating the design, and executing it.

Planning Your Flyer Design
Ideate the Flyer Design
Creating Your Flyer Design

Let’s get straight into the steps.

Planning Your Flyer Design

Before you jump into the design process, take some time to prepare a solid strategy for how you will design your flyer. It’ll add a lot of clarity, and you’ll be able to pay attention to every detail to create an impactful Flyer design.

Understand the Purpose

Figure out the ultimate goal of your marketing campaign and how the flyer will help you achieve that.

Your objective with the flyer could be anything like:

Building your brand awareness
Advertising your products or services
Promoting an event
Driving more sales etc

Don’t try to achieve all your business goals with a single flyer – one objective at a time.

For example, the DocHipo Flyer template below intends to increase the number of attendees for the webinar by promoting it.

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Once you’re clear about the flyer’s role in your campaign, move on to the next step.

Know Your Target Audience

Your flyer can’t be for everyone. It’s for a specific set of people. Once you clarify and know your target audience in and out, you’ll be able to speak to them directly through your flyers.

Now, what do I mean by knowing them in and out?

Demographics like age, location, gender, occupation, etc
Psychographics like their lifestyle, interests, desires, thought processes, habits, attitudes, behaviors, etc

When you know what excites your target audience, you can incorporate those elements in content and imagery, and your flyer is bound to bring you results.

Also, if you’re offering something exclusive, consider who’ll benefit from it the most and distribute your flyer accordingly.

For example, you may want a formal and sophisticated look while creating business flyers like the one below.

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On the other hand, you can use bright, vibrant colors and give the Flyer design a playful look.

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Think about the Key Message

What’s your offer? What’s that one important message you want to communicate?

Offer something precious to your target audience and present it with relevant design elements.

For example, look at the car wash Flyer template that crafted its irresistible offer through its catchy tagline, “WE ARE MOBILE, WE COME TO YOU.”

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Plan Ahead Your Call To Action

After scanning your flyer, what action do you want your target audience to take?

No matter your ultimate objective, ensure they quickly understand what they are supposed to do next. For example, should they need to arrive at your mentioned location on a specific date? Visit your website? etc.

Strategize Your Flyer Distribution well ahead

Plan how you’re going to distribute your flyers, as that might impact some aspects of your flyer design. You can distribute flyers in person on the street, pin them to bulletin boards or share them electronically.

Ideate the Flyer Design

So, now that you have your Flyer design strategy in place let’s talk about how you can plan the design. In this step, we’ll dive deeper into the content and design aspects of the flyer. Doing so well ahead will smoothen your design process and save time later.

Color Choices

While making design-related choices, keep in mind that they need to align with your

Brand
Industry and
Target audience

If your flyer aims to increase brand awareness, choose your brand colors. If you are at the initial stage of your business and struggling with brand colors, check out How to Pick Colors For Your Brand.

Otherwise, think about colors that will reinforce your flyer’s key message.

Choose colors that will evoke certain emotions or feelings in your target audience. The feeling could be hunger, experiencing something luxurious, passion for enhancing knowledge, etc.

Leverage Color Psychology to create an impact with your flyer.

Here’s a Flyer Template from DocHipo, where subtle colors make the whole Flyer design look so elegant.

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You can also rock with different shades of a single color, just like in the following car wash Flyer template.

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Note Down the Brand Identity Elements that Need to be Highlighted

If your target audience is already aware of your business or brand, they should readily recognize you seeing the flyer.

And how will you do it?

By incorporating some aspects of your brand.

What are those elements?

The elements are logo, catchy tagline, imagery pattern, etc., that are unique to your brand.

Observe how the logo placement goes well with the overall Flyer design.

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Dive Deep into the Kind of Imagery You Want to Add

What kind of style speaks for your brand?

Premium-quality images of the product you offer can catch people’s attention and make them go, “Wow!” Otherwise, if you’re not essentially promoting your own product, will you use stock images?

Look at how the high-resolution image from the DocHipo library enhanced the beauty of the whole Flyer design.

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Don’t forget to consider other graphic elements like illustrations, icons, etc.

Look at the beautiful and charming illustrations in the following corporate Flyer template.

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Similarly, look at the Illustrations of human figures working diligently to provide their promised service.

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Brainstorm the Copy of Your Flyer Design

Design and copy can’t be separated from each other. So, it’s time to brainstorm the powerful copy that’ll go into your Flyer design. Your thoughtfully crafted words should feel welcoming to your target readers. Convey the key message that you decided on in the earlier steps persuasively so that your target audience can’t resist taking the next step you want them to take.

Consider the following while crafting the copy:

Concise and Meaningful:

Don’t confuse or overwhelm your audience with too much information. Add just the necessary texts that make your target people excited.

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As you can see, the Flyer design Template above does not overload with unnecessary information. Instead, it’s a neat and elegant design with a straightforward message.

If you have much to say through your flyer, creatively add the text to the design.

I love the below DocHipo Flyer templates with such a beautiful design; the texts don’t feel overwhelming.

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Catchy Title

Craft attention-grabbing titles that make target readers curious to know more. Then, add additional information that your target audience needs to know.

Here are back-to-back three examples for you with catchy headlines.

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Highlight Vital Information

Are you offering any special offers or discounts etc.? Highlight this information creatively to intrigue your target audience to take action.

I love how creatively the following DocHipo Flyer template highlighted the anniversary offer.

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Visual Hierarchy

Visual hierarchy means placing all the design elements in the order of vitality to ensure your viewer looks at the most important information first.

For example, observe the visual hierarchy in the DocHipo Flyer templates below.

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Creating Your Flyer Design

Finally, we’ve landed in the execution phase of the Flyer design process.

Find Flyer Design Inspiration

You have already planned and ideated the design, but still, you may need ideas in specific design aspects. Here are the links to Flyer design guides and templates covering specific industries to make it convenient for you.

Start with a Flyer Template

Templates provide you with a solid foundation making the design process faster. DocHipo’s Free Online Flyer Maker gives you access to various eye-catching templates designed by professionals. You can easily and efficiently implement all the details discussed above with its design widgets and the drag-and-drop editor.

Check out The Ultimate Guide to Using the DocHipo Editor to customize your Flyer design.

Watch the video below to learn how to download your design once done.

Wrapping Up

Now with your pre-built strategy, content, design ideas, and DocHipo in hand, you’re all set to make a flyer you desire. Sign up to DocHipo for free to start your Flyer design journey today. No matter which industry you are in, you’ll be equipped with all the design assets you’ll ever need to create a flyer that brings you the results you deserve.

FAQ

What is a flyer design and why is it important?

A flyer is a cost-effective one-sheet advertisement tool for promoting a brand’s products or services. Flyer design is important because it attracts the audience’s attention, quickly communicates a message aiming at making them take a desired action.

Can I make a flyer design online without any design skills?

You can make a flyer design online with DocHipo’s flyer maker even without prior graphic design experience. First, explore all the flyer templates and choose the one that closely aligns with your need. Next, edit each design aspect, such as title, message, imagery, color schemes, call to action, etc., to reflect your brand.