What are printed leaflets & flyers?
They are a relatively small piece of paper or card, ranging in weight options of 130gsm, 170gsm, 220gsm or 300gsm which carries a promotional message or other piece of graphical information on one or both sides. They’ve been used for centuries as an effective form of promotional advertising as they’re cheap, easy to transport and allow you to get your key selling message in front of thousands of potential customers in a relatively short period of time.
How can I use them
Many clients use them for business to promote what they have to sell. This makes them equally useful as promotional flyers for virtually anything, whether it’s a product, service, event or even a special offer. The most common way to use them is to hand them out to passers-by. If you stand in a busy street, you could get your promotional message in front of hundreds or even thousands of people. Another great technique is to use them for advertising by leaving them in key locations where your target audience may be present. For example, if you are a fitness instructure, you could ask to leave them in the reception of your local gym.
Finally, mail distribution is an incredibly popular method. You can either post them yourself or hire a company to put thousands of your marketing flyers through the letterboxes of homes in your area of choice. The sheer quantity means that it can be a very powerful way of drawing in sales.
What type of leaflet sizes, finishes and quantities are available?
Whilst many sizes are available, the most common are A5, A6 and DL. They allow enough space to present all of the information and graphical elements you may need whilst remaining versatile enough to be handed out to potential customers, posted through letterboxes or left on surfaces. Whilst A4 sizes are available, they are often only suitable for specific uses for example, if you need to include a lot of information where A5 doesn’t provide enough space). Read More
It also depends on their intended use. For example, if they are going to be handed out they need to retain an element of portability which can be difficult with larger sizes.
Double sided flyers & leaflets compared to single sided, are also a fantastic way of making full use of the available space by using two different pieces of artwork on each side.When it comes to quantities, the use of digital and lithographic production now means there are far more options available at much more affordable prices. Traditional methods have the same setup costs regardless of the quantity, meaning that 5000 to 10,000 used to be the only cost effective options. However, digital production means that quantities as low as 100, 250, 500 1000, 2500 are now equally affordable and ensure that you’re still paying a very low price per sheet.
How to make and design them
“How do you make your own flyers” is a common question we hear. The answer is that it’s fairly simple to create them using graphic design software, but the overall final quality of the artwork depends on your own level of skill. That’s why, if you’re prepared to invest in professional leaflet printing, it may also be worth investing in a professional design which ensures that they look fantastic and that you’re getting real value for money. However, if you don’t have your own design and don’t want to use an external designer, then all is not lost. We include a free basic custom design as standard if you need it on orders over £50! Simply tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll do the rest.
History of Leaflets and Flyers
Some of the earliest forms were called broadsides – large sheets of paper printed on one side only with text and sometimes woodcut pictures that advertised events or distributed news.
One hugely popular use in the 16th and 17th Centuries was to print the words of popular songs or ballads, which would then be sold for a penny on the streets, shared and learned by singers and musicians. Before recorded music, broadsides were crucial to the spread of popular songs. Because broadsides were temporary documents, not designed to be kept for long, surviving copies are rare. There are several large collections of ballad broadsides in the British Library and the Bodleian library in the UK, and they are now important social documents. The woodcut pictures used to illustrate the songs show us how people dressed and lived.
Another more grisly use of them in the 17th Century was as a souvenir of the execution of a criminal. Hangings were popular public events, which could gather huge crowds, and printers would produce broadsides for the occasion, detailing the crime with verses and a picture of the execution itself. Broadside sellers would move through the crowds selling their wares, much like the distributors of today! The American Declaration of Independence was distributed publicly as a broadside leaflet in 1776, announcing that the 13 American colonies were no longer part of Great Britain. One copy of the broadside was glued into the journal of Congress as a record. Only 26 copies are known to exist – the last but one was discovered in 1989, hidden behind a painting found at a yard sale for $4. It is now worth $8.4 million.
Early commercial versions were known as handbills, single sheets of paper handed out for free to advertise something. Many theater handbills were made to advertise plays, shows and fairs, using strong visuals and eye-catching fonts. More recently, they have been commonly used to advertise music events, handed out for free at concerts and on the street or made available in venues. Many bands have used innovative flyer design – early punk bands made the most of cheap, crude visuals to create eye-catching promotion for gigs. Early prints of popular cult bands and venues are now highly collectible items, partly because of their rarity – designed to be handed out, pinned to boards and lampposts and thrown away, they were not meant to last! Flyers for the Sex Pistol’s Anarchy In the UK tour are now worth hundreds of pounds. They are popular in some cities with an active nightlife and music scene.
In business they have been used for years to advertise products. For example, companies would hand them out at agricultural fairs advertising anything from the latest farm equipment to seeds and fertilizers. In recent years, advances in technology and the internet have made custom leaflets and flyers easier and cheaper than ever, as people can upload designs for production quickly and cheaply.
