Flyers.... How much is too much??

With Easter just around the corner, many churches are designing and posting flyers to publicize their Easter programs and the special events they host on Easter Sunday (or on the Saturday before Easter in some cases). When designing flyers... when do you stop and say... That's it, I have enough graphics on this flyer?

We have all seen them, the flyers with LOUD colors, cluttered typing and jumbled up or pixilated graphics. These flyers do very little to get the message across to our target audience... the unchurched! There are also the flyers on the opposite end of the scale with very little to no coloring, no attention grabbing text and no details about the event. These flyers do even less to get our message across! (I mean really... what good is it to advertise an event if you do not tell where or when the event will be held?!) Somewhere in between there is a happy medium... This happy medium is an effective flyer.

Recently our Outreach Director contacted me for a flyer to send out that was not for a special event, we weren't promoting any fund raisers or any special services... We were just promoting our church. The only information she gave me was that she wanted a flyer to send out... I told her to give me some time because I wasn't used to creating flyers without a theme or an event to promote... Immediately after praying about it, God gave me the theme for the flyer! Below is that flyer...

The theme for this flyer is Restoration... which coincidentally is the theme behind our Pastor's Vision for our church (which I did not know about until after I had emailed him the flyer and he called me and read me his vision that God had given him for the church over 17 years ago!). The graphics do not interfere with the message of the flyer, the font grabs your attention and the scriptures help to reinforce the overall message of the flyer. The location of the church as well as our website is included in case people want more information or would like to join us. The downside of this flyer (that I did not realize until after we had sent the flyers out) is that I did not include the service times on the flyer. If someone DID want to visit our church, they would have to go to the website to find out our service times. This is a mistake that will definitely be corrected on future flyers.

The next flyer that I am working on is our Easter flyer. This flyer is a little more colorful and has more graphics. I also made sure to include the service time on this one :)

This was the first draft of the Easter flyer. It didn't make the cut! While we all liked the concept, the flyer seemed to focus more on the Easter egg hunt than the REAL reason for Easter and for our special service. Notice that the font is large enough that people won't have to get too close to read the message, the time, date and location is all included, along with our website and our BRAND NEW LOGO! :) (yes I'm a little excited about the new logo :) In addition to the issue of the eggs, the font for the date and time were a little light when the flyer was printed. Below is the final version that we are publishing this week.

The colors are bright and will attract attention, yet don't distract from the overall appearance of the flyer. The background is light enough that the message can be clearly read, yet also helps to deliver the true reason for Easter as well as the reason for our service.

Now that we have a logo, you can expect to see that logo on everything we put out, from letters, to flyers, to business cards and soon even on our envelopes. Our webpage has been changed to include the logo in the address bar (I'll discuss that in a completely different post!!) Branding is all about getting your brand out there. My goal is for people to see that logo and KNOW that what they are looking at is from our church.

Well I hope this blog helped you get your flyers designed. Don't hesitate to send me a message if you need any help or if you would like to use any of the graphics from our flyer. I'll be more than happy to share!

God bless!
Steph