affinity publisher Library Flyer - trying to make it pop

[chasm]

Hi my esteemed listmates, I hope this finds you all well. I'm both a newbie to Affinity and to graphics in that I've only used MS Publisher a few times. I'm trying to create flyer (1/2 sheet) and bookmark which pops so younger people will be drawn to it to read more re: our small public library. Gold and silver are difficult colors to achieve in Publisher but I;d be so grateful to you all for any thoughts re: colors, contrast, font styles, formatting, graphics or other suggestions re: how I can take this "work-in-progress" and make it pop or at least look a lot more interesting or professional. I'm obviously not a graphics designer so I appreciate all your help! Thank you so much!!

Libraries & History Flyer.pdf

[Smee Again]

Some graphics wold be nice. Why?

For the same reason we went from DOS to Windows . . . everyone likes pictures better than words (besides, you would be surprised how many can't read that are being passed from one grade to the next).

 

[GarryP]

In addition to the advice above, my first suggestion would be to have different things on each side of the flyer.
Having the same thing on both sides is a little like repeating the same thing on the same side of a sheet of paper.
You could use one side for mostly pictures, as an ‘attract mode’, while the other side can have more textual information.

Try and find images of young people doing things together and having a good time, if you can find images that show these in a ‘near-library setting’ then all the better.
Do you have any good-quality photos from past events that you can use? It’s usually better if people can relate the images to what they will see in their world rather than some generic people/places.
If you don’t, would it be easy to get some people together to ‘simulate’ people having fun at the library?
Try doing an image search for “people having fun at a library” and see what you get. Check copyright before using any images.

My second suggestion is to think about what your audience might be interested in.
For instance, if you want young people to be interested, how many of them will want to read the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal, or prune a tree, or prep’ their boat for a hurricane? (Maybe you have lots of ‘high-brow’ boat-owning kids who like to keep up-to-date with business news and their stock portfolio before doing a bit of gardening, I don’t know.)

I tried to access the website to get some inspiration but I got nothing. Firefox idled for a couple of minutes before showing me a blank page. Maybe that needs to be looked at.

I’ve attached a crudely-done example of something which might spark some inspiration. (The images are just some semi-random stuff I put there so the areas weren’t blank.)

[Wosven]

18 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Do you have any good-quality photos from past events that you can use?

Be carefull with that, you need written consent from people or parents before using their pic, bluring child faces…

The pictures should relate to a library, if it feels like a flyer for a summer camp, there's a problem.

Look at flyers or mockup/template images online, you'll find nice ideas to reuse in your work.

Avoid all those "free" stars everywhere, it looks cheap, and stop people from reading the content since the eyes are draw to those constantly.

You can have icons or symbols for main categories, a little paragraph to explain those or add details about their content, and perhaps a specific part for "How to" with some pictures with caption…

 

Also, usually libraries (at least in France),  have main sections (books, music, etc.) and sub-sections (adult, young-adult, children). You can advertise about part of them, especially the ones that you think are interesting but not know enough by the public.

Depending of you budget, you can also have other flyers by sections. It'll help people usually mainly taking books to learn about the music or the video sections' content, etc.

[chasm]

Thank you all!  My bad that I uploaded the older version of the flyer done months ago. I've (hopefully) uploaded the last version which did contain graphics.

Wosven - You mentioned "Look at flyers or mockup/template images online, you'll find nice ideas to reuse in your work." Would you please share any sites you've found helpful for mock-ups/templates?

GarryP - your points are well taken. The local community skews older (70+) but I'm trying to attract pre-teens, teens, those in their 20s and 30s as well as successful people who don't use the library because they think we just have books they can get from Amazon and quicker.

I've taught myself how to video record and edit (LOVE DaVinci Resolve Free) video of library events, programs an orgs in the community (pls see our YouTube page with the Charlotte County Technical College (CTC) cooking and baking programs highlighted.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=345968516627342

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XciUso5r6yg&t=18s

Many people don't even know we keep our DVDs for feature films and TV shows up-to-date so as soon as DVDs are pressed for a show (e.g "Billions" "Better Call Saul" or Oscar nominated and international films) we add them to our collection.

I wanted to convey that the library isn't just for the poor but can offer something for everyone, even those living in the lap of luxury.

I see your point about Free detracting graphically. We inserted it because in a poorer community people leap to the conclusion that if something is offered it costs $$$. But, I learned in writing  to remove anything which slows your script down or could jeopardize your audience's attention and if that's how you viewed it then others will, too so thank you for that insight!

All.. I was trying to ascertain which font styles and colors appeal most to people reading your flyers? Gold and silver are out (I learned the hard way) but which colors have been found to pop? I'm trying to create a flyer that even people who could care less about a library want the flyer because it looks cool or they love the colors, patterns, shapes, graphics, etc.

Thank you ALL again for your kind help.

 

[Wosven]

This last one is really nice and better!

 

1 hour ago, chasm said:

You mentioned "Look at flyers or mockup/template images online, you'll find nice ideas to reuse in your work." Would you please share any sites you've found helpful for mock-ups/templates?

It's really a complexe and elaborate process:

• I use Google image to find nices examples I save in a folder, until I'm fed up and can't stand looking another result page...
• If it wasn't satisfactory (too specific search for good result on Google), I search example pic on freepik.com or similar site, and save examples...
• At this point, I've seen too many examples, I close everything and do something else, sometimes for few days!
• ...I begin working on the design, depending of what I need to do, the materials I can use (available fonts, images…), and only look at the examples if I need to check about "how those yellow frames/how this example with contrasted font width/another fuzzy memory..." need some help to be put on the page.
  …Or if waiting didn't help at all, it happens too with projects you're not fond of doing.

Another process would be to begin copying some example, and once done, you'll get more ideas about what is usefull or not, what you need to add, delete, etc. Modifying until it's your own personal work. In the end, it can be completely different.

 

I usually wait at least a night, to get a new look at what I've done (drawing, layout), especially in the morning with a cup of coffee and inactive neurons… This state can give good or terrible advices, don't forget to save as a new file before modifying anything, you'll be happy to compare later progress or regress you made

[chasm]

Hi Wosven... Have you found any studies which shared which font styles, colors and/or shapes, patterns work best? There are tons of Title Effects in the DR library (thank you!) so you have to go one by one to see which ones might be good. There are many I haven't explored  them all as there's only so  much time I can devote to special effects when editing a video - there are deadlines eve for a library! I have no idea if many people like Embrima (any why/why not) and which colors are more appealing to people (is Periwinkle fun? Or Coral better?) I know the huge marketing companies Like Leo Burnett have stats on almost every color and hue so branding a new product is "engineered" accordingly. I just wondered if graphics artists have found certain font styles, colors and/or shapes have been found to be better received?

Thank you.

[GarryP]

Your intended audience is quite diverse so you may find it difficult to come up with one design which will appeal to all.
If you have the funds to have many smaller print runs – rather than one big one – it may be an idea to have different designs, each targeting a different set of people.

Another thing to consider is how the flyers will be distributed.
For instance, will they be sitting in a display waiting for people to pick them up, or will they be stuffed into other publications, or will they be stuffed into mailboxes, or will people be handing them out directly, or something else?
The different distribution methods may require different designs.

By way of example, if the flyers are going to be in some sort of display where only the top quarter of the flyer is immediately visible then that part of the flyer really needs to do something to try and grab peoples’ attention so they pick it up. Otherwise, if people don’t pick the flyer up, they will never see the rest of it.
Conversely, if people are having the flyer thrust at them then the design needs to be something that catches their attention in less than a second or so and makes them keep hold of the flyer until they get home. Otherwise it will go straight in the nearest bin and be wasted.

As for fonts, colours, shapes, etc. there isn’t one best practice guide to what you should do. People get bored and trends change.
There are lots of design guides which will tell you that certain colours ‘mean’ a certain thing to some people – e.g. blue for “tranquillity”, red for “strength”, etc. – but they are generally targeted at specific design requirements – logos and that sort of thing.

Personally I don’t think different colours, shapes, patterns, etc. will change how people feel about libraries; people either think they are good things or they don’t care, and you will probably not change their mind by using, for instance, a red circle instead of a blue triangle.

As for fonts, some are designed to work in very specific ways and others are more general. There are lots of web articles which tell you which fonts to use in which situations, but there are also articles telling you to break with ‘tradition’ if you want to get things noticed. There are some long-standing generally-accepted guidelines, such as “Comic Sans” should only be used for things like posters for children’s parties, but there is no ‘right way’.

All-in-all, the design(s) need to be tailored to your audience and how the flyers will be distributed. Think about how you come into contact with other flyers and how much you look at them and what you do with them. Which do you read, which do you keep, which do you glance at and then put in the recycling bin, and which do you you just put in the bin without giving them any thought?

If you don’t want to have to do lots of work with studies and experiments then, as Wosven says above, try looking for something which already exists and make a variant of that. It’s unfortunate that most of the work you do on this will be wasted on most people so it might not be worth putting too much effort into it; maybe a flyer isn’t the best way to change people’s minds about libraries.

[Wosven]

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

If you have the funds to have many smaller print runs – rather than one big one – it may be an idea to have different designs, each targeting a different set of people.

No really, sorry. Usually you use a “charte graphique” (graphical charter?), using same colors, same font, same basic design, so people will reconize "who" ’s talking to them at first glance. Instantly, you'll reconize it's from your bank, the electricity company, or your library.
But you can have some with lot of pic or lot of text, or in between.

If there's already a chart for this, try to stay in the spirit of it.

Try to be modern and classical, so you'll only have few modifications to do later (some design are so dated they can look old easily when the trend change).

 

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

if people are having the flyer thrust at them then the design needs to be something that catches their attention in less than a second or so and makes them keep hold of the flyer until they get home

If they are given at the library — and it would be the logical way —, they'll look at it and read part of the text because that's different than a flyer put on your mailbox or windshield, when it's given by people they know, in a place they usually go.

 

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

such as “Comic Sans” should NEVER only be used for things like posters for children’s parties

I couldn't resist

 http://www.comicsanscriminal.com/

 

2 hours ago, GarryP said:

It’s unfortunate that most of the work you do on this will be wasted on most people so it might not be worth putting too much effort into it; maybe a flyer isn’t the best way to change people’s minds about libraries.

It would be so if it was distributed arbitrary on in the mail box, but I don't think it'll be such way. It sounds like flyers distributed to specific audience, as in the location they're meant to belong, or special cultural events where people are interesed in such things.

If it's proove effective, you can also try to give them on fairs or markets, to test. Today, communication would use other ways than wasting flyers, like using the city's web site, magazines, etc. as primary communication.
Having expositions (and they can be made locally with less budget and manual work, not always big bucks rented ones), and special events at the library is also an easy way to get people interested and knowing about the place, talking about it.

[GarryP]

1 hour ago, Wosven said:

Usually you use a “charte graphique” (graphical charter?)

When I said “different designs” I should have said “different variants of the same design”.
As Wosven says, all of the library printed communications should use the same overall style so they can be recognised as coming from the same place, but, you may need to vary the design slightly to appeal to different types of people – e.g. a ten-year-old may likely be attracted to different activities to those that would attract a twenty/thirty-year-old.

1 hour ago, Wosven said:

If they are given at the library — and it would be the logical way

Why would the flyers be handed out at the library? If someone is already in the library there’s no need to give them an incentive to go, and any information in the flyers can be given by a poster, of which you would only need a few, positioned in strategic places.

I’m still not convinced that flyers telling people about their library is the best use of time/effort/money but if that’s what’s wanted then why not.

Maybe I’m just a bit jaded by how my local council, and the local general population, regards their libraries. The city I live in has a population of nearly 300,000 people but our main city library has a total floorspace (approx. 240 square metres, maybe less) which would comfortably fit inside the nearest Clinton Cards gift shop. Sad, isn’t it?

[Wosven]

27 minutes ago, GarryP said:

When I said “different designs” I should have said “different variants of the same design”.

Thanks for clarifying, we were on the same mind.

 

27 minutes ago, GarryP said:

Why would the flyers be handed out at the library? If someone is already in the library there’s no need to give them an incentive to go, and any information in the flyers can be given by a poster, of which you would only need a few, positioned in strategic places.

Because the first purpose seems to enlarge the knowledge of different collections in the library, for people going there.

Again, I wouldn't use flyers out of the library, but for special cultural events. I'd rather use large panels explaining the collection and exposed outside (outside the libray, in the park, or other frequented place. It's surdier, you can keep it for monthes so more people will look at them, and can reuses them somewhere else when needed.

If the city can, like here (Morris columns, boards, modern screen display...), advertise and put posters about events, or collection, it would work for longer than some flyers.

Giving flyers to group of children visiting from school can be good to extend the knowledge to parents/families.

 

I don't know about you, but I won't read flyers out of my interests, it's like ads in the mailbox => direct to the bin. If people in the street try to give me some flyers, I ask what it is about, and decline if I'm not interested. Each time I'm sad, thinking how many refusals and waste of time it is for them. (I even take it and wait to be out of view to put it in a bin when I saw too many people doing so!)

[chasm]

Hi Gary,

Your thoughts abbot how the flyers will be distributed is an excellent point as well as creating 2-4 different designs.

We're planning down the road to park a card table outside of colleges, businesses, orgs, maybe even churches and synagogues (all wit their permission) and "personing" (2 people) at the table to call attention to our flyers and the library. I've personally signed people up for library cards who were just hanging around the lobby and taking them on an impromptu tour (2 min.( pointing out our Maker Space we're I teach 3D printing and we have a wood engraver ans 2 digitla sewing machines capable of handling boat sails stitching, then to all the PCs we offer free I-Net to, through our playful Youth section and then around to our collection of Feature Film-TV-Foreign Film and instructional DVDs.

I then show them our Web site and share our YouTube channel where I and others have videos recorded and uploaded tons of programs, interviews, highlight of orgs, share our free connection to Kanopy (streaming films, Hoopla (music) and our Cloud Library app which enables them to download and read our eBooks on their Kindle, tablet, cell, laptop, desktop, etc.

If you haven't visited our library in 3 years, you would know almost nothing about all our assets besides printed books.

There hasn't been a concentrated focus on targeting the communities who have not visited the library. That includes rich older folks, those new to the community, those new to our state, and even patrons who know about books but know little to nothing about all the other benefits of a library card.

My 1st focus will be on students because they want to learn - that's why they're in school. Kids often teach parents and grandparents so they teach as well as learn. They can serve as library "ambassadors' to stir interest in other generations and their neighborhoods. The best marketing is engaged customers.

So, how do you all feel about the colors in this flyer? The starburst graphics? The graphics designed  to convey themes (DVD Films)?

In Google images would you suggest I look for "flyers" with quotes? I haven't spent a lot of time in Google images but I'd really like to collect flyers, images I like. I did that with magazines onely to learn we can't recreate the gold and silver colors which display such stunning contrast.

Thank you!

 

 

[chasm]

Hi Wosven.

Please forgive me as I'm just now catching up with your very insightful thoughts.

You shared... "I won't read flyers out of my interests, it's like ads in the mailbox => direct to the bin. If people in the street try to give me some flyers, I ask what it is about, and decline if I'm not interested."

That begs the very key questions of how COULD we gain the attention of people like you who don't react well to flyers?

I still need to connect to the Morris columns (thank you so much for sharing that!)

We'd like to spark a pro-active, interactive conversation with those who lack library cards as to why they don't have one?

We don't have the budget of a multi-national corp to conduct studies and focus groups so we'll need  to engage them in conversation. I do that daily when they phone in or they're lingering in the library lobby but we need broader outreach. We have a larger spaced library (used to be a grocery-like store) with 3 Meeting Rooms available for reservation and 3 study rooms accommodating 8+ people on a first come basis.

The plan isn't to just pile a bunch of flyers on a card table and walk away but to draw students over to the table to hand them a flyer or bookmark and engage them to determine if anything on our flyer would attract them to the library and if not what could we be offering them which would help their lives, goals, interests, etc.

Meaty stuff, eh?!

Thank you ALL for a robust conversation!!

 

 

 

 

[Wosven]

Hi @chasm,

You nearly convince me to come, explaining your tour of the library and your activities!

And since you can create videos, why not a short one or more of this tour on your site, with a QRcode linked

to the main one on the flyers?

 

On 5/16/2021 at 5:04 PM, chasm said:

You shared... "I won't read flyers out of my interests, it's like ads in the mailbox => direct to the bin. If people in the street try to give me some flyers, I ask what it is about, and decline if I'm not interested."

That begs the very key questions of how COULD we gain the attention of people like you who don't react well to flyers?

I only choose the flyers I'll read. I'll decline if it's about cars, sports, fortune telling... accept the ones about cultural activities, restaurants, novelties. It's like ads in the mailbox, I never put a "no ads" sticker to avoid them, hoping to get interesting ones, but 99% aren't. 

If people don't wan't a flyer, they certainly won't read it. And discard them on the pavement out of view

 

On 5/16/2021 at 5:04 PM, chasm said:

We don't have the budget of a multi-national corp to conduct studies and focus groups so we'll need  to engage them in conversation. I do that daily when they phone in or they're lingering in the library lobby but we need broader outreach. We have a larger spaced library (used to be a grocery-like store) with 3 Meeting Rooms available for reservation and 3 study rooms accommodating 8+ people on a first come basis.

The students/children part is a good way to go. It's free advertising, and can convince people that think libraries are just a bunch of dusty old books stores in dark aisles.

I have a friend that work in libraries, and she created a lot of expositions or cultural events. Sometimes inside the libraries or outside (in the city's park), with posters in the city for everyone to know. It could be about chocolate, or impressionists painters, or illustrators for children, origami... One of those event was particullary crazy: she and hers friends crocheted flowers and such to dress trees, guardrails in the park, to emphasis panels about artists and paintings scattered around. There are concerts on the Fête de la Musique day (perhaps difficult with Covid...)
How old is your library? It's perhaps time to prepare an event for the xth anniversary… or expositions or contest children would be interested in, bringing their parents in. The chocolate expo ended with a funny (but messy...) pastry contest and tasting, and since the children needed to register to participate, it was possible to give each one a prize (a chef's toque with a label and few candies).

The purpose is to show libraries are lively and different than what people imagine if they never went in one. It's also a good way to be known of the communication teams of the city and do more work with them, until it's natural and the library is associated with mains events (and get budget), giving more visibility.

The goal is to be known, perhaps an article in the local newspaper!

Flyers won't be able to do all this, but they'll help a lot giving a sturdy view or answer about details of what you're doing. You just need to bring people in, where you'll give more flyers

Reading about what you're doing, and how you give flyers, I suppose you're at the best for this part. The next part is perhaps "how to get people coming and talking (or the other way) around about what we do,what we provide in the library?", to get more people.

 

Another idea: did you make a "How to" video with a local celebrity? Perhaps it's a pastry chef, and he advertised in his shop about the 1st viewing you did in the library on wide screen, where you invited other people too and did a small party. And now, he'll keep a poster about the library and the video in his shop... and talk about it proudly.

 

[Wosven]

On 5/16/2021 at 5:04 PM, chasm said:

I still need to connect to the Morris columns (thank you so much for sharing that!)

That's the "official way" for posters, the second and better one is half bottom of shops' doors (or any part they provide us), to stick posters.

[chasm]

I'm uploading a sample creation by others as the kind of graphics we're considering for our flyers.

What specific techniques in Affinity Publisher do I use to create something like this?

Ex. If I were creating an MS Word or Libre Writer document and wanted it to have a certain look I might change the font style, size, create a table, import a .jpg and then drag it to flush left, create columns for long bullet lists, etc.

I don't have any experience with InDesign or Illustrator so I'm trying to learn by example (like the one uploaded) how I create something like that applying Affinity Publisher tools? The graphic I uploaded earlier I created in MS Publisher but I'd like the new graphic to be more like this uploaded graphic but I'm not sure the names of the Affinity tools/techniques used to create that.

This isn't about strategy but about techniques available in Affinity.

Thank you.

[GarryP]

Those designs are probably mostly ‘doable’ in Publisher but how easy they will be to do will depend on what you have to begin with.
For example, if you want to have the people shown against a gradient background then that’s fine if you already have them like that but if you only have images of people and want to put them against a gradient background then that’s not really viable in Publisher (probably doable, up to a point, but not easy as Publisher doesn’t have great pixel selection tools).
It’s possible to create a QR code in Publisher – create lots of rectangles – but it will be a pain; if you need one then you should use other software for that.
I’m assuming that you don’t want to re-create the logo (bottom-right), so that’s largely irrelevant.
The rest is just text – you will need to source the fonts you want yourself – and some shapes that have probably been given different Blend Modes.
What you can do to create “something like this” very much depends on exactly what you mean by “something like this” – which bits of “this” do you want and how close does “something like” mean?

Note: You can do this sort of thing much easier in Designer or Photo so you might want to think about getting either, or both, to make the process quicker, depending on exactly what you want to do.

[jaedee]

To add to what more talented and experienced designers have and will contribute to this post.

Below, my visual contribution and approach: a very general and very quick example of one of many possible ways to approach the project : 

• Radial Gradient Background 
• EDIT: Lower Thirds (Bottom Shapes)
• Selection (Edited to reduce time) See youtube video link for details https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StH4Lg5EeWQ 
• Brief approach to text 
• QR Code Generator ( Note: I have no previous experience with the site, just did a google search, please examine for yourself) https://www.qr-code-generator.com/ 

 

Edited June 6, 2021 by jaedee
Missed a bullet

[jaedee]

• EDIT: Lower Thirds (Bottom Shapes)

[jaedee]

• Selection (Edited to reduce time) See youtube video link for details https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StH4Lg5EeWQ 

[jaedee]

• Brief approach to text 

[jaedee]

• QR Code Generator ( Note: I have no previous experience with the site, just did a google search, please examine for yourself) https://www.qr-code-generator.com/ 

[jaedee]

 

QR Code takes longer to generate then depicted on the gif capture. It does not require you to sign-up. There is a blue bar at the top of the webpage that says wait for the code to generate. Simply wait for the download. 

 

[chasm]

Hi jaedee and all and than you for your remarkable videos, suggestions and creativity!

I'm circling back to your posts as I learn, incrementally, Affinity Publisher (Apub).

I've used VLC Media Player (Windows) for years as my video viewing software. It's not the great as slowing video tutorials down so I can watch closely step by step how graphics are created in your hugely helpful videos. What free video viewing software do you use? There's some which require a separate graphics card which my old Dell laptop won't accommodate.

My goal is to pause video tutorials to screenshot them and create a graphic step-by-step to creating Apub graphics. 

I learn best and have found others I've taught software also learn more easily by having graphics step-by-steps while watching easily viewable video tutorials where they can be paused rewound 1-5 seconds and then slo-mo the video again to reinforce the steps.

I know when teaching how to use Word, Libre, Excel, Power Point it's challenge to try to recall how lost one is the first time you opens a program and have no idea whee to go for what technique. It's compounded by the new jargon much like anything you learn. Remember learning how to calculate the area of a trapezoid the first time?

Thnak you again for all your kind help!

 

 

 

[GarryP]

One question is: Why do you want to pause existing video tutorials in order to get screenshots for some other project?
Why not go through the tutorials yourself and then screenshot your own screen when you get to the appropriate places?
Going through the tutorials yourself will also give you more experience in using the software and you may be able to give people some tips and tricks that you found while doing so.

Another concern is: Have you checked that you can legally use screenshots of other people’s videos?
If you take screenshots of your own work then you should be much safer, legally, than using other people’s work in your own work (unless you misuse copyrighted material in that work).