SUGGESTED FORMATTING IDEAS FOR FLYERSDesign Formatting Ideas for Flyers (January 2012) Page 2 of 8 which created .doc. While this doesn’t create any problem if you’re going to

Design Formatting Ideas for Flyers (January 2012) Page 1 of 8

SUGGESTED FORMATTING IDEAS FOR FLYERS

1. By default, MS Word sets the margins at 1” at the top and bottom, and 1.25” at the left and right margins. While this might be OK for formal documents, i.e., letters and reports, it wastes too much space for a flyer, which is, in essence, a mini sign. Thus, I would suggest that you change the margins to .5” (1/2 inch) on all four sides. Go to the <Page Layout> Menu, and Select Margins. Select Narrow (.5” all four sides). [Below is a picture of the MS Word ‘ribbon’ which was introduced with Word 2007. It makes many of the formatting commands more easily available for you. Throughout this Guide, I’ll refer to the Ribbon. And since this was written prior to Word 2003 came out, some of the dialogue boxes will be from Windows 2000, but they show the same options, just changing the title area and color scheme used by Microsoft.]

2. As a general rule, even if the flyer is printed on colored paper, I like a border, as it tends to focus the eye’s attention to the center of the page. To create a border for the page go to <Page Layout> <Page Borders > Select the Page Border tab. You’ll notice three columns of information. For Column 1. While you can experiment with each of the settings, I usually select ‘Box.” Column 2. There are four (4) choices, ‘Style.’ which refers to style of line; ‘Color’ which for flyers which are going to be printed in black on a photocopier, is irrelevant; ‘Width’ which relates to the thickness of the line; and ‘Art’ which instead of a line, presents graphic elements as the border. When you select ‘Art’ it also allows you to adjust the width of the graphics. Column 3. Preview gives you a preview, and allows you to ‘deselect one or more of the borders in which these ‘styles’ are shown.

3. While there is a third tab, ‘Shading’ which could place a light color behind the entire page, unless you’re

printing in color (considerably more expensive), that ‘tool’ is not particularly useful. 4. After you’ve finished selecting all the elements of the page border, Click on OK, and the page border

will now appear on your page. 5. Once you’ve done that, you can actually save this format as a Template, so that you don’t need to redo

the margins, settings, styles, etc. each and every time. In the top left of the MS Word ribbon, you’ll see the “Office Button” – I’ve got a yellow arrow to point it out on the image above - from which various commands such as Saving the document, can be found. Click the Office Button and select either <Save> or <Save As>, Type a Descriptive Name, and prior to saving, select from the drop-down list “Document Template (.dot)”, Word will save this ‘template’ to a particular folder in your computer. And then you’ll be able to retrieve this ‘template’ without a name, from the <File><New> command.

6. Important Note About Saving. Nothing is simple when it comes to computer files and different

versions of software and operating systems (Windows vs. Apple Mac). In an effort to add features to its productivity software, particularly relating to security of files, with the release of Office 2007, Microsoft changed the format of files created in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.. If you just click <Save> your computer will save in this new format, with the file extension of .docx (instead of the previous format,


which created .doc. While this doesn’t create any problem if you’re going to open the file on the computer which it was created, should you need or want to send your file to someone else, they may be using an older version of Word, which doesn’t read .docx. While a person who has an older version of Word, such as Word 2000 or Word 2003, can go onto the Microsoft website www.microsoft.com, and download and install a ‘translator’ for .docx, their initial attempt to open the file will be unsuccessful, which will result in frustration. You can avert all this issue by saving in Word 97-2003 Document format. At the bottom of the Save “Dialogue Box” you’ll see a drop down menu (see graphic below). The ‘Save as type’ value is usually set to the default value, Word Document, which means in the new Word format, and will create a .docx. But there are other choices available. In addition to saving in the new format, you can save in the following additional formats: Word 97-2003 Document, Word (meaning new Word format) Template, Word 97-2003 Template, and even PDF. [PDF, which stands for ‘Portable Document Format’ is a format widely used on the internet, developed by Adobe, and allows for documents to have the same ‘look and feel’ with formatting and fonts, on computers with different operating systems. It is a great way to save a document which is going to be sent to others, IF THEY DON’T HAVE TO MODIFY THE DOCUMENT, since it will look almost the same on their computer, irrespective of the operating system, i.e., Windows 98, Windows XP, Windows 7, Mac OSX, Linux, etc. To save in one of these formats, just select the one you want to use (my preference is Word 97-2003), give the document an informative name, and save it to the folder/directory which you want.

7. Formatting Graphics. When you import a graphical image into your Word document, Word will, by default, make sure that text does not display on either side. Far too frequently, this means precious space is ‘wasted’ on your flyer, which doesn’t have to be wasted. To correct this choice which Microsoft has made, we’ll format this graphic image box to have your text wrap around the box.

a. Click on the box to select it. You should see small ‘boxes’ on all four corners. Then right click on your mouse, and contextual menu will drop down. Almost at the bottom of the menu is the choice ‘Format Picture.’ A dialogue box will appear, and select the middle tab, “Layout.”

b. In the ‘Layout’ you’ll have five (5) options: In Line, Square, Tight, Behind Text and In Front of Text. For the most part, graphics are contained in a box-shaped image, although the image may not encompass the entire box. I usually select Tight, particularly if I am going to place the image on one side of the page or the other, because text will wrap around the graphic, which may be confusing for the person who is looking at the image, to read.

c. Sometimes, if I want very precise spacing, I’ll format the image so that it is behind the text. [However, if the entire image is behind text, it can be very, very difficult to find that image so as to change one of its settings.]

8. Graphics. Remember that although a particular graphic may look great on your computer monitor,

we’ll assume that it is going to be printed on a black and white copier, so all the shading and detail will


be lost. You can actually print out a flyer in black, grays and white on your color printer to get an idea what it will look like. But that requires making certain settings in the print menu, which you or the user may not have, so we’ll ignore this option for now.

9. The primary purpose of a flyer is to attract a person’s attention. Realize that a person may be looking at

a table full of flyers, but their mind is elsewhere thinking about a million other things. The flyer which attracts will likely get noticed. You can get noticed by:

a. Color (of paper), b. Graphical image (but that’s more difficult with a black and white image), c. What the text says, (thus, your Title or Headline is more important than the text within, and so it

should be of a larger readable font.) d. The size and attractiveness (for the particular purpose) of the font.

10. Color of Paper. While the color of paper a particular flyer is printed on is SUBJECTIVE, some colors will be more appropriate or less appropriate for a particular purpose. For example, an invitation to the Funeral Practices Luncheon would best NOT be copied on HOT PINK paper. I’ve printed our region’s (Seaboard) Men’s Club Blue Yarmulke Honoree flyer on… what else, blue paper, so that the person looking at the flyer instantly gets a connection… the flyer means more to them as a result.

11. Graphical Image. Remember, that a wonderful looking image in color on your computer, may not be

as ‘eye catching or eye-popping’ when it is printed in gray tones. Take the following two images downloaded from the internet. In color, the image is wonderful. In tones of gray, it really doesn’t capture what I want to say.

[You can change any image from color to its shades of gray. Click on the graphic image you want to change, and right click on Format Picture. In the Picture tab, look at the Image Control drop down box, and change Automatic to Grayscale. You might want to play and see how the other two values on the drop-down list, Black and White and Washout work, but save your work first. All the image control values can further be adjusted by the brightness and contrast controls. You should experiment how changing the Brightness or Contrast values, even by a small percentage, can affect how the image looks and prints on paper. You can change the values by single digits at a time, by using the up and down arrows to the right of the value, or by using the sliding scale to the left of the value. Cropping Your Image: If you’ve ever had an image which has either too much white space (border) around it, or that you want to remove a portion of, if the portion can be removed by ‘cropping’ the image from either the top, bottom, left or right side of the image. In the Format Picture dialogue box above, in the ‘Picture’ tab, you’ll notice the ‘Crop From’ boxes. Each of those ‘boxes’ will allow you to crop the picture from the applicable side. In fact, I used it for one of the images in this document. Where I spoke


about how you can save a document, on page 2 above, the image of the dialogue box was cropped about 3.5 inches from the top, so that the only portion of the image you can see is the portion on the bottom.

12. What the text says. The very first thing I look at when I’m looking at copy is what is being said. Can

it be said in fewer words, or more ‘attention grabbing words?’ Can a ‘Jewish’ spin on the language be made? Can a humorous spin be adopted?

13. Alignment. This is something which drives many people batty, particularly ME. Alignment refers to

how text (or images) appear on the page. English is generally left aligned, while Hebrew is right aligned. We are accustomed, through many years of education and looking at various publications, at seeing most informal documents written in English to be left aligned, or for books and magazines, to be full alignment/justification. For the most part, if you have a sentence or two or three of information to convey, the text should be formatted as either left justified or full justified, NOT center justified. Center justification is for VERY, VERY SHORT SNIPPETS OF TEXT, i.e., a Title, a date, a time, a location. [Show me a book or magazine article which is published in center-justified text, and I might have a different opinion.]

14. Fonts. Quick lesson on fonts. There are two primary categories of font. Serif and non-serif. Serif

fonts have extra ‘thin lines’ at the end of parts of the letter, like ‘wings’ where non-seriffed fonts do not. The primary serif font is Times Roman (New Times Roman) what this document is written on, and the primary non-seriffed font is Arial. This is an example of Arial. It is generally believed that a seriffed font, i.e., Times Roman, is easier to read than a non-seriffed font. In addition, you have decorative fonts, which are both seriffed and non-seriffed, of which there are thousands, like the following:

Bernard MT Condensed Poster Bodini BT Playbill

Bauhaus 93

Broadway Comic Sans MS Lucinda Handwriting STENCILI

All of the above are 14 point, and the one thing which you notice immediately is that 14 point in one font is significantly larger than 14 point in another. For the most part, these decorative fonts only are readable in short snippets, and only in larger sizes. NONE of them should be used for paragraph text. But properly used, they help to convey an image or feel, which may bring about greater attention getting potential on a flyer. The most important criteria for me is that irrespective of how much I might like a font, whether it is quickly readable by a person who is glancing at the flyer, since the PRIMARY purpose of such flyer is to convey information. Two important pieces of information about fonts which are critical to understand is that: 1) Font Substitution. A Word document which has a decorative font and sent to another person for viewing, will only display correctly if that person has the exact same decorative font installed on their computer. If they do not have the ‘exact same font with the exact same name,’ Windows tries to do font-substitution, and like most things in Windows, the result is usually a DISASTER. Thus, if your document has decorative fonts, don’t send it to another person as a Word doc. At the very least, you need to convert it to an Adobe Acrobat (also known as .pdf) format, since Adobe saves the font information with the document. And realize that the Adobe may not be a ‘perfect match.’ The most significant thing for you to remember is that when you’re dealing with foreign language fonts, i.e., Hebrew, they may not display correctly. While you see a particular font on the page, the computer sees computer code. Recently I made some aliyah cards for the FJMC using an open source


program, called NeoOffice, and although the file was saved as a Word document (.doc), Word DID NOT display the characters correctly, showing them as little boxes, rather than Hebrew letters. 2) Every printer will handle fonts just a little differently, so printing a document on one printer may likely give a little different result than if printed on another printer. For most jobs, this won’t matter significantly, but be aware that it can affect how something looks.

15. Adding Hebrew (or other foreign language characters) to your document. There are times when

you’d like to use a little Hebrew in your document. Word allows you to do that, but since Word is a left to right letter entry program (at least the version which most western speaking people use), you have to insert the Hebrew letters / characters one by one. Go to the Ribbon again, and this time select the second Menu value, “Insert” and you’ll see a ribbon which looks like this:

We’re looking to insert Hebrew, which Word views as symbols, so click on the Symbol icon at the right side of the Ribbon. The ‘Symbol’ dialogue box will appear, as shown on the right. There are two drop down lists which are important. One is the ‘Font’ box. Not every font has Hebrew Characters. Frequently, if you go to the font menu, found in the ‘Home’ ribbon, (the font menu will display the name in a graphic representation of what the font will look like) and click on the font, if a particular font has Hebrew lettering, it will show Hebrew characters to the right of the font name. [Just some of the fonts which have Hebrew characters, on my Window XP machine with MS Office 2003, are: Aharoni, David, FrankRuehl, Levenim MT, Miriam, Narkism & Rod.] If you’ve selected a font which does have Hebrew characters, initially you won’t see those Hebrew characters displayed. That’s where the ‘Subset’ drop down menu comes into play. Find the ‘Subset’ value of Hebrew, and click on it. Now, miraculously, the Hebrew (and other) characters which are available in this subset appear within the boxes underneath the Font name and Subset. To add those letters, click on the letter, and Word will add that letter to your document. Now, there is something you need to realize. Since English is written left to right, the program will enter your letters left to right. Thus, unless you click on the letters in the opposite direction that they are written (Hebrew is written right to left), a word like Shalom שלזם may spell out differently (fortunately, in my version of Word, Word 2003, the program knew to insert the letters right to left.) Make sure your version will do this, or you’ll need to enter them backward.

16. Font (Character) and Line Spacing. There may be times when you have a little too much text to fit on one page, and there isn’t really anything you can delete. How do you resolve that problem? There are many ways, but one of them is: line spacing and character spacing. In the space below, I’m going to show you how these two elements may be used. [I suggest when you have some extra


time, you play with both elements on a sentence or two, so you can better see and understand how they work.

This sentence is 12 point Times Roman, with 100% character spacing. This sentence is 12 point Times Roman, but with 95% character spacing. This sentence is 12 point Times Roman, but with 105% character spacing. This sentence is 12 point Times Roman with 100% character spacing, and I’m going to leave the line spacing to Automatic, i.e., it will do 12 point. This sentence is 12 point Times Roman with 100% character spacing, and I’ve changed the line spacing to 11.5 point. This sentence is 12 point Times Roman with 100% character spacing, and I’ve changed the line spacing to 13 points.

Let’s go to the Home Ribbon, since you’ll find the controls you need for font and paragraph spacing there. Character spacing is found in the Font section of the Ribbon. At the bottom right hand corner of this section of controls (to the right of the word ‘font’ you’ll see a little box. When your cursor goes over that box, a little ‘tool tip’ will display Font, and explain ‘Show the font dialogue box.’ Click on it, and the Font Dialogue Box appears. There are two (2) tabs in this dialogue box. The first tab gives you a little more control over your font, i.e., such as having the letters be all caps, small caps, embossed or engraved. While you should play with the different effects, for the most part unless your letters are very large in size, these affects get lost in translation. There are four options: Scale – automatically adjusts the text you’ve selected, or if you haven’t typed it yet, the text you’re about to select. As the numbers get smaller, your text will be more compressed, and as the numbers get larger, the text will be more spread out. Spacing – you can choose Expanded or Condensed and it adjusts by tenth’s of a point. You can see the relative affect on your text in a window below the values you select. Position – you can choose Raised or Lowered, which are the same as Superscript and Subscript, and you can adjust how high or low such numbers appear. Kerning – by selecting this, you’re telling the program to treat the font as smaller or larger than it really is. When you select ‘Paragraph’ dialogue box (see the yellow arrow above at the Home Ribbon, you’ll be presented with the ‘dialogue box which is on


the right. Half way on the right side of the box is a field called ‘Line Spacing’ which I’ve highlighted in yellow. The choices are: Single, 1.5, Double, At least, Exactly, and Multiple. For our purposes, when you select Exactly, it will initially place the point size of the font which is currently being used. To the right of the Line Spacing box is an ‘At’ box, and it has a sequencer, in which you can reduce or enlarge, by one point at a time, the line spacing. Play with it, and see what happened. A trick which isn’t obvious is that you can ‘type in’ a decimal value. Place your cursor before the ‘pt’ and after the number, type a ‘.’ and a number, say ‘5’ and now you will have line spacing a .5 point larger (or smaller).

17. Spacing Between Paragraphs. Now, there are also a number of ways in which you can modify the space between paragraphs.

a. In the same Paragraph box above, you’ll see to the left of the Line Spacing adjustment fields a ‘Spacing’ for paragraphs, and you have the ability to set the spacing before and the spacing after. By default this is usually set to ‘0’ but if you have cut and pasted text from another document, it might change that value to ‘Auto’ which is Microsoft’s way of saying, we know best. [I have rarely agreed with that statement, and for good design reasons.] The incremental controls to the right of the value increment in 6 point values. However, you can type in any whole value you wish by clicking in the box and typing in / replacing the value. For example, I will usually, if I’m going to type a number of paragraphs and spacing is an issue, set the value at 3 pts for smaller type fonts, or 6 points for regular size fonts. If you’re working with 12 point type, 12 points equals 1 line.

b. You can keep the paragraph spacing at 0 both before and after, and leave a carriage return space after each paragraph, the adjust each and every of these spaces to a larger or smaller size by ‘blocking’ the space and then adjusting the ‘font size’ of the ‘space.’

18. Watermark. Sometimes, an elegant touch can be had with a faint watermark at the back of a flyer.

You can create such a watermark in Word, and I’ve recently discovered how to adjust the image. However, in creating this, you have to remember a number of things if your original is going to be photocopied. First, the Watermark icon on the Page Layout Ribbon, is really for business related watermarks, i.e., Draft, Confidential, Sample, etc. So, my advice, is not to use that Watermark creation tool.

a. b.

To create the watermark, you’ll usually want to start with a blank document, since the image you want to be BEHIND THE TEXT.

a. Find the image you want to use, b. Paste it into the document you’re going to be using for the flyer, c. Set the Layout……. to ‘Behind Text.’ [See above] d. Resize it by clicking and dragging the corners, not the center

‘modification buttons’ since, otherwise, you’ll distort the picture…. unless this is what you want to do.

e. Right click on the picture, and select Format Picture. If you get a dialogue box which looks like the one at right (mostly white background), the best choice I’ve found is to select the Picture ‘tab’ and ‘Recolor’ and select the bottom left colorization scheme in ‘Light Variations’ (the colors are the most neutral).


f. If you get a Format Picture dialogue box like the one on the right (mostly gray background), adjust the image as if you were adjusting a color image. Select Color to Grayscale.

g. Fiddle with brightness and contrast, since each image will have a ‘better’ setting of both or either of these for the watermark affect you’re striving for. [Remember, one characteristic of a ‘expert’ is that he/she has made many more mistakes than you… and learned from them.]

h. Any watermark should NOT conflict with the reading of the text. Sometimes you have to print and copy the image, with the photocopy, to see if you’ve succeeded. And, give it to someone who doesn’t know the copy to see if it interferes with their reading the text.

19. By default, a photocopy machine doesn’t know that you’re copying photo grade graphics, so that

the watermark may print too dark. [This is because the photocopy machine has to be set to print more levels of gray, which by default, it doesn’t do.] You should be able to set the photocopy machine to copy the flyer as if it were a PHOTO to get a better image.

20. In the same manner as different printers handle the same font a little differently, each printer handles’

graphics differently. You’ll need to experiment with the brightness setting of the image (the higher the brightness image, the fainter or more transparent) for the printer you are printing on.

I would hope that these tips are helpful to you and your Club/Brotherhood in creating more interesting and eye-catching flyers, which help to make your programs better attended and more successful. If they do, the success is all your! Good Luck.

i My ‘expertise’ if any, has come about through lots of reading of graphic design books, lots and lots of OJT, and many compliments by professional printers and designers who have seen my work. When I was younger, I gave thought to actually going into the profession, but for a number of reasons, became a lawyer instead. If you have any specific questions, I can be reached at [email protected]

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SUGGESTED FORMATTING IDEAS FOR FLYERSDesign Formatting Ideas for Flyers (January 2012) Page 2 of 8 which created .doc. While this doesn’t create any problem if you’re going to