A flier is a basic, lo-fidelity, often home-made form of advertising. It is generally a single sheet of letter-sized paper that can be handed out or posted in public space (or both). It’s like a poster, but it can also be a “handout.” Bands publicize concerts with fliers and post them on telephone poles. Roofers advertise their services with fliers they put in people’s mailboxes. People who lose their cats use fliers to tell the community to keep an eye out. Etc. Read a basic description here.
Find some fliers, online or in real life. Observe their forms.
In this project you will produce ten fliers which each publicize your commodity in a different way.
Use content from the texts you’ve gathered. Each flier should have a different text. As you choose each text to work with, give attention to its precise editorial quality: is it pithy, long-winded, expert, dumb, catchy, annoying? You can minimally edit texts you found in your research, but try to basically stick to what you’ve found. You can also search for more text that might work well in this flier context. The text can enchant or disenchant your commodity.
The fliers you make should be primarily typographic. You can definitely explore extra-typographic graphic elements like shapes and lines and arrows etc, but don’t use images. (We’ll work with images in the next project). Produce typographic magic.
For each flier, try to develop a unique take on the flier form. The typographic form you develop in your sketches might be uniquely related to the content of the text, or it might instead stage an independent investigation into the weird forms of the flier itself. In each flier, try to develop forms that communicate the magic/mystery/enigma/aesthetic of either (1) your commodity, or (2) the flier form itself. Or, ideally, both!
Think about the effects you produce through your graphic design as plotted along a linear axis from “disenchantment” through “exaggerated magic.” Or as both at the same time.
As you produce these typographic forms, deliberately experiment with different technologies of production: explore different software, templates, applications, and analog technologies. Try to develop magical forms that come directly out of these different technologies. For each flier, experiment with a different software, template, app, printer, etc.
Fliers are letter sized printed in black or full color.
Have fun!
