Making a church event flyer when you're not a designer

A church event flyer works when someone walking past the bulletin board can tell what the event is, when it is and where it is without stopping. Everything else on the page is a bonus. You don’t need design training to get there, but you do need to decide what matters most and be willing to leave things off.

The three things a flyer must answer

What is it? Use the plain name of the event. “Fall Family Picnic” tells people something. “Gather '26” tells them nothing unless they were in the planning meeting. If the event has a clever name, keep it, but put a plain line under it: “Gather '26: a night of worship for students.”

When is it? The day of the week, the date and the start time. Add an end time if people need to plan around it, like a parents’ night out where pickup matters.

Where is it? The room or the building if it’s on campus (“Fellowship Hall”), the full address if it isn’t. If parking or the entrance is unusual, say which door.

After those three comes the next step, smaller: how to sign up, what it costs if anything, what to bring, who to ask. One line, two at most. The flyer can point to a web page or the welcome table for the rest.

Try this before you open anything on a computer: write the flyer’s words on an index card. If they don’t fit, the flyer is carrying too much.

Hierarchy: decide what gets read first

Hierarchy is just the order in which someone’s eye takes in the page. You control it mostly with size. Give yourself three levels and stick to them.

The event name is the biggest thing on the page, by a lot. The date and time come second, still large enough to read from a few steps back. Everything else (place, details, next step) is the third level and can be noticeably smaller. If you find yourself using six different sizes, collapse them back to three.

A few habits help a lot. Use one typeface, or two at most: one for the name, one for everything else. Use one picture, not a collage of clip art. Leave empty space around the name so it has room to stand out; a crowded page makes every line fight every other one. And make sure the text has strong contrast against what’s behind it. Dark text on a busy photo is the most common way a flyer becomes unreadable.

To check your hierarchy, tape the flyer up, step back about ten feet and squint. You should still see the name and the date. If what you see first is the church logo or a decorative border, something is in the wrong order.

Printing at home or at a print shop

Both are fine. They just ask for different things from the file.

If you print at home, design with the margin in mind. A background colour that runs to the edge on screen will come out with a thin white frame, which tends to look like a mistake. Either keep the background white or accept the frame and make it even. Heavier paper than standard copy paper makes colours look richer and stops ink showing through, but check what your printer can feed before buying a ream of cardstock.

If you use a print shop, the word you’ll hear is bleed. Paper shifts slightly when it’s trimmed, so if colour or a photo runs off the edge, the file needs to extend past the trim line, usually an eighth of an inch (about 3 mm) on every side. Keep all your text at least that far inside the trim, too, so nothing gets cut off. Ask the shop what they want; most will tell you the bleed size and file format, and many will check your file before printing.

Resolution matters more on paper than on a screen. For a sharp print, images should be about 300 pixels per inch at the size they’ll be printed, so a full US letter page (8.5 × 11 inches) wants roughly 2550 × 3300 pixels. An image made for a screen or a feed post is around 1080 pixels wide, which looks soft stretched across a full page but holds up much better on a half-page insert or a small handout.

Matte paper is easier to write on and doesn’t glare under the lobby lights. Gloss makes photos pop. For a flyer people will fill in or pin to a fridge, matte is the safer choice.

The same event as a slide and a social post

Your flyer is rarely the only place an event shows up. It’ll also be an announcement slide on Sunday and a post during the week. People should recognise it as the same thing everywhere, so keep the name, the main image and the colours the same across all three.

What changes is the shape and the amount of text. A screen slide is wide, 16:9 at 1920 × 1080, and gets read in a few seconds, so it carries the name, the date and one next step. A square feed post is 1080 × 1080; a tall story is 1080 × 1920. On social posts the caption can hold the details, so the image needs little more than the name and the date. Rearrange the parts for each shape rather than squashing the flyer into it.

There’s more on the slide side in church announcement slides people actually read, and on the three shapes in one design, three shapes for church social media. If you’re starting from nothing, a finished design you keep in Congregate’s Library downloads at all three screen sizes, which takes care of the slide and both social shapes in one go.

Proofreading the date and time

The mistake people remember isn’t an awkward font. It’s the flyer that says Saturday the 14th when the 14th is a Friday. Before anything is printed or posted, check:

1. The day of the week matches the date. Look at a real calendar, not your memory.
2. a.m. and p.m. are right, and the start time matches the church calendar.
3. The year, if the event is in January and you’re making it in December.
4. The room or address, and which door to use.
5. Every web address and phone number, by typing it in or dialling it.
6. Names spelled the way their owners spell them.

Then hand it to someone who didn’t make it and ask them to read it aloud, date included. You’ll read what you meant to write; they’ll read what’s there.

When a detail changes (and the time often does), change it everywhere at once: the flyer, the slide, the post, the bulletin and the website. Keep a short list of where the event appears so nothing gets left behind with the old time.

Before you print fifty copies, print one. Tape it where it’s going to hang, walk past it at normal speed, and see whether you caught the name and the date.