Custom Handbill Flyer

What a handbill has to do is survive four seconds in somebody's hand, so the decision that matters is what goes on the face of it. A church printing for a crusade or a Sunday programme usually wants the theme large, the minister's photograph, and the date, time and address where nobody can miss them. A school opening admissions puts the classes it takes across the middle and the gate address underneath, because the parent reading it is deciding whether to come on Saturday. A salon, a nail studio or a barbershop wants the service list and the price beside each line — that is the whole flyer, and it is the one people keep on a fridge. A kitchen, a caterer or a food vendor leads with the photograph of the food and puts the number to call under it. A boutique, a fabric seller or a bag vendor shows the stock itself, six or eight pieces laid out, because that is what stops somebody walking. And a shop opening, a sale or a new branch is a date and a place in the biggest type on the page. Send a logo, a photograph, a price list or nothing but the details, and the flyer is laid out around them before anything is printed.

Three sizes, and the one to take is decided by how it will be given out. The A6 at 4.1 x 5.8in is the quarter sheet and the cheapest a flyer gets — the one for handing out in traffic, at a gate or door to door, where it costs almost nothing to give one to everybody who passes. The A5 at 5.8 x 8.3in is the usual Lagos handbill and the one most of these were printed in — big enough for a photograph and a list of services, small enough to give away in thousands. The A4 at 8.3 x 11.7in is the full sheet, for a church programme, an admission notice or a price list that has to be read from a wall. Every size is printed on the same 135gsm gloss art paper, which is the stock a handbill is made of: enough body that it does not fold in a pocket, a shine that makes a photograph look like a photograph, and cheap enough to print by the thousand. There is no lamination on this product, and that is deliberate — a laminated handbill costs several times as much and nobody laminates something they are giving to a stranger.

The front is the price and the back is extra, charged per flyer by size: ₦127.50 on the A6, ₦213.75 on the A5 and ₦315 on the A4. It is worth it when there is a second thing to say — a full price list behind a photograph, a map behind an address, the order of a programme behind its theme — and it is money wasted when the back would only repeat the front. The price covers the paper, the printing and the trimming, and the design is free whether you send finished artwork or a list of what it has to say. You see a mock-up and nothing goes on the press until you have approved it. Minimum a hundred flyers per size, printed in 3–5 working days as standard, and each size is its own line so a church taking A5 for the street and A4 for the notice board orders both on one invoice.