Flyers: which size, which paper and how many copies you need

A standard flyer prints on 130 gsm coated. That is the point where paper stops feeling like a photocopy and starts feeling deliberately printed: it has body, it does not show through when double-sided, it does not crumple in a pocket.

• 90-100 gsm — only for very large runs where cost rules. The flyer feels limp and signals little value.
• 130 gsm — the balance: cost, colour rendering, substance. What we recommend unless there is a reason to do otherwise.
• 170 gsm — when the flyer has to last: it stays on the fridge, gets pinned to a noticeboard, goes into a folder with other material.
• 200 gsm and above — that is no longer a flyer, it is a poster or a promotional card. It also changes how it is treated: kept, rather than read and binned.

On gloss or matt: gloss makes photographs pop and is the choice of restaurants, gyms and events. Matt reads better under artificial light and does not glare — better when there is a lot of text, or when someone might want to jot a note on it.

This is where most budget gets wasted, in both directions.

The unit cost drops considerably with quantity: 1,000 A5 double-sided colour flyers start at € 50-70, and at 5,000 copies the unit cost nearly halves. Seeing that number, the temptation is to order plenty because "it barely costs more".

But results do not scale with copies: they scale with where the copies end up. A thousand flyers handed out in front of a university on the right day are worth more than five thousand tucked under windscreen wipers in a car park. And leftover flyers do not keep: if there is a date on them, by January they are recycling.

A practical rule from the counter: order for the distribution you have already planned, not the one you might do. If the first run works, the second reprints the same day — and costs little more precisely because the file is ready and set up.

⚠️ If there is a date on the flyer, size the run for that event and nothing else. It is the most frequent and most expensive mistake: five thousand copies reading "Saturday 12 October" are worth nothing on 13 October.

A flyer gets two seconds of attention before someone decides whether to keep it. In two seconds a person reads one line, recognises an image and looks for a reason not to bin it.

The four things that must be there:

1. One single thing to understand. Not three offers: one. The other two weaken the first.
2. A reason to act now — a date, a deadline, limited places. Without urgency the flyer becomes "I'll look at it later", and later does not exist.
3. How to reach you: address, phone, opening hours. It sounds obvious, and it is missing from one in three flyers that reach us for correction.
4. A QR code, if you need one. But make it at least 2 centimetres square and try scanning it off printed paper before ordering a thousand copies: below 2 cm, or printed on a dark background, many phones will not read it.

What can nearly always go: the company history, the full list of services, the justified paragraph filling the bottom of the page. White space is not wasted space: it is what makes the rest noticeable.

The same rules as business cards apply, and there is a dedicated guide: 3 mm of bleed on every side, at least 4 mm of safety margin for text and logo, CMYK at 300 dpi, a PDF with embedded fonts.

Two things specific to flyers:

• Double-sided must flip on the long edge. On a portrait A5 that means the back reads by turning the sheet like a page, not by flipping it over. If in doubt, send a two-page PDF in the right order and we will handle it.
• Dark solid backgrounds are less forgiving on large runs: a crease, a fingernail mark or a scratch shows immediately. If the flyer will be handled a lot, either go lighter or budget for lamination.

If the file is not ready we can prepare it: that is design work, quoted separately, and we show you a proof before running the full print.