What’s the best way to promote your upcoming music show? The answer: Every way you possibly can. There are a lot of resources available to get the word out about your show ranging from the newer outlets in social media and email blasts to the more traditional announcements earned in radio, newspaper and creating flyers. In fact, flyers can earn higher attention from its placement in high-traffic areas like coffee shops and store windows. Designing an effective flyer is easy, you’ll need the show’s information, art, a computer with graphic design software tools and a few supplies to help create your successful street campaign.

Steps to Creating your Music Flyer

1. Step 1

   Gather the information needed to clearly promote the show. Who is performing? What type of music? Where is the show going to be? What time will it start and end? Is there a cover charge, and how much is it going to be? Is the event a CD release party or is it benefiting a cause? All of these questions need to be on the flyer, giving your potential audience member all of the information he or she needs.

2. Step 2

   Select the artwork that gives a good theme to your show. You only have a few seconds to make an impression and the artwork will help filter the attention of people, telling your audience what type of music you perform and what type of show they can expect. A punk rocker’s choice of art will be dramatically different than a classic music performer’s choice.
   It’s easier to reproduce graphic design or drawing. It also provides a cleaner image that will hopefully get a closer look from someone at your flyer. Draw or have a friend to draw an image for you or find a royalty-free image(s) that clearly represents your show’s theme.You can also download a pre-designed theme that you can later import into your a design program to customize.

3. Step 3

   Scan or download the artwork into your computer into a new folder named after your event. If you have multiple art files it may be a good idea to create another folder within the event folder titled “art.” If you don’t have a scanner you can also snap a digital photo of the artwork and import it to your computer. This may take a few tries to get a good shot.

4. Step 4

   Open your favorite design program with a document size of the paper stock you are planning on printing the flyer. Some common design programs are Adobe Creative Suite (In Design, Illustrator and/or Photoshop), Microsoft Publisher or Word. Use the program you are most comfortable with. A lot of times the program will have a flyer template already created for you to add your information and art.

5. Step 5

   Start laying out your design and put all of the information gathering and artwork you did earlier to use. Stay clean and keep simple with the most important information, like your music project’s name and venue in larger and bold font. A big flyer is not necessarily the best choice. It’s good to stick with sizes 8.5 x 11 inches or less. Sometimes it’s smart to plan on making multiple flyers on one document page. This not only gives you more flyers with the same amount of paper but in the end you’ll find it easier to post on a crowded bulletin board.

6. Step 6

   Print your flyer on your printer or save the file for professional printing. Most print shops prefer a PDF file (Portable Document Format), with all of the fonts embedded, meaning converted the fonts to outlines, because their computers may not have the font you used to design the flyer.