When it comes to flyer designing there’s only a few layouts or styles that come to mind.
There’s the 90’s nightclub flyer and its spin offs.
Yes you know what I’m talking about.
The principle of the 90’s nightclub flyer design is a centred layout with an eye-catching and alluring image that takes centre stage using at least 50% of the page and surrounded by short bursts of text highlighting the main points of the event/flyer. It entertains and oozes glamour.
The 90’s nightclub flyer design set a precedence for flyer design because it works so well as a marketing tool.
It’s bold, catchy, to the point and best of all it does the job. These flyers fill up and sell out events.
The style and genre of the 90’s flyer design evolved though, creating spin-offs which were a little more illustrative and classier, using shapes, colours, type and an abstract demeanour that was a little more reserved than the bold and brash flyers that were the norm.
The other type of typical flyer might be the business flyer.
Composed with shapes, transparency effects, gradients, drop shadows, and more complex grid systems, they create a more structured response to design, allowing for more space for text and a clean, creative and contemporary look.
When it comes down to it you’d be hard pressed to find a flyer design that doesn’t conform to the two styles or layouts above. These styles have created the fundamental backbone of flyer designs for the last 20 odd years.
Whilst the 90’s nightclub flyer is fantastic because it works, it’s also become a little monotonous so I went on a small internet expedition to find some flyers that were truly unique in design and style.
Sure some of them still hold remnants of the 90’s flyer or the contemporary business flyer but the flyers below are great sources of design inspiration to get you to design something a little different when it comes to flyers.
Click on images to see the authors, source or full projects.
At the end of the day, the 90’s nightclub flyer design still forms the basis of great flyer designs and if you can learn how to apply the format to any flyer design then you’re onto a winner.
Give it a bit of twist like the flyers above do and you’ll come up with a magnificent flyer design yourself.
Looking for more design inspiration? Check out or fashion magazine covers and layout inspiration.