designing a flyer for a club night [critique time!]

First word of advice. Skip center aligning text unless there is a specific reason to do it. (like every line gets shorter and has a pattern to it).

This would automatically look better to me with the subtitle and details being left or right aligned.

I don't want to shoot your idea to pieces, for what you need it to do, it may work fine. But I have a few suggestions

I think your fonts are fine. The text at the bottom looks like it's forming a triangle, maybe try justifying it so that each line matches the width of the word "YEAH!" The word "at" isn't needed. Remember KISS, keep is simple stupid. The less you put on there, the less the person has to remember.

Does the venue have a certain color scheme to it? Maybe try and incorporate that into the flyer.

The CRT overlay is clever, but it doesn't pop out enough to know its there. To be honest I didn't see it till you said it was there. In some forms of ads, subtlety a good thing when you have time to look, if this is just a flyer that someone may just glance at, you want them to take away the most info in the shortest amount of time and in a way that they will remember (like if it's pinned up somewhere). If this place is known for it's CRTs, what about making the entire flyer a grid of CRTs? Something like this or even this. You can put the text over the monitors as if it's being displayed or even one letter/word per monitor.

Maybe even keep what you have and make the border look like a monitor or something, that way the CRT static would fit in nicely.

Just some ideas that popped into my head, you can take my advice with a grain of salt if you want. Are you getting paid for this? I kinda suggested a lot of work if you're not being compensated...

I know the bar and Dalston.

I think your design is fine.
My only noteworthy comment is that words in capital letters aren't always very legible. (the date and address matter). You could always use a different weight of Futura. (And caps in italic is a little bit of an overkill if you are looking for emphasis.) Maybe try Futura Bold/Black in lowercase.

Yes, centred text is a little 'standard', but for this layout I don't have a problem with it.

SIDEBAR:
How are you printing it? Digitally? I realise that most flyers are printed digitally these days and therefore one way of adding impact and stand out would be to pay a real printer and lithoprint it using a single special ink. ie. a Fluoro orange, like a Hexachrome Orange. Apologies for digressing....

Hey toypadlock,

On the map I would add two TFL Overground Station Logos, one for Dalston Junction and Dalston Kingsland. This will make it easier for people who are travelling to the night.

Johnny.

toypadlock said:

thanks for your responses, people. incidentally, here is my first draft of the back of the flyer: Image

Comet5o4: i thought about making the CRT thing really emphatic but in the end wanted that just as a basis, rather than a main idea, as i think quite a few nights that have been there have really gone heavy on the monitor idea.

Beowulf70: it's a nice place isn't it? i'd love to get it printed like that, but i think the budget i'm on (almost non-existent) would kinda preclude that. i've been quoted £25 for 500 double-sided 250gsm silk finish A6 flyers, whereas i imagine printing it properly would be around four times that?

Click to expand...

I might try adding another horizontal street (at the top) and a gradient to make it fade out as it gets to this other horizontal street. The way it is right now looks too much like a (christian) cross ESPECIALLY since it is in flyer form.

The body text/names is a little hard to read with the wavy lines and the YEAH! in the back.

Just as a general rule and something that would seem to apply in this case, try varying the sizes and weights of your type a bit. Right now I don't really get much visual hierarchy from it, my eye isn't drawn anywhere in particular when I look at it (other than "YEAH" of course).