Researching my genre

After researching my genre, which was flyers, I found some pretty interesting things. Some information that I found was stuff I knew or have seen before, however I was surprised with some of the things I found.

First, flyers have to be visually appealing. They have to catch the audience's eye and make them want to see what your advertising. They are spatially limiting, which can be a challenge, but it gives the person looking at the flyer a snapshot of what it is that is being promoted. There can't be too much text because people will lose interest. How your creative your flyer can get, however, is based on the group your trying to appeal to. Business flyers for example are a lot more conservative and formal than a flyer for a party at a club. Club flyers are a lot more bold and pop out more. Brochures tend to be a little more organized by default because it forces the author to separate the information into three sections and allows for more text. Flyers are bascially a "blob" of text on one page that you have to take on the challenge of organizing.

One thing about the genre of flyers that surprised me was the media used to create them. I always thought they were just ink on a sheet of 8x11 paper. I was looking on websites and this one aeresol artist from NYC in the 80's made a bunch of flyers using all different kinds of media.