Editor’s note: Chris is a print design enthusiast with a passion for minimalism. He has collected over 100 leaflets over the years, which now serve as inspiration for his design projects. You can follow him on Twitter.
Leaflets are everywhere, but most of the time, they can be pretty boring and also, rather dull.
A lot of designers tend to overcomplicate leaflet designs, cramming them with as much text as possible; this can overload the reader with information right from the word go.
However, not all leaflets are so poorly designed. In fact, there are some pretty incredible designs out there if you’re willing to seek them out.
So, if you’re looking to embark upon a printed leaflet design project in the near future, check out our list of 15 insanely beautiful leaflet designs below; you might just find the perfect inspiration for your project.
#1 – Fresh Recipes
Fresh Recipes is a leaflet designed by the graphic design agency, Leo Burnett, and showcases a number of delicious, fresh recipes in a handy leaflet format.
It features a relatively simple design, as the high-quality photography does most of the talking; the text simply compliments the photography.
In terms of colour scheme, the leaflet has been designed around the colours naturally found in the included photography, which keeps the design consistent throughout.
Each full spread of the leaflet features two delicious recipes, all of which are laid out in exactly the same way, further helping to ensure consistency throughout the design.
#2 – Coqo’Clock
Coqo’Clock had this leaflet designed by the Italian graphic designer, Giorgio Presinenzi.
It’s a simple yet effective design that certainly manages to catch your eye. Colour is used rather sparingly throughout the design and the designer has used some cool design tricks to give the text a level of depth.
In fact, only one colour has been used throughout the design and that is a pink/red colour. Again, this helps to ensure consistency throughout the design and helps to tie everything together.
It might be minimalistic, but the design is one of the best out there.
#3 – Nick Cave
Allison Wilton, a graphic designer from Buffalo, New York, created this leaflet in conjunction with the Fosdick-Nelson Gallery and Nick Cave.
Nick Cave is a textile and performance artist who is well known for his colourful and “out there” work.
Because of the colourful nature of Nick’s work – of which the leaflet was designed to showcase – only a neutral grey colour is used throughout the folded leaflet design in order to accentuate the vividness of Nicks work.
The result is a minimalistic – yet beautiful – leaflet design that is as beautifully printed as it is designed.
#4 – CHP
Nicole Kraieski, a designer based in San Francisco, USA, created this leaflet design on behalf of the Centre for Health Policy.
More often than not, leaflets for such establishments tend to be dull and boring, but this leaflet design is far from boring.
As you can see, the designer has managed to keep things simple and professional while also creating an exceptionally colourful design. A beautiful bold red colour drives the design, with a light blue/green colour used to complement it.
#5 – Hot Club
This leaflet design, created for the Hot Club in Portugal by graphic designer, Joao Neves, serves as yet another great example of how the right colour combination can make or break a design.
In this instance, Joao has opted for a bright red, blue and white combination. When combined with the rather adventurous typography, the leaflet design gives a good representation of the type of place that the Hot Club might be (i.e. a fun, creative place).
As the leaflet is opened out, the pattern on the front opens out to show an illustration of a jazz player. This is a subtle design choice and looks fantastic.
#6 – Design Futures Exhibition
London-based design, Alex Tomkins, created this design on behalf of the Design Futures Exhibition. According to Alex, the design brief was to design a suite of materials (including the leaflet pictured above) that would showcase Design Futures and their success within the industry.
Clearly, the leaflet fulfills the design brief perfectly, as it shows exactly what the organisation does in a visual and easy-to-digest manner.
The front of the leaflet incorporates geometric shapes, each of which are “inherently embedded in the history of packaging solutions”, according to Alex.
#7 – Singapore Central Narcotics Bureau
With this leaflet, the brief was to educate youths about the potential side effects and penalties of taking Heroine and Methamphetamine.
Reaching such a young target audience in regards to such a subject is never easy, and once again, these kinds of leaflets are often dull and boring. However, the designer of this leaflet, which was created on behalf of the Singapore Centre Narcotics Bureau, really pulled things off.
The leaflet is extremely eye-catching thanks to the use of a bright red and blue combination. It also features a hard-hitting headline and graphic, which further helps to capture attention.
#8 – Events Leaflet
Informing people about events is one of the most common reasons that leaflets are created, but even so, they very rarely look as good as this.
As you can see, this leaflet is pretty large when it’s unfolded completely, but it folds back into a relatively traditional size with ease. What’s more, it’s extremely colourful, and it gets even more colourful as you open it up.
Each page is a completely different colour, which helps to divide the leaflet up into logical sections, while also helping to keep the design consistent throughout.
#9 – Retro Barbershop
Retro Barbershop is a template offered by the popular website, Inkd.com, and you can get your hands on it for a mere $75.
This is a traditional tri-fold leaflet but as you can see, it has been designed to cater for a young, hip crowd of people. It would work exceptionally well for a modern, trendy hairdressers or salon.
Overall, the leaflet is quite simplistic in terms of the design. It makes use of cream, red and black throughout, with a few well-chosen fonts that work beautifully together.
#10 – Counselling Brochure
Counselling Brochure is another simple, tri-fold leaflet design created by Inkd.com and once again, you can get your hands on it for $75 at the moment (usually $99).
Despite the substantial use of colour and a number of illustrations (which aim to depict common stress-inducers), this leaflet has an air of professionalism to it and would work well for a variety of different organisations.
A consistent, professional, and highly readable type is used throughout; this helps to further portray a professional image that is both serious and straightforward.
#11 – MCA
Michael Schepis, an Australian graphic designer, created this exceptionally elegant and minimalistic leaflet design for MCA.
This leaflet is absolutely beautiful and as you can see, uses a large, consistent typeface throughout. It also makes excellent use of white space and large imagery to break things up.
It’s not the most “text-heavy” leaflet in the world, but it doesn’t have to be. The large imagery and typography say everything that needs to be said.
#12 – CTP
Javier Fuentes, a Boston-based graphic designer, created this leaflet on behalf of Computer to Plate (CTP).
The idea behind the leaflet was to introduce young art students to the Computer to Plate printing technique. To do this, the designer opted for an eye-catching – yet informative – design.
On one side of the leaflet, there’s information about the technique itself while on the other, there’s a large eye-catching design that unfolds into a poster.
#13 – Colourful Leaflet
We have no idea who or what this leaflet was created for (or if it is, in fact, just a template) but either way, it’s a great example of a beautiful and creative leaflet design.
It’s also an extremely colourful leaflet, as you can see. The cool thing about this leaflet is that the colours used for the text on the cover aren’t just random; if you look closely, you’ll notice that the colour choice actually reflects the mood of the word. For example, “sweltering” is written is bright red, while “cold” is written in blue.
The use of white space is another notable point, as it helps to ensure that the text itself stands out as it should.
#14 – Farmers Market
Farmer’s market leaflets can often be quite dull and uninviting; they’re also often filled with low-quality stock photography that quite honestly, never looks good.
However, this leaflet is different and there’s no bad stock photography in sight.
Rather than opting for a dull, lifeless design, the designer has created a colourful- eye-catching leaflet that oozes a sense of freshness and liveliness that a farmers market should be known for.
A bright colour palette is used throughout, and the typography choice is readable, modern and certainly not dull.
#15 – WWF
Raewyn Brandon teamed up with WWF to create this leaflet, which aims to capture the audience with hard-hitting statistics and bold typography.
Raewyn has made use of extremely large bold typography to display the main topic of the leaflet on the front cover, while orange text is used on the other side to draw attention to the chilling facts surrounding the topic.
The leaflet’s minimalism fits perfectly with the brand identity of WWF and the subtle use of colour helps to draw attention to the important points.
Other useful resources:
32 Easy-to-Follow Photoshop Print Design Tutorials
42 Examples of Clean Graphic Design for Print Marketing
