Putting It Together — Your Flyer

Lesson 8 · taught by Pip

You've gathered the whole toolkit now: hierarchy, alignment, whitespace, type, and color, plus the readability rules that protect them all. So let's put them in your hands. Your capstone is a single, clean event flyer — a real one-page poster for any event you like, designed from scratch.

Think of a keeper finally lighting the lamp after learning every part of the tower. The pieces were never the point; the light is. This is where the four tools stop being ideas and become something you can hand to a friend. 🔦

The project

Make a one-page flyer for an event — a yard sale, a concert, a fundraiser, a game night, anything real or invented. Use whatever tool you're comfortable with: a free design app, a word processor, slides, even paper and markers. The tool doesn't matter. The decisions do.

Your flyer needs, at minimum: the event name, the date and time, the place, and one line about what it is. That's plenty of content to practice every rule on. Resist the urge to add more — restraint is part of the test.

The checklist

Build it, then judge it against the course, one tool at a time. This list is your grade.

Hierarchy. Decide the order people should read things — usually event name first, then date, then place, then details. Make the name clearly the biggest and boldest, and make the small print small. If everything looks the same size, push the differences harder (lesson 2).

Alignment. Pick one edge — left-aligned is the safe choice — and snap your text blocks to it so they share an invisible line. No floating, no almost-lined-up. Center only a short title if you like, never the paragraphs (lesson 3).

Whitespace. Give the flyer comfortable outer margins so nothing touches the edge. Tighten the gap between related items (date right under the name), and widen the gap between separate groups. When it feels cramped, remove something rather than shrink the space (lesson 4).

Type. Use one or two fonts at most — a headline font and a body font, or just one family sized big and small. Match the font's personality to the event's mood: a child's party isn't a law firm (lesson 5).

Color. Stick to a small palette: one main color, neutrals for most text and background, and one accent saved for the single most important thing. Don't let a rainbow creep in (lesson 6).

Contrast. Check text against its background — dark on light or light on dark, never faint-on-faint. Keep the text comfortably large, and run it through a free contrast checker if you can (lesson 7).

Your turn

Now do the part that makes it real: test it on a person.

• Show your finished flyer to a friend and ask one question: "Where do your eyes go first?" If they name the event, your hierarchy works. If they hesitate or point to the wrong thing, you've found exactly what to fix — and you now have the tools to fix it.
• Squint at it, or step back six feet. The big stuff should still read; the small stuff politely fading is fine.
• Then share it for real. Post it, print it, hand it over. A keeper's light only counts when a ship can see it.

You did it

You came in thinking design was a gift other people had. You're leaving with a flyer you built on purpose, decision by decision, against a checklist you understand. That's not luck — that's a skill, and it's yours now.

Keep running the four tools on everything you make, and your eye sharpens every time. The rest of the shelf is waiting whenever you are at /lighthouse/courses. 🐙