Part of Metal Type’s Printing Advice Section, here Phil discusses printing flyers.
At one time we printed a lot of grocery store flyers or as this item was known around these parts, “dodgers’’.
These hand bills ranged all the way from 6 x 9 inches for small corner stores and were printed on newsprint, almost always in black ink and one colour of course and in quantities as small as 500 to perhaps a 1000.
At this time at the start of my apprenticeship there were no big grocery stores here in Regina. Mind you the Safeway chain had just opened three stores here and they were all the same size. Two of these old buildings still exist and they were about 30 feet by about 80 feet in size. All sold a pretty full variety of grocery and fresh veggies and fruits and all had a small meat department at the back of the store.
All the rest of the grocery stores were pretty much mom and pop and all the kids who could be pressed into service stores. One seldom had to walk more than three blocks to do ones’ shopping. There were very few cars then and our local society was not like it is now.
The somewhat larger grocery stores issued larger dodgers and ordered larger quantities. All the way from a sheet size of about 12 x 18 inches and quantities of 3000 or so. I base this on my memory of what we printed right here in our own shop.
These flyers were almost always distributed by local boys and only in the immediate area of the store concerned. Some of these small stores had their own children distribute or supervise the distribution of these flyers.
This type of hand bill or dodger was widely sought after as a printing job and was always very tightly quoted and had a short turnaround time, In other words these jobs were always rush.