Library Event Marketing Design: Keep It Simple

8.5x11 inch sign.

When time is of the essence and a program you want to promote isn't a particularly visual one, often times the best solution is to give more room to the typographical information and less to visuals trying to illustrate the subject matter.

A good example of this was a recent event that addressed how to search for college scholarships. Aside from the event name, location, and time, I thought including the events descriptive text would help pique potential attendee's interests, so I worked it into the design for both an 8.5x11 inch sign as well as quarter page handbills.

Knowing that I was going to attempt to get the descriptive text on such a small space as a handbill meant that I would want to work out my solution on that promotional piece first. If I could get something to work on that item, then I knew for certain it could easily be applied to a larger promotional piece.

Once all the text was in place, I selected and styled a sophisticated font for the essential display information. I then worked out a styling solution for the descriptive text and assessed what kind of room I had left to work with.

Handbill design, four up to one 8.5x11 inch page.

There wasn't much remaining room, so for the illustrative element I considered visuals that had to do with money, paper, and searching tools such as binoculars and magnifying glasses. While sourcing for images, I liked a particular silhouetted magnifying glass and chose to work with that. Because it didn't require being in a boxed in area, I could wrap the essential text elements around it.

For a little enhancement of the message theme, I chose to run a line of typographical dollar symbols behind the magnifying glass, then enlarge them when they passed through the glass lens.

An additional online web banner completed the promotional materials. Because the web banner was smaller in dimension than even the handbill, only showed for five seconds on page, and also made use of a descriptive caption line below it, less text in the art area was necessary. I used the most essential event information and then angled art elements at a slant to make it more dynamic.

Overall, the solutions were an easy and simple. They took minimal time and effort, which resulted in a clean and sophisticated styling of promotional pieces that were better served by not getting bogged down in grander, more complicated illustrative storytelling.

Web banner shows the most essential text elements, and
leaves the finer print details for a (unshown) caption line below.

The full compliment of print and online elements used the promote the event included:

200x quarter page handbills

10x 8.5x11 inch signs

1 website web banner