Children's Library Theater Event Marketing Designs

Top to bottom: 8.5x11 inch sign, website
banner ad, quarter page handbills.

Our headquarters library youth department has a really great staff of individuals who constantly strive to deliver interesting events to the younger generation. One of the many things they are finding enthusiastic notoriety from is their formation of The Headquarters Puppeteers, a small troupe of staff and sometimes college interns who put on short theatrical plays inspired by popular children's literature. 

The Puppeteers plays are aimed at the preschool and kindergarten age audience, but with just enough sprinkling of adult references to keep the older audience entertained as well. I've attended a couple of their plays as well and can attest to the joy I experience myself from watching my colleagues entertain the entire audience.

To publicize Puppeteer events, only a small amount of publicity is required; they already have a following of fans who pack the room whenever there is a play. The typical publicity used to promote their events include being listed on the library print and website calendars of events, eight 8.5x11 signs, 240 quarter page handbills, and a website home page web banner.

Creation of the collaterals generally involves sourcing for domain free images which are then combined together to create a scene that can be consistently used from one collateral to another. The challenge was finding available images that all complimented the style of all the others. 

After finding suitable images, each image was imported into different Photoshop layers for easy positioning and manipulation without affecting neighboring visuals. The sign uses six layers to complete the scene (1: background, 2: scroll, 3: wolf, and fairy godmother, 4: red riding hood, 5: three pigs, 6: pig shadows. Text and the library logo were added later in InDesign, which is a production method I prefer for handling typography.

At right, you'll see three promotional collaterals, but notice that the web banner has been modified by rescaling, repositioning, and removing some images to account for the change in format. The handbill is simply a scaled down version of the larger 8.5x11 inch sign. 

And for the curious who might be wondering what Fractured Fairy Tales is, it is an intermixing of different fairy tale characters into one play. I believe this one is (obviously) Little Red Riding Hood and associated characters, plus the fairy godmother from Cinderella, aided by an unseen original character who will act as the narrator of the play.