Integrated Marketing Design Collaterals Promote Library Author Series 2016

An integrated marketing design campaign created to promote the Alachua County Library District's 2015 Author Series will return again in 2016 to build upon the strong visual branding it established previously (view the 2015 marketing collaterals here: http://librarymarketingdesign.blogspot.com/2015/01/integrated-promotional-marketing-design.html).

45x45 inch large format poster used for in-library display.

This year, I was very pleased to receive head shots of each author that included their entire head, as well as most that also included their shoulders. These kinds of shots enabled me to create silhouetted knock-outs of each author rather than have them all appear inside of boxed photos on their promotional pieces. The presentation of complimentary collaterals in a campaign usually work better when all photos are consistently treated the same from one author to another and from one promotional piece to another, so I was happy that complete heads and shoulders on all images allowed me to feature them as consistent silhouettes rather than boxed head shots with a range of different image backgrounds. Having the option based on the images I received, silhouetting authors out of their photo backgrounds opened up the presentation space on each collateral piece, allowing them to be integrated into the design more directly, which in turn made for a more fluid, pleasing design solution.

8x11 sign, quarter page handbills, and print advertisement.

This year's author series is scheduled to take place from January through May, so I will be continually working on creating and fulfilling publicity requests for each author as their scheduled events approach. Lauren Groff is scheduled to be the series first author to appear. Other authors include Victoria Christopher Murray, Cynthia Barnett, Meg Waite Clayton, Amanda Conner with Jimmy Palmiotti, and Amy Stewart. The first three scheduled authors appeared on the cover of the library's Winter 2015-2016 newsletter, THINK... and as its featured article (view at: http://librarymarketingdesign.blogspot.com/2015/12/library-newsletter-think-winter-2015-16.html).

For each of the author events, many of the same design collaterals will be used. Maintaining a consistent, integrated look among the campaign collaterals will help to build quick recognition of the event series, whether they be seen in print or in digital formats for websites, social media or television.

11x17 and 8x11 signs cross-promote library online services.

Design collaterals created for each upcoming author to promote the series includes (+ quantities):

24x18 inch speaker podium sign (1) 
3.25x5 inch newspaper ad (1)
Quarter page handbill (300)
8x11 inch sign (45)
21x28 inch poster (5)
45x45 inch poster (1)
Cross-promotion of online library database service, Newsbank 11x17 inch display sign (1)
Cross-promotion of online library database service, Flipster 8x11 inch display sign (1)
Library website banner ad (1)Library website blog icon (1)
Television public service announcement (1)

Library website banner ad (left) and blog icon (right).

Television public broadcast announcement (PSA).

Black History Month 2015 Library Marketing Designs

Library website banner ads for general theme events (top) and "Outside the Book" event series (bottom).

Each year the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) selects a theme for celebrating Black History. Based in Washington, DC, the organization has a website that displays its complete list of annual themes and provides information relating to its organization (see www.asalh.org). When I begin my annual Black History Month project for my library client, the ASALH is my go-to place for determining what the national theme is so I can develop imagery compatible to it. 

For 2015, the national theme was "A Century of Black Life, History, and Culture." The organization provided a single text page to speak on the theme, with the only visual offered being a black/white image of ASALH founder, Carter G. Woodson superimposed onto a parchment background. With this single image serving as a launching pad for my own creative project direction, I set out to develop marketing visuals for my library client to compliment the national theme set by the ASALH. 

Project: Alachua County Library District Black History Month Identity and Promotional Materials.

Brief: Establish a visual identity mark and develop integrated print and digital media marketing collaterals to promote the library's Black History Month events.

Required collaterals (and printed quantities):
General collaterals:
Theme logo, with element variations and in both colour and black/white formats (4)
8.5x11 inch event flyer front/back (400)
Library website banner ad (1)
Library website blog icon (1)
TV broadcast public service announcement (1)
Magazine print ad (1)
Newspaper print ad (1)

Resulting theme identity design.

Small publication print ad (1)
21x28 inch display poster (6)
116x68 inch large format display poster (1)
LIbrary newsletter 8x11 inch page (1)

Black History Month Thinking Out of the Book series events collaterals:
11x8.5 inch sign (10)
17x1 inch sign (10)
Half page handbill (75)
Library website banner ad (1)

Production notes: I already had an image of a parchment background that I could use. What I needed was something to give a little reference to the human component of the identity. I first explored illustration and photographic detail images of skin, however I still felt like I wanted something more recognizable, so I sourced for a face that I could use and finally settled on a purchased stock image I could crop tightly in on. I didn't want viewers to concentrate on a specific person, so I cropped in tightly on the face and reduced the area it took up so that the theme name would be the dominate visual element. 

Although the number "100" was not part of the official title, I added it to the theme identity for more visual impact, as well as to communicate faster and reinforce the words "a century." Typeface used on the identity was Headliner No.45 for a bold and slightly distressed appearance. URWEgyptienneTMed used for the ampersand because one was not included in the Headliner No.45 font family. Headliner No.45 was also used throughout the design collaterals as the display font. Body text used on collaterals was either from the Adobe Arial or Adobe Garamond Pro family set, both standard typefaces that are part of the ACLD corporate identity standards. 

Theme identity development began in October and was presented for review in November. What resulted was a four-item set of theme identity marks that could be used in a variety of ways. Specific collaterals were developed as content was delivered by project stakeholders. 

 Four colour and black/white variations of the identity with and without the background image.

Website blog icon

Left and center: 8.5x11 inch flyer front and back. Right: newsletter page.

TV broadcast public service announcement (PSA).

Half page handbills, and both 11x8.5 and 17x11 inch sign formats all used the same design.

Library Author Series Integrated Promotional Marketing Designs

Above: speaker podium signage helped to reinforce recognition and recall of the program series identity.

Project: Alachua County Library District Author Series Identity and Promotional Materials.

Brief: Establish a visual identity mark and develop integrated print and digital media marketing collaterals to promote the library's newly created speaker engagement series. 

Above: one of the seven 8.5x11 & 21x28 inch author posters.

Required collaterals (and printed quantities):
Series logo, with element variations and formats in both colour and black/white (8)
14x8.5 inch gatefold brochure (2,000)
Library website blog icon (1)
Library website banner ad, 
one per speaker (7)
Newspaper print ad, one per speaker (7)
Magazine print ad for entire series (1)
17.5x18.25 inch speaker podium sign (1)
45x45 inch library poster (1) with
one 17x11 inch author poster insert
per speaker (7)
11x17 inch mini-poster (2)
8.5x11 inch mini-posters (40 per speaker)
8.5x11 inch mini-poster for 3 speakers  
(1 .pdf for branch printing)
5.5x8.5 inch half page handbill for Steve Berry event (1 .pdf for branch printing)
21x28 inch library poster, 
(7 for each speaker)
14x8.5 inch author poster inserts (1) 
Two-sided 2.5x8.5 inch bookmarks, 
(one per speaker, in various quantities from 300 printed in-house to 1,250 printed by vendor)
Public Service Announcement broadcast media ad, one per speaker (7)
Library newsletter cover and two-page layout design (3 pages, 2,750 printed copies)
Library newsletter website blog icon (1) 
Library newsletter cover website image (1)

Top: library one of seven individual author website banner ads. Bottom, left to right: library website author series blog icon, THINK... newsletter cover library website icon, THINK... newsletter library website blog icon.

Above: 45x45 inch poster with 17x11 inch author bio insert.

Top: front and back of 14x8.5 inch gatefold brochure. Middle: THINK... newsletter cover and interior pages. Bottom: magazine print ad, author bio insert (same design for both 17x11 inch and 14.8.5 inch inserts), and front/back of bookmark concept design.

Above: TV broadcast media public service announcement.

Above: one of seven individual author TV broadcast media public service announcements.

Above: all seven bookmark fronts plus common back. Greater emphasis was placed on listing complete book titles over author and book cover photos.

One of seven newspaper print ads.

Three smaller sized newspaper print ads.

8.5x11 inch mini-poster of three speakers.

5.5x8.5 inch half page handbill for individual speaker.

Doctor Who? Library Event Marketing Designs

Banner ad displayed on library website.

Doctor Who is coming to town by way of your library event, and you're wanting to teleport some promotional marketing materials your way in a flash. What to do? Just wave your "sonic screwdriver" in the air? No, you call your crafty graphic designer to do some image research and magically blend the results all together to create a unique, custom promotional image for your event. Then you stand back and watch as he expertly maximizes this single image in such a way as to create an integrated series of different promotional marketing items to promote your event with consistency for greater impact and recognition.

Sourced images used for new illustration.

Where to start? How about with providing sufficient time for your designer to do a good job for you. You've spent how many days and weeks, maybe even months thinking and planning for this event? Why not let your designer in on the action as early as you are. Then you'll be working together as a team, not just dropping off "the laundry" in his lap while asking how soon can you get it back. Some ideas you have may influence the direction of the design process; likewise, some design decisions might even inspire ideas for your event. Without providing sufficient time for generating marketing concepts, making adjustments based on feedback, and then distributing the final collaterals, your event is otherwise destined to hobble along with less impressive quality and less time to reach the full scope of your potential audience.

An 8.5x11 inch sign for posting at locations.

At my library, internal clients are asked to provide a 4-6 week advance notice of their projects. Unfortunately, that happens only about 50-75% of the time. Fortunately for me the first part of this project came in with sufficent notice; unfortunately, the other half was requested urgently and delivered with less than three days notice.

For development of a centerpiece illustration, I first sourced (looked) for public domain images I could use to create a custom illustration of the iconic "tardis" booth that Doctor Who uses to teleport himself through space and time. I wanted to give the stationary booth a dynamic, energized appearance, so I looked for radiating light rays, electrified-looking time delayed light patterns, colourful swirling shapes, clouds, glass, metallics, and other materials. Once I had a collection of images that looked like they could work together to provide me with the results I wanted, I layered them in Photoshop and experimented with a variety of colour balance sliders, effects, and filters to produce a dynamic, new image unique to our event.

Quarter page handbill arrangement
on 8.5x11 inch page.

I first applied the illustration to the 8.5x11 inch sign, then submitted for client review and feedback. Once all content and aesthetic details were approved on this initial design concept, I applied them to the remaining collaterals, repurposing the arrangement of illustration and typography to each individual piece as appropriate, taking care to be mindful about text size legibility for readers.

While I was sourcing for images I could use to incorporate into my illustration, I came across a wide range of Doctor Who related assemblage designs created for public consumption by artist CyberDrone (http://cyberdrone.deviantart.com) for a company called Cubeecraft (cubeecraft.com). These designs included images you could print out flat on card stock using your office or desktop printer, then cut out and fold together into three-dimensional Doctor Who characters, a tardis, sonic screwdriver, video arcade machine and other items. I printed out a few different tardis booth renderings, folded three versions into their final shapes and presented them to the librarians to see if they might be of any use as options for event activities. They liked them and decided they would indeed enjoy to include them at the event.

Printed tardis materials and fabrication process.

About a week later, one of the librarians said that they liked the mini-tardis constructions so much that they wanted to paint an old refrigerator cardboard box into the image of a tardis. With the event only three days away, I doubted they'd make it in time, so I suggested I try to print out a full scale (over six foot) large-format image of the  mini assemblage tardis I had provided them with earlier. A test print revealed I could indeed get a good quality print out of the artwork, so I made some modifications to it (added an additional set of square panels to make it higher overall, remade the call box text panel because the text was not sharp, removed the door sign for a new one to be placed on later, created new hardware door pull and lock, created new window textures, and lightened the overall colour globally to help compensate for printer ink gain). I then printed out the large tardis walls. The print out proportions didn't perfectly match the box, so I had to print out an additional wall print to cannibalize for adding a little extra strip of colour around the base, as well as for fabricating the additional pyramid and light beacon features that topped off the tardis. The entire project materials only required use of the printer paper, sissors, duct tape, double and single sided clear tape, and the cardboard box. Total construction took about six hours.

The dalek is put to work around the library.

After the librarians marveled at the completed tardis box, one asked if I could print out an enlarged image of a dalek (robot) to a size that might compliment the life-sized tardis. Using the large format printer, I printed the dalek to the size of my largest remaining piece of cardboard (32x52 inches), then cut the shape out. Afterwards, I decided to have a little fun with it, and put it to work for me as I completed fulfillment of the publicity materials. You can see that the dalek helped monitor the printing of a poster of itself; used the cutting board to chop the quarter page handbills, looked for a book about robots in the stacks, brushed up on its upcoming event presentation skills by reading Dale Carnegie's book How to Make Friends and Influence Others, and cleaned up after itself--demonstrating workplace production and leadership qualities that a few staff members could benefit from by taking notice of themselves. 

16x20 inch contest gift poster design.

Just when I thought I'd cleared every imaginable last minute marketing design request, there was one more: "wouldn't it be great if we could make a version of the publicity sign into a poster to use as a give-away for winning a contest?" Sure...of course it would! Easy enough, with a little modification to repurpose the sign into an event poster, and wahlah!, instant poster design, x2 for winners of event contests and x3 for additional event announcement signs. 

After promotional and event materials were completed, photos were taken at the event, edited down to the best, and left to librarians to publish to the library Flickr account. I've posted one shot below to show a view of the tardis lurking in the background, and an easel display in the foreground that announced the opportunity to win a poster of the same.

Scope of work included:

(4) 8.5x11 inch signs
(60) Quarter page handbills
(1) Website banner ad
(5) 16x20 inch gift posters & promotional signs
(1) 32x52 inch dalek display poster mounted to board
(6) 33x74.5 inch tardis box & other associated printed elements for full scale dimensional display construction
(30) Event day photography

16x20 inch gift poster display sign at event. Tardis in background.

Marketing Design for Black History Month 2014 Library Events

Base theme design that would be applied whole or in part to other corresponding event collaterals.

Web page blog icon.

Every year, the Alachua County Library District puts on an array of programs and events to celebrate Black History Month. Marketing and design helps to support that effort through the creation of a variety of publicity materials. My first order of business in developing a visual theme for the celebration is to refer to The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), headquartered in Washington, D.C. which sets the annual national theme for Black History Month. The association's mission is to promote, research, preserve, interpret and disseminate information about Black life, history and culture to the global community. You can read more about the ASALH here: www.asalh.net, and for an annual listing themes, here: http://asalh.org/blackhistorythemes.html.

Website home page banner ad would be 
used to promote all associated events.

The 2014 theme was "Civil Rights in America" so I focused on collecting images of three symbolic things relating to two key moments in a 100-year span of history related to the government's recognition of these rights: the Supreme Court building, Abraham Lincoln (in reference to the Emancipation Proclaimation of 1863), and finally Martin Luther King, Jr. shaking hands with then-president Lyndon Baines Johnson at the 1964 signing of the Civil Rights Act bill.

I was able to assemble these photographic images overlaying each other, then add a background of radiating light rays, stars and stripes and typography to create a few different arrangements for the various collaterals needed.

Television Public Television Announcement.

Projects included:

General quarter page handbills

350 General 8.5x11 inch event list flyer

1 General television PSA

1 General celebration webslide

1 General celebration blog icon

1 General newspaper print ad

250 Dance event quarter page handbills

1 Dance event 11x17 inch poster

45x45 inch large format display poster.

Final 45x45 inch display poster installed on site.

Promotional Design for Library Fundraising

Our Library Foundation and Friends of the Library organizations are incredibly generous groups of people who provide considerable financial assistance to the library district. So whenever I hear that they are in need help developing marketing materials that in turn benefit the library, I always encourage them to first ask if I can provide them with creative services before they entertain the thought of looking elsewhere. Having them work with me not only saves the Foundation and library district money, but it also allows me the opportunity to monitor and maintain a certain level of quality control while seeking to provide continuity in their communication collaterals.

Updated brochure design exterior (top)
and interior (above).

In the past I've had the pleasure to design fundraising brochures and flyers for the Foundation which you can see here http://librarygraphicdesign.blogspot.com /2012/07/library-foundation-brochure.html. Later, when they wanted to create additional fundraising collaterals to promote its donor program which features a large etched glass pane called the "Katherine's Tree" at our Headquarters Library, I suggested for  purposes of reinforcing their brand recognition that they continue using the design sensibility already established in the other recent fundraising materials I created.

Views of an older brochure exterior
(above) and interior (below) that
predated my redesign.

For this project, the Foundation wanted to create an 8.5x11 inch page and a 20x30 inch poster to illustrate the Katherine's Tree glass etching. An initial idea by the client was to have a photo shoot of the 20 foot high etching which would involve an elaborate set-up to hang large fabric behind the etching, shoot without any additional lighting, and hope that there would be no flash hot spots or glare to contend with. The fall back would be that extensive Photoshop work could save the day. All this and before I forget to mention they were mildly in a hurry for it too.

I could see that such a photo shoot plan would require such a considerable amount of logistics, manpower and production time that I suggested instead to use the photo I had already shot and used in the existing brochure, remove the etching portion of the photograph and replace it with a vector redraw of it using Adobe Illustrator. To demonstrate how much easier and less time consuming it would be, I spent about 15 minutes of time to do exactly that and showed my Foundation contact that I'd already finished about 10% of the etching with very little effort and without all the complicated and non-guaranteed photo shoot results. Not only that, but by creating the graphic portion of the tree using Adobe Illustrator, it ensured that the line work in the image would be pristinely sharp and clear—even modifiable at a later date if needed—at any size big or small that they would want to use it in the future, unlike the pixel format of a photographic image. 

Sales job done, it was agreed upon and I went to work. I had a proof for the Foundation to review in less than three days to check for counting the tree leaves which needed to be numbered and approved for the order in which they would be viewed. The initial request was to number all the leaves from top to bottom, right to left, but due to the uneven, non-uniform arrangement of the leaves, I chose to utilize a sweeping path that attempted to keep every leaf butting up against the numbered one preceding it—or as close to it as possible. This way, leaves in groups of 10s might appear in clumps together, rather than in unevenly spaced, bumpy lines that attempted to force readers to try to read it like a book.

With the number grouping strategy approved, I cleaned up the design and saved the image in three different ways for using: 1) a straight black and white etching image framed by the colour photo, good for reproducing at a small scale as a graphic that individual leaves could be identified later by hand with highlighter markers; 2) colour-coding leaves in groups of 10s to assist in locating numbered groups faster and more conveniently; and 3) the straight black/ white graphic tree laid overtop of a ghosted back image of the original background. This would help communicate that the Katherine's Tree is a see-through glass etching and it would also give the illustration a little more sophistication. It could be used at a larger presentation scale and look better than the straight black/white or colour-coded graphic versions that were intended to be more utilitarian for reference and marking on.

Delivery of the project only took a couple of weeks. A single 20x30 inch poster was printed using my large format printer and them mounted to foam core board. They would display the poster at events where they would have multiple person audiences. For their 8.5x11 inch pages they would use as handouts and mailable inserts, all they needed were the three digital images; they would place those images onto Microsoft Word or Publisher pages they would create language content for and maintain themselves.