For this weekend I wanted to get all my smaller printed media done as the deadline is only a few days away. While I am not worried about having enough for the deadline, I do want to get it all done this weekend so I can spend Monday and Tuesday getting everything photographed and ready for the hand in.
I made a list of everything I wanted to create:
- Invitations
- Letterhead
- Business Card
- Postcards
- Exhibition leaflet - something to pick up when entering the exhibition
- Tickets
While there are a fair few things to do, I am confident in the designs I had in mind for them. This is because of all the developmental work I had done of the exhibition book and the previous promotional material. I had a good idea about what really works and what doesn't work, especially now I have all of the other stuff printed out. The blue images across my work have printed out much better than they looked on screen, so I am confident in using blue images. The red ones don't look too bad either on the right images.
I started with the invitation as I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do for this. I decided that these invitations would be for the 'opening night' of the exhibit, sent to important people in the NBA, as well as past and present players, and obviously the players recognised in the exhibition who were still alive/their families.
I simply wanted to create a grid of 10 images on the back for the 10 players, in three rows, and then the logo in the middle. With the logo in the middle, I decided on four images on both the top and bottom row, and then two images in the middle row. I had first thought about doing three images on the top and bottom and four in the middle, however when I put the logo on, it was clear that it would cover the images, so this would be pointless.
Like the flyers, I wanted to have two variations, one blue, one red. I decided on keeping the images the same on both of them though, just changing the monotone colour.
Invitation fronts:
When it came to the back there are a few things that I needed to definitely include:
- A note to invite them
- The secondary logo
- A introduction to the exhibition
- Date & time
- Venue
- Contact details/web addresses
- A note asking them to bring this invite to the opening night
I initially found this very hard to get all of this on the page, and considered turning the invite portrait to fit it on, however I really liked how successful the fronts were and didn't want to change them.
To fit everything on I had to make the text smaller than I wanted to, but it did all eventually fit quite well.
Once again I did two variations, changing the colours over.
Invitation backs:
I printed these and found that the text was easily readable, which was good. The fronts printed out well so this was good news. Overall these printed out well and I didn't see anything that needed changing at all, so printed them out on the correct stock and cut them down to A5.
In terms of packaging for these invitations, I decided that an A5 envelope would be the best thing, as they would be mailed out to the people invited. This is something that I will sort out later.
I then moved onto the exhibition leaflet. This is something that I wanted to be a simple fold out, just something that could be picked up at the beginning of the exhibition which had a bit of information and images on. I didn't want it to be too complicated really, as they would already be in the exhibition and wouldn't look at it for so long before they looked at the exhibition itself.
I decided that I wanted to do one layout for each side of the foldout, but variate the colours on them.
For the front I thought about the colours that I had, and particularly what I had done for my stickers, where I had four variations. I decided that four variations for the front cover would be something a bit more visually interesting to do instead of having them all the same. This would also link back to the posters and concertina as well. I decided on one red, one blue, and two white - each with the logo a different colour.
This is the first layout I did for the foldout - taking the same approach as I did with the A3 poster of this style. I think that it works really well and could be visually interesting to have the logo this large and folded. It means that I could put two next to each other - one flipped over - and it would make the logo. This is something that could be visually interesting at the exhibition.
I decided that this layout worked really well so went with it, applying it to all four variations I had.
Fronts:
I then moved onto the back of this, which I had quite a clear idea of what I wanted. I wanted a bit of an introductory to the exhibition as well as the list of the 10 players.
I played around with a layered layout, trying to find a balance between the images and text boxes.
I decided on the one below. I felt it is the most balanced as the images are reasonable sizes and so are the text boxes, and everything is layered in a way to be able to see the images well, as long as I choose the right images.
I added the dashed line in a few different weights to make it a bit more visually interesting.
As the text boxes are in both red and blue, the images couldn't be in either of these colours otherwise one colour text box may not be so visible over the image of that colour. I didn't want the images to be full colour, because again, I wasn't so sure on how well that would work with the boxes, so decided that greyscale was the best colour type to go with.
I tried out a few different images until I found the two above, which suited the images spaces well. Wit the text boxes overlaying in the way they are, it was quite tricky to find images that fit, especially the bottom box.
I then added the introductory text into the red boxes and player names into the blue box.
I'm really happy wit the way this has turned out. While it is simple and quick to read, I do think that it works nicely as a brief introduction to the exhibition.
As there are four colour variations of the front cover, I decided on doing two colour variations of these inside pages. So, just like the flyers and invitations, the logo colour would indicate the colour of the text boxes.
Two variations:
I then printed these four foldouts out. The designs with the blue logo on the front have the two red text boxes, and the designs with the red logo have the two blue text boxes.
These printed out really well on the stock chosen. I printed these onto the thinner matte paper as it didn't need to be any thicker, and in reality, something like this would be printed on a large scale on thinner, cheaper paper than some of the more informative promotional material.
After this I started on the letterhead. I decided I would just do the layout of it and not add any text as at the minute, I didn't really have anything to have a letterhead for.
I referred to the brand guidelines and designed the letterhead according to the brief guidelines I had created for it.
Letterhead:
I then moved onto creating some tickets for the event. I had previously made tickets for the Jackson Rising Task, so took the general information from that of what to include as I did research at the time.
The entry price of the exhibition is free as visitors have to actually pay to enter the venue. I thought in a realistic circumstance, somewhere that is free and has an exhibition, the visitor would have to pay to enter it, but in a venue where payment is necessary to gain entry, all features inside would be free of charge to see.
I designed one ticket and duplicated it, changing the ticket number.
I decided on creating four tickets so I could create four different backs to them. I thought that this was something good to have because it means visitors would get different tickets to one another. This is something that I experienced when visiting an exhibition, and it was good to see that the designers had thought about this kind of thing instead of just keeping everything the same.
I didn't want the backs to be too complicated or detailed so decided on having it as just block colours with the dashed lines over the top. I had initially thought about using photographic images, but then I thought about in realistic terms, it would be quicker and easier to print something in flat colour than in photographic images, and having the flat colour designs makes it obvious that these are something different from a piece of merchandise or something else from the exhibition.
Four backs:
I printed these onto the thicker matte paper as these aren't the sort of tickets where a piece gets torn off, due to the fact that there is no payment for the ticket and the visitor has to pay to get inside the venue before getting the ticket. These printed well and I think the colour variations worked well.
Going back to the retail side of the exhibition, I wanted to create an example of a pack of postcards which could be bought at the exhibition. I have noticed that exhibition often do postcards, bought individually or as a pack. It is quite a nice little reminder for a visitor to buy.
I decided on creating a pack for the Top 10 NBA Moments. This is down to the fact that I had already written small sections on each of the moments in the book and had images for these, and everything else was focussed around the 10 players, so it would be good to show that this section isn't just something to stick in the book.
I created these to A6 size, the standard postcard size. On the front I wanted to variate the colours used between the red, blue and white, and on the back I wanted it very simple in having the number, text and logo of the exhibition.
Once again I variated the colour designs on the front, but kept the layout of everything the exact same due to the fact that these belong to a set.
Postcards:
When finished I printed these onto some thick card. I had a fair few issues printing these as the card was too heavy for my printer to pick up from the tray, so had to spend ages manually feeding it into the rotary system. This was a huge pain because this was a job that should have taken about five minutes and it ended up taking a good couple of hours because the printer was stupid. I am glad that I was doing these towards the end of this for this reason alone. At least at this point I had the majority of the other stuff printed so it wasn't like I had a lot of work left to do.
Eventually when they did print out I cut them down to size and then created packaging net for them.
I printed this out and put it together, and thankfully the postcards fit perfectly first time. I decided that I would seal the package using one of the stickers I previously printed, however I will not do this until I have photographed it all.
I researched into the Hall of Fame and found that they have a 'vice president of guest experience & programming' - which is essentially the guy who sorts the events and exhibitions at the venue. I decided that this was the perfect person to put as he would be the guy sorting the exhibition if it were actually happening.
Like the foldouts and concertina I just wanted it to be very simple and have the logo over the opposite colour background.
Business Cards:
At this point I have completed all the physical work I want to create and have printed it out on stock which works well together. I am happy with everything I have done, although it is a bit rushed, but I do think that because I have gotten so used to the branding I know what works and what doesn't work so it has become a much quicker process for me to create these collateral print pieces than it would have been without this knowledge.
What I need to do now is photograph everything well, complete proposals and create the final design boards.
No comments:
Post a Comment