Designing to a theme

So you have a big event coming up and you need to design all the stuff for it, from invites to posters, place settings, thank you cards, programmes, seating charts, and a million other things. Where do you start? How can you create them with minimal effort? What ways can you get the highest quality without having to spend huge amounts of time or money on it? If you have these questions and more then read on

When you have your mind on a big event like a wedding or birthday, the stress of trying to do everything gets so much that you don’t know where to start. You get focused on every little detail that you want to get perfect, so you end up rushing it stressing you out more or having to make do with something because you don’t have the time. It doesn’t have to be like this. With a little bit of planning and a few simple rules you can pick everything you need in your design to give you a high quality result without the stress.

The Image

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and when it comes to a themed event, this is a good place to start. Pick an image that embodies what you want people to think about the event. It doesn’t actually have to be the artwork you will be using, it only has to be how you want the event to feel. For example if you want to evoke the look a feel of a Victorian wedding then scans of wedding invites from that period, photos or paintings of a wedding parties, or images of wedding items like dresses or decorations can all spark how you want the wedding to feel.

The Art

Once you have found your image/s then you can search for similar images that have the same feeling or look. Using Google’s reverse image search is a great tool for this. Just go to images.google.com then drag your starting image and let it search. It will bring up your source image or one close to it then you can use the ‘Visually Similar’ option on the search list to bring up more of them. As you search you will often get what search terms relating to it that will help you find even more images to use. Copy these images and save them to a folder or paste them into a document to help you build a scrapbook of ideas to work from. As you collect more you will start to see common elements that you can use for your own designs. This is key when you want to go to the next stage of picking colors and fonts.

The Colours

I have one golden rules when it comes to picking colours for a theme: primary & contrast, secondary, tertiary. The primary colour is the one you will use the most, it will be the one that colours the text, tints the frames and borders, picks out things that have to grab people’s attention. The contrast an offset to the primary colour: the white to the primary’s black for instance. It’s normally the background colour for the theme but you can use the primary as the background and the contrast as the foreground when you want something to really standout. The secondary and tertiary colours’ job is to support the primary colour by either providing a highlight by being a bright or darker version of it, or by being a colour between the primary and contrast to provide a ‘change of emphasis’. There are many many articles on the internet discussing the science/art of colour combinations, and I’ve talked about it myself several times before, but if you let common sense and your scrapbook be your guide you shouldn’t go wrong.

The Fonts

With so many thousands and thousands of fonts out there it can be either too hard to pick the right one or too easy to pick so many that your text becomes a mess. I’ve always found the simplest rule to follow is: Headline-body-special. The headline font is the one you use sparingly to be the titles of things or for jobs where the text is going to be big and important. Body fonts makes up the bulk of the text in everything you do and should be as easy to read as it will carry important information generally in a small type size. Special type is reserved for odd jobs which you wouldn’t use the other two for, as a contrast or to point out something important and may only be used a few times in the bulk of the work. If you are trying to work out what fonts would be good for headlines and good for body text, have a look to see if there are bold / italic / bold-italic versions of the font – if they do then it’s great for body and special text, and if they don’t then keep it for headline work only.

Embellishments

I use the term embellishments to describe the simple graphics that are used to provide visual interest without getting in the way of the information you want to impart. These are the fancy glyphs/symbols/icons use to indicate information, the stylized frames and corners for your work, they can be photos or drawings that provide background images and colour to the material. From your scrapbook you should see commonly used embellishments that you can use for your own things. Many fonts have graphical embellishments built in to them as part of their type set and you can access them in many computer programs, just look for ‘Insert Glyphs’ or Insert Symbols’ There are typefaces that are just big collections of symbols so, for example,  typing ‘A’ in wingdings gives you a hand in the victory sign. You can also get embellishments sets from various sources that contain collections of clipart designed for the job, just google search using words describing your theme and ‘clip art’.

Sizing

One thing that can often trip up people when designing for their event is not thinking about the size of the items they are printing. With a little bit of planning, the basic design that is used for the A6 thank-you card, can be the A5 place card, A4 program and menus, and the A1 seating chart. The simple trick is to select one size or format, ie A5, DL, CD, then scale everything up or down while keeping the same proportions. A good printing company, like us at Copy Express, can tell the printers to scale everything up or down to the size you need when printing so you only design everything at the one size. Of course you don’t have to stick with this rule, but you will really have to carefully plan things so it’s worthwhile talking to a designer at the start to make sure everything works together.  But please note: scaling up is more problematic than scaling down.  So if you are unsure, design for a higher print size or use a higher resolution than you need, just in case.

All In One Solutions

Naturally you can buy all in one solutions for this sort of work. Many designers and design companies have theme packs that cover all that I’ve talk about in a ready to go pack to buy. The downside is that you are ‘buying off the shelf’ so you will end up with material that is exactly the same as other people. You could also pay a designer to create something for you that is unique but unless you have a really big budget, the costs of that can’t be justified for a one off event. Copy Express can offer you another way. By using the advice in this article and many others found in this blog you can get 90% of the way there designing your own event material, and then we can come and do that last bit of work that will give you the wow you want but without the oww to your bank account. Give us a call to find out what we can do for you.