Fun, Food AND Fundraising!
Easterseals Bay Area's Food, Wine and Beer Festival is one of its most popular annual fundraising events. Held in the Automotive Wing of the Blackhawk Museum, the holiday-themed event offers samples of a wide variety of wine, beer and other hors d'oevures from local, popular Bay Area vendors. Ticket sales benefit Easterseals Bay Area, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which provides services and treatment to adults and children with autism.
Background
The Director of Development approached me in late July to create the design for the event. The Development team planned to launch a direct mail campaign in early September, with follow-up communications to be launched regularly throughout the months and weeks leading up to the event.
Development's ask was for stylish, modern creative with an obvious winter feel and very subtle holiday accents. Materials needed to translate well across wide variety of print and digital needs – everything from website event pages and landing page carousels, a Classy fundraising page, social media, and email communications to posters, signage, flyers, and various other printed materials.
Creative Strategy
I started with Easterseals Bay Area's brand colors. I chose a deep, rich navy (PMS 541) and a soft, luminous blue (PMS 7460) from the brand palette and combined the two into a soft background gradient in a classic, wintry hue. I then overlaid a pattern of hand-drawn snowflakes in a slightly lighter shade of blue. The pattern was understated enough to avoid distracting from more important elements, such as typography.
When it came to typography, my goal was simple: minimum verbiage, maximum legibility. In pursuit of that goal, I chose to simplify the event title down to the three most important words – FOOD, WINE, and BEER. I used a large, sans serif (Roboto, the organization's preferred brand font) to help ensure that the top three words would sink in, even if a recipient glanced at an email or invitation for an instant.
The Blackhawk Museum's Automotive Wing is a unique and popular local attraction in the Tri-Valley area and I wanted to ensure that the location was prominently featured across all materials, even if it wasn't explicitly mentioned. I sourced a simplified illustration of a vintage Rolls Royce. In vertical layouts, such as posters, I aligned the base of the car's tires with the baseline of the header typography to create a natural visual divider for vertical layouts, such as large posters.
I was able to obtain pricing for the initial direct mail campaign well within the Development team's budget, so I suggested the addition of a clear varnish, to be applied across the header typography. The varnish added an unexpected element of visual interest and helped increase the perceived quality of the item.
