Organizing an event requires a lot of planning and preparation to ensure it goes smoothly. One of the ways to do that is with event program creation that will help attendees learn critical information as well as hype up the event’s activities, history, or plans for future events. Whether you are hosting community events, business meetings, school programs, or even athletic competitions, event program creation that is designed to highlight and support your event’s key elements can play a pivotal role in how well they run.
To help with beautiful event program creation, we have curated our 10 best tips to help you make the most of your event program creation so your attendees will get excited while learning a little bit more about the event they are attending, the organization putting it on, or even the future events you might hold.
Building Excitement with Event Program Creation
If your event has a storied past, like an annual competition or a yearly corporate awards banquet, using event program creation to hype up attendees is a no-brainer. One-time or new events don’t have as much history to build upon to engage and excite guests, so a beautiful, helpful, and interesting event program creation is an easy way to set the expectations for attendees about the event’s tone as well as give them a keepsake to take home.
Carefully designing a program to reflect the event’s purpose along with providing meaningful information in an attractive format is a great way to help attendees feel the importance of the event and help them look forward to future ones, too.
#1: Harness the Power of Photography for Event Program Creation
Before you begin crafting a program, search for or create photography to use in your event program creation to make it memorable for attendees. Collect photographs from past events, solicit photo donations from attendees or significant past participants, or even set up a professional photographer to capture portraits or group shots to include in the program. The impact of high-quality photography is hard to beat and including a few curated shots in your program will make the program more personal as well as memorable.
#2: Cover Design Matters
Eye-catching covers are not just for books and magazines. Event program covers should do these three things:
- Prominently show the event’s name and date or time
- Provide a clue to the event’s activities or purposes
- Engage participants with an attention-grabbing detail
When the cover design includes these three elements, attendees will want to take a look inside the program so don’t skimp on developing a cover that will wow the event participants. Use a photo from a past event or feature a picture of someone who will be a part of the current event activities to garner attention.
Or utilize branding that will appeal to the group and demonstrate the event’s significance like transforming a familiar logo that has been altered to reflect the specific event. Attendees love to find out that they are attending a business’s 50th Annual Program or have been a part of an organization’s First Ever Conference when this information is integrated into a familiar logo or brand as part of the event program creation cover design.
Get design help from a cover expert if you need it so your program’s cover will hit all three key elements and look great at the same time.
#3: Focus on High Quality for Event Program Creation
All pictures should be at least 300 dpi so they look crisp and clean when printed in event programs so check to make sure that any submitted for consideration will appear as good as you need them to before going to print. Graphics should also be high quality so your event program creation will look professional and leave attendees with a positive impression of your organization.
#4: Make Guests Feel Welcomed
The first page of your program should welcome attendees and thank them for coming or being a part of this time together. The welcome might be in the form of a letter from the President or another key title holder within the organization or it could be a general welcome to the event.
A brief overview of the event, what the event program creation is useful for, and a thank you for being part of it are three key parts of a meaningful welcome page. Personalizing this page with humor, appropriate details, or heartfelt appreciation sets the tone for the rest of the program.
#5: Keep Event Program Creation Organized
If the program is longer than a few pages, include a Table of Contents. This simple organizational tool is key to making the event program creation worthwhile so attendees can quickly find the information they need to have a positive experience at the event. Structure this page in the way that makes the most sense for your event:
- List what is located on each page: Page 1 – Keynote speaker bios and dates/times for each
- List grouped content and page number: 50 freestyle rankings and heat sheets – Page 12
- Provide general locations for content: Pages 1-6, President’s Club Award Winners
#6: Tell the Story
Consider including a section to retell the storied history of the event or the organization putting it on. List out previous award winners or memorable achievements of participants or even remind attendees of historical events connected to the group, activity, or past participants. Programs can feature a specific page for this content or sprinkle it throughout the program where it makes sense.
#7: Make Event Program Creation Personal
While one photo on the cover can help breathe life into an otherwise potentially boring event program creation, injecting excitement into the rest of the program is easily accomplished with the use of photography. Including pictures can help bring historical stories to life for attendees who may not have been a part of the program to witness or experience these special moments.
And when event pictures are part of every year’s program, current attendees may enjoy anticipating being included in next year’s program as well.
#8: Give Key Information
Highlight the important information for event guests like the time and location of different sessions, where lunch will be served, or how to obtain competition results. If a map is appropriate, consider putting it on the back cover or in the center of a Saddle Stitch bound program for easy reference.
In addition, think about including smaller thoughtful details like a listing of nearby restaurants, hints about local transportation that might be helpful to out-of-town guests, or a brief overview of the event location to acclimate attendees to any necessary information.
#9: Create a Keepsake for Event Program Creation
While some event programs are strictly utilitarian, event program creation that attendees will want to keep increases the impact of your event on your guests long after the program has ended. Selling advertising space to businesses with targeted products or services can help you raise extra funds to help you create event programs that your attendees will want to keep.
With the additional funding you can choose an unexpected upgrade to the binding for your program, include more personalized pages for attendees to enjoy, make space to highlight key participants, or even splurge on a full-color program that can do double duty as a program and a marketing tool for your organization.
#10: Partner with a Pro
Developing an event program that looks great is just the first step. Make sure that you partner with a professional printer that has the experience and expertise to help you bring your event program to life. Dazzle Printing has been assisting individuals and organizations alike for decades with printing event programs using high-quality materials, bindings, and printing processes.
The cover design experts can help you craft just the right cover for your event’s program, too, and their years of experience working with printing projects both large and small means that your event program is guaranteed to impress your event guests.
Partnering with a pro means that even those who have never put together an event program won’t have to worry about how their final product will look when a professional printing company with years of experience will work with them to get the project just right.
Your Event Program Creation
Whether you need 10 programs or 1,000, creating event programs comes with some unique requirements for even the most seasoned designer. But the most important part of developing a program is keeping functionality as the basis for your design decisions.
If attendees can’t get the information that they need or aren’t able to find it inside the program, then they won’t appreciate the event program’s purpose. This little – or big, depending on your needs – booklet can provide information, answer questions, give guidance, be a marketing tool as well as become a keepsake.
With all of that potential wrapped up in the shape of an event program, the possibilities are almost endless for creators and organizations to make the most of a surprisingly powerful event program creation. Getting started making your own program is easy. Check out Dazzle Printing when it comes time to print your event program.
