Publication Design | Chamber of Commerce | Hello, Kamloops

Publication Design | Chamber of Commerce | Hello, Kamloops

I help organizations and businesses design and layout beautiful printed pieces.

When it comes to designing a print publication, finding a graphic designer who specializes in print design is key. So much goes into creating a piece like this.

Let me help your organization or business design that next multi-page print piece.

Photo above: Kristina with client Nic Zdunich of Kamloops & District Chamber of Kamloops, celebrating the success of this piece!

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PROJECT SHOWCASE: Working with Nic at the Kamloops & District Chamber of Commerce on designing the Hello, Kamloops biannual publication.

Hello, Kamloops

Nic Zdunich (Manager, External Relations & Strategic Communications at Kamloops & District Chamber of Commerce) had a very clear vision of the “what” and the “why” when he came to me to design this piece. Simply put, it’s a publication where the Chamber has the opportunity to share and promote local Chamber businesses who are thriving in and around Kamloops. There are so many businesses in the area that are doing such innovative and great things – this piece gives them the opportunity to be featured in the spotlight. Secondly, this strategy of highlighting businesses helps to attract new and potential business from Vancouver, Calgary, Washington and beyond. Hence the title, Hello, Kamloops.

Portlandia to Kamloops

When Nic first came to me, he created a mood board so I could see his starting vision. This is very helpful for a graphic designer at the start of any project as it helps the designer to get into a client’s head – to see what the client is thinking. Nic had a “feel” for where he wanted this design to land. A starting point was the ‘kitschy-ness of Portlandia’ which came up a few times in early conversations. The mood board reflected a touch of that. These starting points gave me a design focus and then the freedom to take those thoughts and run with them – creatively. The vibe of this piece is businesses with an edge. Sleek and modern with a touch of trendy.

Content and design

Founder & CEO of Boom Business Solutions, Roxanne Kennedy has a team of talented writers on deck that created the eloquently written articles boombusinesssolutions.com. Having a writer or writing team on deck for a project like this not only helps with generating great content, but also allows for each page to have a consistent number of words and similar tone of voice for all articles.

Design-speaking, one key stylistic choice is the rounded corners seen on images throughout the piece. Instead of going the traditional route of square boxes, I wanted to add a subtle flair to the photos as the images are such a focus throughout.

The table of contents and land acknowledgment on pages 2 and 3 of the piece turned out particularly wonderful! In newer magazines, we are seeing the TOC being treated quite stylistically and creatively. It also allows us the opportunity to feature some of the best images found inside the magazine, to be featured as large images and points of interest for viewers. The large numbers in Abril typeface adds a tactile quality to the page and at this large point size, and is very readable. The green at the top (grabbed from the Chamber colour brand palette) is the first page that is opened to and really invites the reader to read on. The acknowledgment page allowed us to feature local photographers and their work.

Quick facts and a weekend in the ‘loops

We dedicated two pages (page 3 and page 19) to feature a few unique points that Kamloops has to offer. Nic at the Chamber and Roxanne’s Boom team came up with these fun engaging story concepts: “13 Facts about Kamloops” and “A weekend in Kamloops.”

To make these pages pop, I approached the typography with more of an infographic approach. Bite-size bits of text and information that viewers can easily skim through, or read top to bottom. To follow the flavour of this piece, I included sourced hand-illustrated graphics to compliment this text. These images add a touch of colour, and texture to the pages. Fun to read!

Palettes and fonts

As we chose to print this piece in full colour, I took advantage of that opportunity to have a few of the pages with large full colour photos and/or large background with full bleeds. This allows the pages to pop and gives contrast to the pages with more white space.

The colour palettes include the Chamber brand colours, again, helpful for the brand consistency within the whole organization.

For typography, we chose the already established fonts that are used in other Chamber pieces. Our fonts used here are Abril and Montserrat. These two fonts cover all typography font needs and usages from large, bold headings to body copy and call-out text.

Here’s to thriving business in Kamloops

I just love creating large print pieces like this with and for clients.

We are all so very happy with how this piece turned out. Polished to perfection. Looking forward to see who we get to feature in the next issue!

Why hire a designer?

Because she’ll dot the i’s and cross the t’s if she loves attention to detail – like me! For larger print publications like this, there is so much behind the scenes that goes into this polished project. From tracking content with the content creators or writers, to tracking down and sourcing good images, to quick turnaround of approvals and revisions, to prepping perfect press-ready pdfs! Entrust your project to a designer.

Did you know:

I find clients sometimes have a different language when trying to talk ‘designer.’ Here are a few lingo-clarification examples. If you ask a designer you want large images on the page, do you want full-bleed images that span two full pages, OR images that simply take up ? of one page? If you ask a designer to keep the body text small, do you mean 7pt text (people with good eyes can easily read, but those who have glasses, this size can be too small) OR 10pt text (the usual standard in the design field for body copy.) If you ask a designer you want bright colours, do you mean primary colours such as blue, red, and green, OR pastel colours such as sky blue and sunny yellow?

I place great importance on initial conversations with clients when starting a new piece. We can get through a lot of the potential stumbling blocks in these first chats.

A few publication terms:

• Masthead: title on the cover (can also refer to the inside page regarding content creators and publication information)
• TOC: table of contents
• Hierarchy: the structure of headings and text through the document, also sometimes referred to as H1, H2, H3, body, body with bullets, etc.
• Serif: fonts that have extra curves at the ends of letters
• Sans Serif: fonts without these little curves (‘sans’ means ‘without’)
• Orphan: a single word at the end of a paragraph that appears apart from the text
• Lorem Ipsum: dummy text used as a placeholder to mimic real copy that has similar line-lengths and character counts in the English language (derived originally from Latin text), also referred to as placeholder text

Kudos to…

Nic Zdunich , Deanna Gilroy , and Acacia Pangilinan (she/her) at the Chamber of Commerce for having the vision for the project and overseeing all of the many details, and entrusting me to be the designer for this incredible piece. ??

Boom. Business Solutions for writing the featured articles and sourcing images. (So nice to work with someone as organized as me!)

Photos from the TNRD include photographers Mary Putnam and Kelly Funk .

Kevin at The Printing Place for creating a gorgeous final printed piece.

A few other name mentions:

Some of the amazing people and/or businesses featured in this publication also include: Jessy Sra and James Foucault and their team MNP LTD ; Tobiano; Progressive Planet Products; Greg Munden and his team LOTS GROUP ; George Casimir and the team at Community Futures Development Corporation of Central Interior First Nations (CFDC of CIFN) ; Orenda Films; Nicole McLaren at Raven Reads; Sharon Bond-Hogg, MBA and Darren Hogg and their teams at Kekuli Cafe; Cordo Cafe; Delta Hotels; Centrepoint; The Hive; Community Futures; The STIR; and Venture Kamloops .

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