Design

Graphics Team

The graphics team is responsible for creating marketing material for con as well as badge designs and the con book. We take the submitted artwork and use it to create our designs.

Requirements

• Experience with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, and/or InDesign
• Accepting to critiques and changes to your work
• Have access to the internet and Dropbox

Responsibilities

• Create/Develop/Refine badge, fliers, and con book designs in a timely manner
• Review and suggest changes to other piece marketing material
• Make changes to work that is not yours and save it as another revision file
• Use submitted artwork in your design
• Save files to Drop Box (including work in progress)

File Sharing

All members of the graphics team must be shared on the 'snafucon art & graphics' Dropbox folder.

Inside the Dropbox graphics folder there is a text file which links to our Evernote graphics folder. All graphics and donated art are archived to Evernote. Any files too large for Evernote (over 100mb) are archived to an S3 bucket with a link in an Evernote note so that the larger files may still be accessed.

The Evernote and S3 bucket are shared publicly, so if you know the link you can access them. However, the link itself is not public and is only accessible to the graphics team through the Dropbox folder. At this time the files are not sensitive and thus do not need private sharing. However this can change at any time.

Naming Convention

Files which are modified by team members must include Rev and initials. This helps keep things straight in the file history.

Example:

• 2015_Flier_Rev_1_RP.psd
• 2015_Flier_Rev_2_SS.psd
• 2015_Flier_Rev_3_MD.psd
• 2015_Flier_Rev_4_SS.psd
• 2015_Flier_Rev_5_RP.psd
• 2015_Flier_Rev_6_MD.psd

Graphics Annual To Do List

SEE THIS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA SIZES (2015 edition): Social MEdia Image Size Cheat Sheet

Fliers

When designing use the file "BLANK 4x6 cmyk flier.psd" as a starting off point since it has been established at the right size with bleed and cropmarks. Make sure to hide the top layers when designing and periodically make them visible again so you can see your design and how it will look when printed. Your design must go all the way to the edges of the file!

Fliers are 4x6" with bleed.

It is generally best to use a previous year's design as a jumping off point (I like to copy relevant layers from the previous year into a new/blank flier)

We used to use both sides for text, but we after a tip from BLFC we tries just using the back for eye-catching art and got a better response on the fliers. If the back looks like something someone would pick up (or pay for) in artist alley, they're much more likely to want to take it off a flier table. Since we changed the style to this, we have people wanting to take the fliers just for the art - just like we hoped.

Note to the artist do not design the mascot to the size of this flier. We can not use 4"x6" art for the 11"x17" poster.

Required Specs

• Logo (Don't change the colors, just copy the layer from a previous flier)
• Year
• List of interesting items
• QR code
• URL
• Dates
• Location
• Theme

Poster fliers

11"x17"

Social Media Icon

Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr can all use the same icon. It must be square. 2014's icon was 877x877 pixels, and 2015 was 765x765. It should generally be as large as possible and can just be a crop of the flier.

This is generally a closeup on the year's mascot's head (or a mascot if there are more than one).

Facebook header

Faebook changed layouts in 2014. A modified template is needed.

Facebook event header

The event header for Facebook is different than the header for the Facebook page and needs to be specially designed for specific placement of items.

The file Facebook-Event-Template.psd has guides to tell you what will show on the page and what will be hidden. Keep the text in the same location as it already is set up in the template. Before finalizing image, check to make sure that the guidelines have not changed. Facebook changes things far too often.

Twitter header

590x296 See previous year's file for placement of items.

Badge Designs

General Attendee

General badges need to use the main con mascot for the year and match the general marketing materials used for the year.

Guest

We have never had a complaint over the guest badge design. It just needs to be different than the other designs. Guests are either being paid to be here or are here to market themselves - getting a cool badge is not one of their priorities (sometimes guests don’t even want to bother picking up their badge).

Vendor

Vendor badge designs seems to be more about us giving vendors something we want them to have than the vendors wanting something specific. The vendors don't seem to care about their badge design. They just want to get into their space and sell.

Artist

Artist badges need to be the prettiest, coolest, or 'artsy-est' of our badge designs.

Keep in mind, however, that no matter what badge design is given to the artists, there will always be artists who complain about their badges. Don’t take it personally - artists are impossible to please.

Staff

Staff badges need to be different than the general badges but still be cool looking. We’re the freaking staff and attendees should to want to be us. Our badges should be better than the general badges even though we probably will be getting a secondary mascot or completely different design.

Special Things

Staff badges get special randomness added to them so that the staff have an extra fun thing they get. Some staff do not care, but many of us love to look at each other’s badges and compare special items.

• 2011 Weakness and Status (not theme related)
• 2012 Weakness (In Space)
• 2013 Improvised Weapon (Apocalypse)
• 2014 Prepared Spell (Magic Theme)

Items are added to a large array and chosen at random. However, roughly 10% of the badges are rerun for various reasons. The most common reason was the random item came up too many times.