Tips for Working with a Graphic Designer for Your Corporate Event

Welcome to Part 2 of our series on working with a graphic designer for your corporate event! Our last post focused on finding the right designer to fit your needs, and today we’re talking about a few things that will make your graphic designer’s job easier. If you missed Part 1, you can catch up here! 

We love working with graphic designers to carry branding through an event, from name badges to custom-designed stage backdrops, from welcome signage at the registration table to wayfinding signage throughout the venue. Working with a graphic designer who has experience designing for an event can make a world of difference. This month, we’re sharing a few tips for making the most of a graphic designer’s time and skills, thanks to our own in-house designer, Brenda Lyman.

Tip #4: Stay Organized

The best way to make sure that your communication tools are successful? By communicating with the designer. KE Event Producer Robin has mastered the art of coordinating between printer and designer, maintaining a spreadsheet of all print needs, including size, quantity, copy or content for each piece, material for final output, vendor, etc. Of course, the most crucial bit of information to track is the current status of each item—from “waiting for content” to “approved.”  

Another expert tip from Robin: assign a code to every print item; labeling them from “A” to “Z”. This keeps things organized, especially when there’s a large number of unique print items. For a recent corporate event, those codes went all the way to “ZZM”! The coding is included on the spreadsheet and the designer uses those codes to name the print files. When you have multiple hands on a project—from designer to traffic manager to printer—this extra step provides one more level of organization. 

We recommend keeping this document in a central location (we love Google Drive!) that multiple people can access. For the KE team, the spreadsheet for event print needs has become a great tool for not only keeping print needs organized for the designer but also for tracking the information needed by the designer, event producer, client, and the printer all in one location.

Tip #5: Mind the Timeline

Have you ever thought to yourself  “this shouldn’t take long,” only to find it takes three times as long as you originally anticipated? While we consider ourselves efficient, we’ve also found that people don’t have a solid understanding of how long things take when they don’t actually specialize in those tasks.

Here’s the truth about graphic design: doing it perfectly takes time. Since we’re not ones to settle for less than perfect (and we don’t think you are either), we recommend giving your graphic designer as much lead time as possible. When creating a timeline for print needs, we recommend working backward starting with how much time the printer needs, an estimate of how much time you’ll need for reviewing and revisions (especially if your decisions will need to be made by committee), and finally how much time your graphic designer will need to produce all of your event materials. Keep in mind: printer’s timelines have the least amount of flexibility and designers aren’t superhuman so it’s extremely helpful to have one person who acts as a taskmaster to keep all parties on track.

Tip #6: Have the Designer Available Day-of

Once the event day is here your graphic designer will still be a huge asset to your team. Speakers are notorious for changing information on their slides right up to the last minute, often making changes in the green room as they prepare to go on stage. Having a graphic designer on-site to make those changes and ensure that all the slides still meet the brand standards goes a long way in making your speaker successful and keeping your brand looking polished. 

Even if your designer can’t physically be at the event, having someone on-call for these changes works just as well. Thank goodness for cloud-based documents and apps like Slack that let us stay connected even when our team is on-site or our in-house designer is across the country!

Having a designer in your corner, and keeping that designer happy by being mindful of deadlines and communication, can help ensure that your event stays on brand. When that designer has experience working on event materials, you’ll definitely benefit from having someone on your side who not only understands your needs but also understands the bigger picture needs of your event and its guests.

What’s Your Next Event?

Do you have a corporate event coming up? Tell us all about it! We’re happy to chat with you about everything from strategy to venues, or anything else event-related that you could dream up. Send us a note and we’ll be in touch right away (responding quickly is kind of our thing).

Maggie Kennedy is the co-owner of Kennedy Events; a large-scale event management company based in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Our team creates stress-free conferences and events with a positive impact, which allow our clients to resonate with their audience. Kennedy Events specializes in producing flawless product launches, award ceremonies, fundraisers and multi-day conferences while keeping our eye on retention and engagement goals

MAGGIE KENNEDY