Annoyed by cumbersome guidebooks and awkward fold-out maps, we decided to make a compact set of letterpress printed cards, presented in a custom letterpress printed sleeve.
Points of interest were grouped by topic, as opposed to location, helping out-of-towners gauge what to expect (fancy? pricey? fun? famous?). Copy was restrained to a few digestible sentences and contact information was limited, keeping in mind our smartphone savvy audience.
A luggage tag motif was used as a way to reference our location and structure the illustrative side of the cards, which fit together like a puzzle. This secondary puzzle function gives the viewer a reason to go back through the piece and interact with it once they're at home unloading conference materials and no longer need it as an actual guide.
We were approached by AIGA leaders to create a culture guide for attendees of the 2013 national AIGA Head Heart Hand design conference. Our task was to “highlight cool and interesting things to see and do in Minneapolis from a designer’s point of view.” The format, the content, and the theme were all up to us.
AIGA national was thrilled with the end result. All attendees of the conference, nearly 2,000 people, received a guide in their swag bag. You could see people reading through the quotes between presentations and flipping through the deck at lunchtime. Tweets of completed puzzle rolled in over the weekend and still pop up months later (which is the bonus of having this letterpress printed, it's too nice for people to throw away without feeling bad).
Finally, and this is hard for us to know for sure, but maybe someone really connected with a quote on a card or had a unforgettable night at the polka bar we suggested. The card format allows a conference attendee to tack up a souvenir from their trip without taking up major bulletin board real estate.
