I look forward to this time of year because it’s one of the few opportunities I get to do anything with print design.  Riptide is starting its hunt for 2010 sponsors so we’re starting to roll out the marketing materials.  The 2010 Team Preview is a summary of our 2009 accomplishments and a look at what we’re planning for 2010.  Also included is all the information potential sponsors need about what is involved in sponsorship and why it benefits them.

Very simple cover with a little gloss.

Last year was the first time I took on a print project like this and learned a lot as I went along. I was very careful not to repeat those same mistakes this year. Though we print out copies of the guide, it also has to  be easy to view online.  Last year’s guide was so heavy that the file took forever to load on our website.  So this year, I opted for the super clean and simple look.

I scrounged the internet for famous quotes that went along with each section of the book.

After last year’s printing debacle (I waited until after I had designed it to figure out where to print it), I knew I wanted to use Blurb.com and plan for that from the get-go. I got caught up playing with their book-making software, BookSmart, and laid out the entire book in that, using Fireworks to create the graphical text.

Each returning athlete from 2009 has a photo with his/her background information.

All was well until I went to print it as a PDF so I could upload it to the Riptide website. Blurb doesn’t let you know that when you do that they watermark it to death, rendering it useless for use in public. I went back and made each page into a PDF using Illustrator (I still don’t have InDesign…definitely my next big purchase…that or a Powertap…) and then compiled them. BookSmart is definitely a great little piece of software, but next time I’ll do it all with Illustrator, or hopefully InDesign.

The photos really make the book, and I can't take credit for a single one. A huge thank you to David Liu and Beth Mackenzie.The details.

Despite the BookSmart incident, Blurb really impressed me. It’s so nice when you send something off to print and it comes back exactly how you imagined it would look.  Highly recommend!

The details.

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