This is the first year Staines Amateur Regatta was held as a two-day weekend event which meant that it needed to have an EPIC programme. They asked me to do it again and I took it as a challenge to create an innovative but practical edition that people would be excited about.
My idea was to create one programme for both days by designing it to flip over for day-two. I wanted the cover to be seamless across both covers front to back.
FINAL PRINTED PROGRAMME DESIGN
1. I created a mock-up of what I wanted to design to go back to the Regatta Committee and make sure they were ok with my design. My idea was to take a drone photo of a quadruple sculls crew directly from above. Align the crew over the seamline and overlap the rowing blades over each side onto each cover.
Information needed on the cover were: logo, web address, days, dates & race distances which were all arranged on the mock up to make sure there is enough space on the image for these items.
Mock-Up Design with Place Holder Imagery from Google Images
2. Using this mock-up, I then asked a member of Staines Boat Club who owned a drone to help me take the best picture for the cover. I accompanied him to art direct the photoshoot creating multiple versions for what I wanted. I wasn't 100% sure the quality was going to be good enough but thankfully, we took a good selection of heights and we found the best quality we could.
Video Footage by Gregory Fletcher; Edit by Del Posner
3. The covers were edited using Adobe Lightroom then Adobe Photoshop and combined with rest of the programme which was laid out and completed using Adobe InDesign. Exported to CMYK high-quality print file to PDF and sent to the Printer to print and bind a stapled saddle stitch booklet with a gloss cover varnished cover for a degree of weatherproofing (which was very useful as it rained all day on day 1!)
Photo by Gregory Fletcher; Edit & Design by Del Posner
The programme was a massive success with feedback throughout the weekend from multiple sources including people in the Print Media industry stating "this is the best rowing programme we've ever seen, even better than Henley [Royal Regatta]". Definitely a successful design and how am I going to up it for next year?!