For decades, 3thought has supported organizations and event planners with the creation of cohesive, professional, marketing materials across a variety of mediums including digital, print, and web.
Our design services include event logos, brand guidelines (colors, fonts, and graphics), event websites, invitations, programs, signage, social media graphics, merch, and so much more.
If you need help creating unique and memorable event collateral that excites your event attendees and leaves them with a strong positive impression, we'd love to work with you.
Event Branding Examples
Logos
Brand Guidelines
Invitations
Programs & Journals
Social Graphics
Banners, Signs, & Wayfinding
Promotional Products & Merch
Comprehensive Event Collateral
We Specialize In the Creation of:
Pre-Event Marketing Materials
- Consulting
- Brand Guidelines
- Custom logos
- Event invitations (evite, mailers, or both)
- Event graphics and styles (including fonts and colors)
- Web design including the event website, microsite, and landing pages
- Branded event collateral
- Email marketing and graphics (Mailchimp and Constant Contact)
- Event posters and event flyers
- Social media graphics and templates (Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Spark, and Canva)
- Event registration packets (including registration forms for attendees and sponsors)
- Event Billboards
- Digital advertising
Day of Event Materials
- Event signage & wayfinding
- Sponsor signage
- Event programs and journals
- Auction guides
- Nametags and badges
- Banners
- Snapchat filters/Giphy stickers
- Event schedules
- Event merch and promotional product customization
- Event maps
Post-Event Materials
- Post-event mailings
- Thank you cards
- Photo galleries
- Social media summaries
- Website updates
Kristen Ann Carr Fund
A Night To Remember
A Night To Remember
A Typical Event Branding Process
No two organizations or events are alike, so these steps are an overview of a typical process. The exact process always depends on budgets, timeframes, size of event, location, and desired expectations. We're easy to work with and flexible so we customize each project's process to meet your needs.
Before you start branding your event, it's important to take stock of your organization's overall brand. To get a sense of your brand, we ask questions like:
- How do people feel about your organization?
- How does your audience feel about your events?
- Is your event or organization new?
- Has your event been around for years and do you have strong brand equity?
- What existing themes, colors, logos, fonts, or graphics exist if any?
- What would be on-brand for your business to say and would be not okay?
Taking an inventory of assets and getting a temperature on your audience will help you make better decisions when it comes to how we market to your audience.
- NEW EVENTS: Building trust and increasing event awareness (getting people to know who you are and into the seats) are often top priorities.
- ESTABLISHED EVENTS: Changing how people feel and generating new interest and excitement are often goals.
Set a realistic timeline. Start with the event date you want and back out what needs to be done to get there.
- Is the venue secured? Do they have any lead times for final attendance numbers?
- Are your other production vendors reserved? Printer? Signmaker? Equipment rentals? What lead times do they need to ensure everything is ready?
- What special needs does your event have beyond general promotion, invitations and a program? Do you need item signs for your auction? Do you need tee-signs for a golf tournament? Do you need a map or schedule to assist attendees?
Detailing out all your needs ahead of time prevents headaches and scrambling.
Understanding who you are, but maybe more importantly, who you want to be will inform your event's theme, look, messaging, and event marketing materials.
How do you choose your event’s theme?
Long before any event takes place, you’ll want to figure out the theme of your event so you can brand it. The type of event you're holding is often a major consideration in how creative your branding could be.
To help decide, ask yourself a few questions:
- Are you hosting an upscale event such as a gala?
- Are you hosting a casual event like a night out or day trip for employees?
- Is your event an established annual tradition?
- Does your event take place on a national, regional, or local level?
- Does your event confined to a limited time frame or take place over multiple days?
- Is the goal of your event to raise money, awareness, or both?
- Are there major milestones you’re celebrating?
- Does your event honor a person, business, or organization who may have their own brand, and what considerations for co-branding should you be aware of?
Answers to questions like the ones above will likely shape the theme of your event. Some events scream for wild, loud, and in-your-face ideas, while other events need a more conservative, softer approach. Some events carry strong traditions that need to be honored, while some are open for reinvention year after year.
Once you decide on your event theme, it’s up to your graphic design and marketing teams to bring the theme to life through an official event logo, colors, fonts, naming conventions, and messaging.
The type of event you’re having, your budget, your resources, as well your desired results will play a huge role in the logistics of who’s doing what and when.
How we can help you and your team depends on what you need. We have decades of experience working directly with organizations and event planners to create thoughtful, consistent, professional event materials.
Sometimes we play a large role in the creation of marketing materials and other times we're called in for a specialty like an event theme, logo, or event website. One thing that keeps our clients coming back to us is our ability to work as a team deliver creative marketing materials on time and on budget consistently.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Whether you're a seasoned veteran with dozens of events under your belt or starting from scratch and wondering what's next, here are a few of the questions we get asked the most.
Event branding is the process that event organizers, event planners, and graphic designers go through to influence how attendees feel about an event. The goal is often to build trust, awareness, and excitement with an audience.
What people think about your event will happen with or without your participation. The benefit of branding is you’re not leaving things to chance - you’re actively trying to shape people's perceptions.
It's all about reputation and trust. Organizations that invest time and money into creating creative, consistent, professionally branded events appear more trustworthy than organizations that don't.
If your goals include attracting more/new event attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and donations, you’re going to want to hire a team that can help you look your best at every touchpoint — making your event more memorable.
Absolutely. Graphic designers are critical when creating professional event marketing materials, so many event planners work with agencies like 3thought or have graphic designers on staff. Event planners are master organizers who know when it’s best to delegate to an expert.
We’re always open to working with new event planners and our level of collaboration with event planners typically falls into one of these three categories.
- Event planners who work with outside agencies. These event planners often have a handful of trusted designers they work with on every project and have a process for working as a team. 3thought WOULD BE an excellent fit in this scenario.
- Event planners who have in-house designers, but rely on outsourced agencies for services they don’t do in-house. Event planners like this typically have a small team with specific talents but often need assistance with deliverables that fall outside of their comfort zone. 3thought MIGHT BE a good fit here.
- Event planners who have in-house designers, but are over-booked. Event planners can get extremely busy and when they do they'll often outsource help. 3thought MIGHT BE a good fit here.
- Event planners who do everything in-house. If your event planner has a staff of designers, marketers, and web workers ready to roll, forcing them to work outside their system could gum up the works. 3thought WOULD NOT be a good fit here.
If you'd like to hire 3thought to help with event branding, but you’re unsure if your event planner works with outside agencies, you usually just have to ask.
We’re always happy to have a conversation and explore new opportunities.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when working with any creative professional is that there's no certificate or license needed to call yourself a graphic designer, web designer, or event branding expert.
A few qualities we’d recommend include:
- Experience - It’s really tough to fake this and any agency that’s been doing this for years should be able to provide high-quality examples of their work. Events are time-sensitive projects. The right experience saves time and ultimately money.
- Process - A repeatable process that gets work finished on time, on budget, and delivers consistent professional results is what sets run-of-the-mill designers from excellent ones. Most people think that an established process can kill creativity, but creatives know that process is what frees them to do their best work while avoiding mistakes.
- Services - There are a lot of individuals who are really good at executing a single piece of a marketing puzzle. The problem with events is they require knowledge across a broad range of fields (print, web, social, email, marketing, branding) and a single person rarely does everything well. The benefit to hiring a team is that each member typically has different specialties and they're used to working together.
- Chemistry - Whoever you work with should understand you, your business, your event, and your goals. And, you need to feel good about this relationship and be able to have open honest dialog.
No, 3thought does not provide event planning services however, we highly recommend Empire Events Group for event planning (especially if you’re in New York City).
No, 3thought does not provide videography services however, our colleague Darrin Fitzgerald at ArtieMedia specializes in video production for events and conferences. He works all over the United States creating incredible event videos.