When’s the best time to visit Portland? According to Travel Portland: “Right now. Tomorrow. Ten days from now.” They’re right – there’s always something happening in our fair city. Travel Portland encourages travelers to visit Portland by highlighting the amazing calendar of events, tasty food and beverages, landmarks, and quirky character that make Portland what it is. Within their organization is the Convention Sales department. Its objective is to bring meetings and conventions to town through marketing to meeting planners. In addition to trade show booths and traditional advertising, the department sends direct mail pieces to their audience, which sparked the concept of Maker’s Day.
For this campaign (and many others!), Travel Portland worked with Grady Britton, an agency here in Portland that is focused on public relations, digital strategy, creative messaging, and content and media strategy. On this project, their goal was to create something memorable and uniquely Portland that could be sent to meeting planners each year as an annual celebration of their work. Says Jill Hrycyk of Grady Britton: “We created a holiday, Maker’s Day, because they are making magic happen every day. Seriously – meeting planners have a tough job.”
The team at Grady Britton put together an “Office Cubicle Makeover” kit, giving their prospects the ability to “Portlandize” their offices. The kit was carefully sourced to support local vendors. It included a terrarium kit with driftwood from the Oregon coast, a Portland-made magnet and hand-crocheted stapler sweater to go over a branded stapler. They also included a snazzy custom Scout Book and miniature colored pencils to go with it. The cover features the shine of gold foil, plus navy ink on the back, and the custom pages contain writing and doodling prompts aimed at meeting planners.
The designer, Grady Britton’s Vince Skelly, was excited to work with foil for the first time, and to design for the Scout Books format. Says Vince:
Since everything is streamlined it's super easy. I especially love the language used in the template guidelines. It feels very friendly and fun.
Vince used india ink, brushes, and paper to create the illustrations found within the book. They were then scanned and digitized to become the interior pages. “I’ll take any chance I get to design something off screen.”
Thanks to Travel Portland and Grady Britton for their help in sharing this project!