We’re big fans of beer here, so we were delighted when Loy Maierhauser contacted us to put together event passports for Bozeman’s first ever craft beer week! Their passports lay out all the events of the week, provide a place for attendees to collect stamps from each location, and showcase promotions from the event’s sponsors. We love how they are able to distill all the information about the event into a pocketable book for attendees to carry around with them. We reached out to Loy to learn more about how the event went and what it was like making these crafty little passports.
What got you interested in using Scout Books to create your your event passports?
We heard about Scout Books from Ryan Newhouse, the gentleman who created the Montana Brewery Passport. Since we had seen the Montana Brewery Passports around town and knew we liked the quality, we looked into the company a bit more to see if it’s something that would work for our week-long series of events.
How did Bozeman’s first ever craft beer week go?
It went wonderfully! We had 24 events that happened over eight days, and over 2,900 people attended events. The event passports served as peoples’ schedule and guide for the week. People collected stamps as they attended events. The passport also included coupons and discounts at our local sponsors that attendees could use throughout the week. When you’re working with 32 different local businesses, getting logos and advertisements in all the right file formats and specifications can be a challenge, but in the end, everything turned out really well. We had set a deadline for ourselves of having the passports done three weeks before we actually needed them to be finished, and having that extra time built in was essential to making sure the details were perfect. I had a feeling we’d need to trick ourselves by setting that super early deadline so that we would have some extra time, and I was right!
Who designed the books? What was it like designing a detailed guide like this?
I did! As someone who had never used InDesign until I started this project, there was definitely a bit of a learning curve, but we had a good idea of what we wanted, and the Scout Books team was so helpful in providing lots of feedback to make sure our passports printed perfectly.
Did you have a favorite experience from putting everything together?
There were so many wonderful events, it’s hard to pick one favorite. Something really neat that we did was orchestrate a collaboration beer project with the nine breweries in our area. Each brewery was grouped up, and they created unique beers together that were released during the week. People could take their passports around and get stamps for trying all of the collaboration beers, and I have to say, I enjoyed them all! It was really neat to see what each brewery came up with. We had a lemongrass white IPA, a coffee IPA, and a gose, among many others!
Thanks to Loy for taking the time to speak with us, sounds like a total success. Check out the Bozeman Craft Beer Week if you want more info and to get in on next years event!
Event images courtesy of Loy Maierhauser and Lindsey Hove Photography.