Most event attendees spend their time looking at increasingly shrinking graphics. Its time for event planners to start making sure their creatives match the devices your attendees look at the most. 

Getting graphic and creative work for an event is an essential part of making sure your event looks amazing. An effective event brand can be the best marketing an organizer can have. Plus, your creative brand can set the tone for your event and convey an attitude to your attendees. The difference between a good event and great event is often the care and effort that went into the creative graphics. Event organizers have mastered a system of creating effective graphics quickly. However, with the onslaught of mobile devices, its time to throw a wrench in the system.  

When its time to plan and execute graphics for smartphones, we have learned that its important to follow a different set of rules then when you design for printed media, desktop emails, and websites. Here are a few tips:

1) Keep It Simple

It's not enough to simply reduce the size of your images; it's just as important to simplify as much as you can. However simplification doesn't mean you have water down your brand. Rather, we suggest your strip away the unimportant elements. Remove the patterns in favor or solid colors, concentrate on the major elements, make sure your text is crisp and easily readable, and don't put in too many points of focus. 

2) Color Can Be Your Best Friend - or Worst Enemy

Event organizers always want their event to stand out and often use colorful graphics to help. On mobile devices however, color can sometimes draw attention from the information they are trying to emphasize. We recommend using color to draw focus to your app, but simplify pages where information is key. Sometimes white space can be your friend. 

3) Use First, Beauty Second

Sometimes lost in the race in the build beautiful event branding is purpose. For event organizers, creating graphics for mobile devices should be more about letting your information shine rather then trying to overdesign. On a small canvas, this can have more impact then a fancy design. 

4) Look Before You Publish 

One issue with the variety of mobile devices is the different screen sizes you must adapt graphics for. While systems like EventEdge do much of the heavy lifting for organizers, its always good to pull out your device and check before you submit. What may look good in Photoshop may look very different depending on quality and size of a mobile device. Check your graphics on a few different devices and and make sure you are happy with your look before finalizing.