The Ultimate Guide to Designing and Printing Sports Programs
From little league to the national championships, a well-designed sports program brings the game to life for everyone in the stands.
Understanding how to make a sports program booklet that unites your fans can involve thinking critically, using your creativity, and putting yourself in your readers’ shoes (or cleats). Even better, sports program printing is easier than you might think. This article will explain everything you need to know, from starting your design to hitting “print.”
The Importance Of Sports Programs
Sports programs are important for fans. You can feel the excitement in the court, at the arena, or on the field, and there’s an energy in the air as everyone gets ready to cheer on their team.
Before the game, many spectators take the time to look through the program in order to understand who their team is up against, read stats about their favorite players, and know who to pay attention to. This is true for baseball, basketball, football, and all other sports.
Your program is also a useful marketing tool. It presents an image of your team, as well as your parent organization such as a school, community center, or franchise. Your imaging and branding encourages people to come to future games, buy tickets or send in donations, and tell their friends about your team.
Finally, it provides essential information. Program booklets often contain useful details about future games, team schedules, and important player stats. They help readers familiarize themselves with your teammates and support the team at every game.
Key Design Principles
As you’re thinking about how to make a sports program booklet, here are some ideas to consider.
Understand Your Audience
Think about who will be reading your booklet and what their interests are. Are they parents who want to see pictures of their kids doing the sport they love? Are they sports fans who care about statistics? Are they fans of individual players or of the whole team? By adjusting your design to fit your primary audience, you increase the chance that they read it and come back to the next game.
Brand Consistency
Your team and your parent organization already have an image and an identity, so include your team’s existing branding such as colors, fonts, and logos. For example, if you’re printing a high school sports program booklet, be sure to include your school colors and mascot. Including your branding ties your program to your team and your larger organization.
Visual Hierarchy
Readers might be looking for a specific section in your program, so make your headings clear so that everyone can find the information they need. Include headings in two or three sizes, which indicate your main sections and subsections. This helps readers easily see where to find the information they need.
Essential Elements Of Sports Program Printing
Here are some of the most important sections to include in your design.
- Cover page. Add a dynamic image here, such as an action shot or a team picture, and accompany it with the most important information: the team name, and the event name, time, and location.
- Event details. Include important information about current and future events, such as the schedule for the season, listing dates and times for all future games, as well as possible playoffs or tournaments. This makes it easy for readers to show up to future games.
- Team information. Provide both team and individual player stats, bios, and photos, so that readers know who’s out on the field. By helping personalize your players and provide an identity for your team, this section helps readers feel more invested in your team.
- Sponsor ads. Offering space for local businesses to place ads gives them exposure and helps you offset costs. It’s a win-win!
For more inspiration, take a look at some examples to get an idea of what great programs look like.
Use Design Tools
Creating a sports program is a big task in and of itself, so don’t make the process more difficult. Use the help of existing design resources that will help you create a great product. Consider using the following:
- Work with easy design programs. Platforms such as Canva help you create your own design. You can start from scratch or easily customize their existing templates.
- Work in Word. If you don’t want to start working with a new design platform, you can create your program in Microsoft Word. Microsoft provides settings that make designing a booklet-style program easy.
- Work with professionals. If you don’t want to create your design yourself, ask the professionals at ZoePrint to do it for you! This relieves you of the responsibility and ensures that you’ll receive a program that looks great in print.
Once you’ve finalized your design, save it as a high resolution PDF file, which you can then send to your printing partner.
No matter how you create your design, you can get an extra pair of eyes on your design at ZoePrint. Our design team can tweak your existing design to make it ready for printing, adjust your design, or create a design from scratch for you. This is a great option if this is your first experience with sports program printing or if you want some input before you print.
Printing Options And Techniques
After you’ve created your design, it’s time to think about printing options. The printing process offers lots of flexibility for you to create a design that reflects both your goals and your budget. Here’s what to consider.
Color
To print in color, or to print with only black ink? That is the question. Fortunately, this question has many possible answers. Printing your program in full color brings every page to life and encourages readers to keep paging through. On the other hand, printing in only black ink is the most budget-friendly option.
If you’d like to meet in the middle between those two options, consider printing with black and one or two spot color inks, or print your program’s covers in color and the interior pages in black ink. These strategies allow for some bright colors while keeping costs in check.
Paper
When it’s time to print, you’ll need to decide which papers to print on. In general, your paper options will include a range of thicker and thinner papers. Thicker papers such as 100# gloss or dull cover paper will provide some helpful structure for your booklets and help them hold up over time. For your program’s interior pages, papers such as 100# gloss or dull text paper are good options.
If you’re unsure which paper option is best for your programs, feel free to reach out to your printing partner. They can give you advice about which papers will fit both your project and your budget.
Finishing Processes
Printing isn’t always the final step in the printing process. You might want to opt for additional finishing processes, such as folding, stapling or binding, or die-cutting. Depending on the form you want your program to take, any or all of these might be a good idea.
In particular, folding and stapling gives your program shape. They help it hold together and make it easy to read. Feel free to talk with your printing partner about the finishing processes they offer and how they can help your program look even better.
Bat A Thousand With The Print Experts
Whether you’re printing a high school sports program booklet or a program for a professional team, ZoePrint is here to help. As leaders when it comes to printing programs and playbills for sports, performances, and businesses, we provide the options and quality you’re looking for at a price you’ll love.
Our simple online ordering system and helpful customer service team help you get the sports program printing that will make your games great. Order online, or ask ZoePrint for a custom quote for your next project!
