Case Study: Welcome to Grande Cache.

This case study (Welcome to Grande Cache) looks at designing street banners for the newest member of the Municipality of Greenview.

Hi! I’m Aysha O’Brien,

I’m the graphic design lead for Aurora Flags and Banners. I wanted to share with you a pretty cool street banner project I recently designed for the lovely Town of Grande Cache. From start to finish here is the project:

Recently Aurora Flags and Banners was asked to help print and design 153 new banners for Grande Cache’s 50th anniversary.

Grande Cache is a diverse community and wanted new banners designed that reflected the history, multiculturalism and culture of this unique area.

Grande Cache is a hub for outdoor events, the main event is the Canadian Death Race. Held every summer in the area for the last 20 years.

Grande Cache is known for it’s beautiful hiking trails, winter sports, bike paths, wildlife, horseback riding and river rafting.

In addition to all of these fun things to do Grande Cache has some of the best dinosaur tracks on display in the world.

With all of these things in mind Aurora Flags was tasked to design new banners reflecting this lovely town in the Canadian rockies.

Step 1:

Inquiry & Design Brief

Inquiry

An information request was sent to our sales team about creating street banners after the client saw the ones we had printed for Communities in Bloom Strathcona. This client did not have a dedicated design team so she asked us to help out. After ironing out the particulars with our sales manager Jabir, I was sent over the design brief.

Design Brief:

-Banners must reflect the diversity of Grande Cache.

-Banners ideally would reflect the activities available in Grande Cache

-We would like to incorporate a fun look to these banners we really liked the ripped paper effect in another municipalities banners.

-Could we incorporate dinosaurs somehow?

-Could we have multiple designs but keep them consistent?

Step 2:

Brainstorming,Proofs and Revisions

Design Limitations

Photo Sizing

These banners are a little bit larger than standard street banners at 28” x 72” a few of the photos we wanted to use were a bit small to be blown up to full size so I used an old trick I learned for creating artwork for billboards. The live trace button in illustrator! This button gives an almost artistic look to photos and should be used sparingly But, due to the fact that these banners have a far away viewing distance (this is key) and the fact that we were going for the look of hand drawn artwork we opted to use this method.

Consistency

There was quite a few of these banners, they will be displayed next to each other on light posts with alternating designs, I wanted to make sure that these banners all complimented one another, so that they could be shown either as a group or individually.

The Design

True to the Spirit of Grande Cache

Grande Cache is an amazing place, I wanted to make sure that these banners accurately reflected the spirit of Grande Cache and it’s residents, every street banner project is as unique as the area I create it for.

Here is the revision process from start to finish

1) Idea/Rough Draft.We typically do one or two ideas before committing to a whole run
2) Draft Is Refined
3) Draft is approved with revisions, a full set is produced.
4) Area undergoes a name change from the town of Grande Cache to the Municipal District of Greenview.
pantones and style guides are applied to the artwork.
5) Municipality of Greenview undergoes a rebrand, Logos and Pantones are swapped to match the new style guide.
6) A few small adjustments and the banners are ready to print.
7) Hard copies are sent to the client, Minor colour corrections are applied to the final files.
8) The banners are finished and shipped off to the client to be installed.