You’ve planned your perfect event: booked the best venue in town with the biggest headliners, and everyone is talking about it.
What’s left? Get your attendees to register and buy your tickets.
An event ticket has an obvious functional purpose: verifying that the holder of the ticket is a legitimate registrant for the event so you can provide access. However, an event ticket can also act as important branding collateral for your event. If your ticket is memorable and well-designed, attendees might remember it and will increase the likelihood of them visiting your future events.
Thus, although an event ticket is seemingly a simple aspect of your event planning, don’t underestimate it! To be effective, your event ticket should maintain the right balance between being attractive and being informative, and it can be easier said than done.
Here, we will share all you need to know about how to make attractive and effective event tickets, and without further ado, let us begin right away.
Event Ticket Best Practices: Three Golden Rules
When designing event tickets, you should stick to these three golden rules:
Rule No 1: Emphasize your brand
You’ll be surprised at how many event planners and event organizers don’t effectively ensure their brand and their event’s brand are recognizable enough on the ticket.
Make sure to have a strong brand presence on your event tickets: recognizable logo, easy to find and read website URL, prominent social media handles, and so on. If you already have your future events planned (or established regular events), display their logos on the ticket. This practice alone can significantly increase the likelihood of retaining attendees for your next event.
Rule No 2: Readability above anything else
It’s very important to make sure your texts are readable. Take your time to find the best possible font type and color for your ticket, and experiment with different color combinations to make sure the most important information on the ticket is emphasized.
Also, your fonts should represent the theme or character of your event.
Rule No 3: Balance between aesthetics and information
A key consideration in designing tickets is the limited space on your ticket. Thus, the crucial part is to find the right balance between including the important information without making the tickets too cluttered.
Important information should also be positioned in the areas on the ticket where it’s easy to find (i.e. on the very top).
At the very least, your ticket should include the following information:
- Venue address: the complete and accurate address of the venue where the event is taking place
- Directions: you can include a map (or QR code to Google Map) and other useful information like public transportation available
- Schedule: you should at least provide a general outline of the important events
- Venue map: not mandatory, but recommended for a big physical venue
- Contact information: make it easy for ticket holders to contact you.
Tips and Tricks for Making Great Event Tickets
- Portrait or Landscape
How should you decide between these two orientations? Here are some key considerations:
- Landscape orientation is typically better if you want to include more information so they won’t look cluttered. If you want to provide maps, for example, the landscape is more likely the better bet
- Portrait orientation is better if you don’t include too much text-based information so it won’t look too empty
- Check the number of logos and images you’d like to include in the event ticket. As a general rule of thumb, the more packed the event ticket is, the more likely you should use landscape orientation
- Remember that a foldable design is an option, so you can include more information and images when needed.
- Decide The Information You Need To Include
Before designing the event ticket, you should plan beforehand the information you’d like to be displayed on the event ticket. Determine which information is important, and which can be left out (and put on your website/social media instead).
If you have event sponsors, don’t forget to also consider what kind of information about your sponsors should be displayed on the ticket, including logos and images. If you need to include these images and logos, also plan beforehand how big they need to be.
- The Right Size
There is no right answer for “what’s the ideal ticket size?”
However:
- The average size of event tickets with stubs is 1.97″ x 5.63″, the common stub size for an event ticket is 1.875”.
- For stubless tickets, the average size is 2.125″ x 5.5″
It’s important to make sure the ticket is small enough so it’s easy to pocket, but can include the required information you’ve planned without being too cluttered. Also, avoid making the ticket too small since they’ll be easier to lose.
- Blank Spaces and Contrast
Use blank/white spaces and contrasting colors to emphasize important aspects of the event ticket. Again, make sure important information is positioned in areas that are easy to find (for example, on the very top).
This will help in both aesthetics and readability, as blank spaces and contrast will make the ticket more appealing when done right, and white spaces can help reduce clutter.
However, when using blank spaces and contrasting colors, remember to maintain balance. Avoid, for example, having one side of the ticket too cluttered and too empty on the other side.
Wrapping Up
Don’t underestimate the importance of designing an attractive and informative event ticket as a part of your event’s branding and marketing efforts.
You might want to consider an event ticket software not only for an easier design process with intuitive templates but also to more effectively manage ticket registrations for the event.