The following article was written by Emily Brandt, a Marketing Associate with the Manitowoc Public Library.
Manitowoc Public Library is pleased to now offer a printed quarterly Events Guide for patrons to take home. This detailed and informative guide will feature three months’ worth of upcoming library events that you won’t want to miss out on!
Previously, we had offered a month’s worth of events on a grid-style, one-sheet calendar handout. These handouts had minimal information, they were not very visually appealing, and didn’t really capture the scope of the programming happening at Manitowoc Public Library.
Early this summer, Manitowoc Public Library’s Executive Director, Karin Adams, and Public Services Manager, Karen Hansen, met with our Marketing Department, and discussed the possibility of offering a more comprehensive Events Guide. The Marketing Department, consisting of myself and Tim Gadzinski, jumped at the idea. We had offered a version very similar to this concept many, many years ago, but eventually stopped doing it like that.
We were very excited at the opportunity to once again offer something to our patrons that showcased all that the Library was doing with programming. These great events—that staff work so hard to plan—deserved attention.
The process started in early June. We knew our first guide would feature events happening in September, October, and November. This meant that MPL’s awesome staff had to work very hard to finalize all their fall programming earlier than usual, with a strict new deadline. This would allow me to begin designing the guide, followed by staff providing feedback and edits, with everything needing to be finalized and ready for distribution in August.
At first, I was worried designing the Events Guide would be overwhelming and complicated—trying to make all the pieces of information fit, not only so that it made sense, but also so that it looked good. But, oddly enough, it fell together really nicely—and I truly enjoyed putting it together. And my first draft didn’t end up being too far different from my final draft!
I can’t forgot to thank all my co-workers who spent time proofing it for me (multiple times, even), to make sure dates, times, and information were correct. There’s one thing I can say for sure when you work on something like this—you start to go blind to all the information after staring at it for so many hours—days, even—on end.
We sent our new-look guide off to be printed by our friends at Fricke Printing mid-August and asked if they could have these printed and delivered back to the Library a bit faster than our normal requests. As always, they were awesome and had our final product ready-to-go in under a week!
Best of all, these expanded Event Guides are FREE for the taking and can be found in the Library Lobby in the Information Corner, as well as in the Youth Services Department.
We hope you’ll stop in, grab one for yourself, discover that MPL offers something for everyone, and add some of MPL’s events to your personal calendar!