Event Ticket Design: Some Fabulous Ideas

You are going to organize an event. This can be a conference, seminar, or a festival.

Once you have planned the whole event, the next step is to design and give out event tickets.

And you know that event tickets mainly have a functional purpose of permitting entry. But for many guests, it means much more. For example, some guests consider tickets as a souvenir of a noteworthy event.

Hence, when you design tickets, you want two things:

First, you want the ticket to have all the event details. That is, event name, time, venue, and a short event description.

Second, you want to design a ticket, which is visually appealing. You may also want to add branding to the ticket design. The main purpose is to delight your guests by designing personalized tickets.

So, in this article, we will give you some creative ideas of how to design your event ticket.

Keep reading.

1. Rewind the vintage look

If your event deals with vintage themes such as old films screening, an exhibition of antique items, or a circus, then this is a perfect ticket design.

Let your ticket do all the talking. You can use vintage colors such as boggy, burgundy, crimson, green, pale pink, and saturated green on your ticket.

The best vintage font you can use on the ticket is The Aviator font. It is elegant, stylish, and has distressed letterpress.

2. Keep it sophisticated

Sophisticated ticket designs will render a very calming effect on your guests. Generally, grey or white color background is considered to be the most sophisticated. Keep the font color dark such as black or dark purple.
The best sophisticated fonts are Reklame and Brandscript.

Such ticket design goes well with events such as a book launch or fashion week. Here's an example of a sophisticated theme-based ticket for Nottingham Trent University's graduate fashion week, 2019.

Source: Behance

3. The hi-tech design

As the world becomes tech-savvy, ticket design isn't an exception to this practice. You can create a hi-tech ticket design by adding a QR Code to it.

A QR Code is a 2D barcode. This can easily be scannable via a smartphone or a dedicated app.

Now, here are two ways through which you can use QR Codes on tickets:

i. Make your ticket secure

You can create QR Code-based tickets with the help of professional tools such as Ticket Generator. Upon scanning the QR Code with a dedicated app, you can know whether the ticket is genuine or not.

This way, you will easily be able to identify and discard fake tickets. Plus, you can also add a logo, background color or background image, and make the ticket totally branded.

Besides, if you already have a design template, you can simply add a QR Code. This will add a layer of security to the ticket.

In case you'd like to know how it works, here's a quick video:

ii. Let your guests interact with the ticket

Yes, with QR Codes, you can actually make your event tickets engaging and interactive. You can create a QR Code and link it to both text-based and multimedia information.

For example, you can link:

• A short teaser of your event
• Anecdotes on the event theme
• An audio clip, if it's a music event
• Feedback form to make it easy for guests to send event review
• A coupon code

Your guests just need to scan the QR Code via their smartphone. And enjoy the content within.

4. Quote the ticket

Art director, Kris Tsao, designed a ticket for an Art and Design lecture. The lecture was on graphic designer Edward Ella.

And the ticket design had the famous words of this designer, (Design is) 'Permission Given Allowance Taken'. The ticket created a great impression on the designer's fans. And many of the guests kept this ticket as a souvenir.

Similarly, say if you are organising a Shakespearean play. You can actually quote the bard's words on tickets. This will make the guests feel special.

5. Fuse the designs

Say you are organising a reunion. This can be office, college, or school. For such events you can design a colorful ticket, which has lots of fonts. That is, you can go bold and italic, while writing a normal text in other places.

Plus, you can also play with the font sizes. For example, Aleo is one of the best bold font designs. While Roboto is one of the most minimalistic fonts.

6. The paper work design

You can design your ticket like an envelope. That is, you can design it on cardboard paper with blanks. The blanks will have attendee information such as name, entry timings, date, and number of admits.

This design will go well with historical events. This is because the ticket design will give a retro tinge.

In a similar manner, you can add a bit of sophistication to this design. For example, the tickets of the opera singer 'Placido Domingo' concert were a visual treat.

A lot of time and work was consumed in the design but the end product was just amazing. The ticket had three separate sections; an envelope, the ticket itself, and a tracing paper with designated seat number.

7. Play with words

Say you are organising a big event. And there are different ticket categories/access passes. And normally you mark different ticket categories with words such as Gold, Silver, or Platinum/ VIP, Ordinary etc. on the ticket.

You can actually define these categories in a playful manner. For example, the Ancora music festival held in Vancouver went quirky with their ticket designs.

The festival had various entry options such as all access passes, day passes, and night stand passes. They specified these categories such as All day long, Day tripper, and One Night Stand respectively.

8. Let the colors do the talking

You can use vibrant, neon colors on your tickets. Say, your event is based on the theme of LGBT group. Here, you can design your ticket with rainbow colors. This will reflect on the broad theme of the event.

Source: Deviant Art

Same goes with a festive event such as Holi. According to experts, neon color blue is one of the best colors for vibrant ticket design. While red is considered the most favorable color to trigger action and boost sales. So, if your event requires sale of a product/service, then you should use red.

Hence, these were some of the ticket design options. Once you choose a ticket design, go ahead to choose the type of material you want your ticket on. Rag paper is the highest quality of paper while Matte paper is best for color printing.

Here is a helpful guide on how to choose the right paper for your ticket.

Now, let's move on to some of the best practices in ticket design.This will help you design tickets flawlessly.

1. Ensure that there is enough contrast between background color and font color. For example, if the background color is light, then the font color should be white and vice versa.

2. Use colors, which are eye-friendly. Avoiding using very bright or flashy colors, which may repel the guests.

3. Provide all the details of your event on the ticket. That is from minute details such as seat number to additional details such as event tagline, mention it all.

This will not leave your guest confused or doubtful about any detail.

Follow these best practices rigorously to create tickets smoothly.

Still have any questions? Write it in the comment box.