The Christian Book Expo

Connecting Christian readers and Christian authors

The Christian Book Expo is an opportunity for readers to meet and interact with their favorite Christian authors. It is produced by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association with its first year being in Dallas in 2009. With over 60 publishers and 200 Christian publishing authors, practical and theological seminars, panel discussions, nightly inspirational entertainment events, kids programs, and, of course, the daily trade show displays and booths, it promised to be a huge event.

Design Solution

Design Corps was brought in with branding and marketing strategists to design the Christian Book Expo’s identity, identity style guide, church promotional materials as well as the event signs and banners.

IDENTITY CREATION
For the logo we sought to communicate the power of the written word, the central Christian character of the event, as well as the variety of voices offered by such a large event as the expo. Multiple concepts were presented with their rationales. Colors and fonts were also selected after multiple proofing stages and these elements would guide the design of all subsequent materials.

A Christian Book Expo Identity Style Guide was then created which would help the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association in-house designers by explaining the various logo formats and showing standards for logo and name usage including recommended fonts, logo colors & color equivalency, background colors, minimum size limitations, and border and boundary area.

CHURCH PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS
One way the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association promoted the show was by sending full-color and one-color PDFs to churches which could be printed an placed in bulletins. Colorful posters in the same style were also produced to be sent through denomination headquarters to church communities. These materials highlight the vast array of authors which are the main draw for Expo attenders.

SIGNS & BANNERS
Finally, colorful banners and signs needed to be produced. Design Corps designed three banners for various entrances and meeting areas. Each was 25 to 30 feet across. We also designed templates for three sizes of signs and announcements which were then used by in-house designers to produce all signs as the need arose.

Unfortunately, as reported by Publisher’s Weekly, the timing was poor due to the economic recession. “There is a great market for such an Expo, but the timing couldn’t have been worse for the Expo’s debut year. With the recession and massive cutbacks in consumer spending, this just wasn’t the best time for a new book convention. ”