EVENT: The Arts Reach National Arts Marketing, Development and Ticketing Conference in San Francisco, October 28-30, 2011.

Over the years, Arts Reach readers, webinar participants and conference delegates have heard my rules of design excellence expressed in different ways. Every layout needs a focal point and visual hierarchy. Make similar things similar, and different things different. Assume your audience knows nothing about your organization, offerings or art form. Brochures, postcards, ads and posters sell with emotion, while newsletters and websites sell with persuasion. Every important message should be repeated three times. Clarity beats intrigue. Market the experience, not the ticket. And so on. For their book, Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath did the research and ended up confirming the value of these ideas, and organized them into six principles of sticky messages. We'll explore arts marketing and communications using their framework, with good examples to emulate, as well as bad examples (with obscured identities) to avoid.