Unsprawling Marketing Scrapbook (Ideas Needed)

I’m going to design some posters to start advertising:
a) the forum, once it’s ready to be properly launched
b) unsprawling as a community
c) the need for “volunteers” interested in video editing for short forms (along with whatever else @biz determines is needed)

  • Forum Feature Idea: This could probably link to a sign up form, or something on the forum to indicate interest in this position instead of people being sent to the discord right away?

It was also suggested to keep the “posters” simple and eye-catching (think guerilla marketing-y), invoking intrigue.

With this we will probably do some with just “unsprawling” and the logo with a QR code, and some with a tagline and cool illustration of some sort.

Reply with ideas!!

Yea we definitely need to think about our CTA direction.

Corbin says that the Discord is a more “immediate dopamine boost” - people can come in and instantly start chatting in a low-stakes environment.

I think it would be good form to describe volunteer positions in some degree of detail on the Library. Somewhat of an open RFP. I’m sure there’s some plugin for this where you could fill out some kind of interest form within the platform.

Idk… vibes…

Anyway in terms of branding ideas, I have had an idea floating around for a while that I haven’t sat down and done something about yet, but if anyone would like to play around with it be my guest.

Crappy MS Paint version of my branding concept:


Character red background and white strokes.

Anyone interested in playing around with stuff like this shoot me a DM on here, I can give you access to our branding repo. (A better way to do this WIP)

I’m by no means a graphic designer. That being said, I may have cooked up a quick design idea for a poster:

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I went for a city of calgary colour scheme and used the vivaldi website qr code feature. Just wanted to design something before I went to sleep 'cause why not.

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haha I like the idea of stealing the City of Calgary design language. I’ve been thinking about doing the same with road signs.

I’ve changed the name of the topic and moved it to Initiatives because I think we can use this as a space for storing little bits of marketing babble as they come to us.

I think about language and messaging a lot in my free time (autism) so I’m just gonna start sketching.

Keyword Babble

Unsprawling is NOT a destructive act! We can’t go back in time to remove the neighbourhoods we’ve already built. We can only improve them, connect them, and make them more sustainable.

The same is true with our platforms. On private chatrooms every new ‘organization’ is extra infrastructure that needs to be maintained. It’s another unsustainable low-density development.

In these messy, mingly environments, every new idea is automatically connected into the network. Each new perspective serves only to strengthen and expand it.

I think y’all had said something like “we need rowhouse brains” or whatever LOL — but it’s true! What we’re doing here is applying the tenets of good urbanism to virtual community-building.

We’re creating a platform that builds incrementally, that affords people the freedom to make adaptations. Creating places where a majority of the difficult work has been done for you already so you can focus on what you really love to do. Places where you can bump into a variety of different strokes and become more well-rounded.

I think this is an idea seed we have to package into our messaging. The ways we organize our virtual communities right now are simply unsustainable. It makes us private, separated, territorial.

I wanna keep going with this “Connect, Collaborate, Communicate” messaging.

Words I like to describe our vision for Calgary: Inclusive, Sustainable, Safe, and Productive.

Passionate Calgarians should be more informed, engaged, and activated.

Urban form & urban fabric are go-tos — Alex had always said “Calgary’s built form and the ways we move around it” which I really like.

Embrace a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives, toward activism that is more engaging, effective, and well-rounded.

Just jotted up yet another Mission Statement as if we don’t have like 5 of those already.

Unsprawling is a collective of advocates, artists, and community-builders who are changing the way Calgarians engage with urban activism. We are dedicated to creating platforms where those passionate about improving our city have more opportunities to connect, collaborate, and communicate.

I loooove coming back to the word “generous” again and again. To describe this urge to create things that are beneficial for other people. Sharing your knowledge and really working hard to communicate it as best as you can is the most generous act humans are capable of.

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“Politics that’s critical instead of cynical.” Is a sweet tagline. Idk if I would put it at the tippity top, but it’s definitely a big part of this movement for me.

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Definitely catchy. Let’s just keep writing down taglines and ideals, we can figure out what to do with them later.

I’ve maybe got the start of something: “Building constructive conversation”

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“Get in — We’re building a better Calgary together — unsprawling wordmark

With scrapbooky good vibes, transit, trees & parks, cyclists, the skyline.
@whatchy would probably have a good photo backlog for everything

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May have forgot to add my Pinterest board here. Pure inspo, no rules: https://pin.it/3XSEcmW2y

I made a few possible graphics as well that I think were going to be edited and adjusted.

One roadblock was not having access to our actual fonts thru canva (re: brand-guidelines) and just personally being limited in my design experience + platforms I’m familiar with.

The scrapbook-esque font wasn’t exactly the vibe though - trying to stay away from “ransom note energy” as someone mentioned before; being mindful about associations (the paint splatter doesn’t help in this case).

I kind of like the maximalism and chaos here though. Draws attention for sure.

Probably more of a bold experiment than our ideal direction though.

(QR codes are just templates at the moment)

I did some revisions on this one but didn’t quite take it all the way, I like this a lot though, almost there.

I’ll make a post about fonts. There are some good free alternatives to our brand fonts that I’m happy with folks using.

Making our brand fonts public would probably violate TOS on the licenses we bought to use them lmao, but I’ll link ppl to the repo in that post.

UPDATE: