Brochure/Poster/Hat

Lots of stuff can be two different things: wave/particle, producer/director, dessert topping/floor wax. The list goes on and on. Today, though, we’re going to be one-upping that and making something that’s three different things. I know, right? Here’s how it all came together…

Last night, Amy posted this tweet:

Followed by this one:

To which Phil replied:

And I said:

There may have been some talk of brooches and pterodactyls as well. It was that sort of discussion.

And I started to think about this. A poster’s about so big, and you’ve got the entire back of it as free space, so what if you fold it like this, or like that… This kept me awake half the night. Well, either that or the quart of Diet Coke I had with dinner. One or the other.

This morning I scribbled down this, carving out the back of a poster into brochure and hat areas:

And here’s a layout guide based on it:

I printed that out at 1/4 size and tried folding it to make sure I’d gotten the layout right:



The hat brim is folded up and then down, accordion-style to avoid having the poster-side of the sheet visible.

Then I put together a mockup brochure for a Skepticamp event and tried that at 1/4 size. I didn’t bother mocking up the poster. It basically covers the entire other side of the sheet, so what’s there to mock up, right?



Note that bits of pages 3 and 4 of the brochure show up as the back brim. Probably not a big deal but I suppose you could always design those pages to incorporate a dual-purpose design.


And finally I printed off a full-size one using 4 sheets taped together. For a 17″x22″ poster, the brochure comes out to about 3.7″x8.5″. The hat’s about size 7 3/8.