Blog

Rick Steves sell sheet

Rick Steves—THE name in travel guides. He’s now writing a newspaper column and Tribune Media Services is syndicating him to newspapers across the country. I designed the sell sheet to help the salespeople to convince newspaper editors to buy his column.

Since Rick Steves already has such a great brand going with his guidebooks, I picked up the basic look from his jacket covers—yellow Futura bold condensed on a field of royal blue. But I expanded it a bit more, make it more fun, and added more yellow for some happy pop. And the design elements also add more fun, with Rick’s head poking out of a circle with rays bursting out. A fun eyebrow to highlight that this is a weekly column. And a bunch of photoshop work adding soft shadows to pull it together into a cohesive look.

Even the back of the sheet has some fun treatment for the call to action. Usually, the call to action just ends up being put into a rectangle box. But here I pulled the curved the eyebrow from the front and used it on the back to add some appeal. And I also dropped another photo of Rick into the call. He’s such a TV personality, I wanted to use his image as much as possible to really drive home that it’s his personality that editors are going to get into their newspapers.

Client: Tribune Media Services: News & Features department

Fonts: Futura

Front:

Back:

Happening right now on Spudart: Press a leaf in an envelope with the date and story written on it until 2026-10-31

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

8 Comments
oldest
newest most voted
Tom Saaristo
20 years ago

Very cool that TMS landed Rick Steves! I used to watch his show all the time!

Tom Saaristo
20 years ago

Oh, and I love your design [but did I need to say that ;^)

unlikelymoose
19 years ago

Rick Steves rulz! There’s only one show that I Tivo and it’s Rick Steves Europe. His shows give a great taste of European destinations. I love museums and such and Rick always gives great insight into the cultural history of the cities he’s in. And I especially enjoy that he’s an Art nut. oh. nice clean polished design as usually, matt. I didn’t realize that he had a weekly newspaper column. The trib should pick that up.

costa rica directory
19 years ago

It already picked it up I think. Nice design

Erin
Erin
17 years ago

This is just silly.

buy eee 1008
17 years ago

Very well done! I love the Rick Steves head popping out of the page. He is all about ego so you better put him front and center. He’s great though. Helped me a lot in my travels.

netbooks for sale
17 years ago

I love rick steves lisp. He’s manly, but in a feminine way. He’s great. Quite a little empire he’s created I must say.

cool boy
cool boy
16 years ago

a europe brosure in my opinion i dont like it