Design QUEST: Bringing Experience to Life in a Luxury Travel Booklet

Design QUEST: Bringing Experience to Life in a Luxury Travel Booklet

Amy Willis is the in-house graphic designer for Texas-based Ker & Downey, a leading travel design company dedicated to crafting individually inspired global adventures. Every day she sets out to create visual experiences for the luxury tour company’s bi-annual travel booklet, QUEST, that are so compelling even the most diehard armchair travelers consider packing a bag.

Two hands holding a stack of custom travel booklets with Quest and an elephant scene on the cover.

Perfect Bound Binding

Taking A Whole New Direction

“Originally,” Amy explained, “Ker & Downey offered its customers an editorial style travel magazine called BESPOKE.” Like many traditional newsstand leisure mags, its glossy pages were filled with the usual interviews, travel stories and fashion and accessory spreads but had very little news about K&D or the trips they offered. So the decision was made to change direction, to give it a new name, a new look and a new reason for being.

A travelog booklet laying open to ocean imagery and content with a hand pointing to a paragraph on the right.

Two hands holding open a travel booklet printed with a perfect binding.

Full color on matte stock

The Editorial Journey

Like anything, transforming the travelog was a process. And one a premium online printer like Smartpress could help with. “We started by slimming it down – going from publishing four times a year to twice, narrowing our circulation to 1,000 from 5,000, making it more portable by downsizing from 8.5″ x 11″ to 8″ x 10” to give it a book-like feel, trading the glossy stock for matte and focusing on trips rather than fluff,” Amy said.

Once those things were done, the real work started on the travel book. According to Amy, the new mix of editorial, coming from a multitude of global partners, not only demanded a critical eye but a deft hand. “For me, the challenge was, and always is, how to fit it all together and make it look and feel cohesive,” she said.

 

It’s a challenge that Smartpress’ online printing services are up for. With custom booklet printing options like perfect bound and saddle stitched bindings, plus coated and uncoated stocks and UV coatings, there’s no online printing project Smartpress can’t handle.

A woman holding a travel booklet open in front of them with an image of a woman in an ancient building in Jordan.

She’s Got the Whole World in Her Hands

For nearly six years as Ker & Downey graphic designer, Amy has been laying out spreads that beckon travelers to step inside the frame and globe-trot from one page to the next.

 

“I’m lucky,” she said, “our team is small – me, three writers and our editor and we’re used to working together. We touch base every week, even when we’re five to six months out from the final proof, making sure the narrative and visual stories we’re developing answer the question I always ask myself, does it make me say, ‘I’ve got to go there?'”

Two hands holding open a travel booklet to information about and images of Asia.

Photography is a mix of stock and custom imagery

A travel booklet laying open to a forest and mountain landscape and The New Adventure Frontier.

Packed with Inspiration

“When I first started working on  QUEST my boss told me not to think of it as a travel brochure but as the Ker & Downey travel experience in print. It’s advice I haven’t forgotten,” Amy said. “From that day on, I made it my goal to design pieces that inspired people to travel, to discover the unforgettable.”

 

 

Hint: Ready to create your own travel booklet? Get more design inspo:

Print Details

Perfect Bound Book

100# Coated Matte White Cover, 80# Text Coated Matte White Pages, Flat Matte U/V Coating, 8 x 10 Portrait Format

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