Event promotion checklist.

An event is a timeline, not a single post

One announcement rarely carries an event on its own. People often see an event several times before they commit: once when it is announced, again in a reminder, and once more just before doors open. The cadence below is a common, adaptable pattern — not a formula — and each phase has a format that suits it. Shrink the whole timeline for a short-notice event; the order of the steps stays the same.

These dimensions match common Instagram and TikTok placements and sit inside Facebook’s: Meta’s ads guide now recommends 1440×1800 for 4:5 Facebook feed images, and 1080×1350 clears the stated minimums of 600 px wide and 750 px tall but is no longer the recommended figure (source, 2026-10-02); for Facebook Stories Meta recommends 9:16 (source, 2026-10-02), and the 1080×1920 row carries Instagram’s Stories figure. Specs are current as of October 2026 — verify against each platform’s own documentation before a critical print run or launch.

The table’s figures are read from the specs registry: the square (source, 2026-10-02), the Stories size (source, 2026-10-02), TikTok’s cover (source, 2026-10-02). The other figure that moved is Instagram’s: its organic feed now keeps portraits up to 3:4 (1080×1440) (source, 2026-10-02); 4:5 at 1080×1350 sits inside that range, so the checklist keeps it.

Announce early, with every detail on the asset

The announcement graphic should answer every question a would-be attendee has without a single tap: what the event is, the date, the start time, the venue, and the price (including free — say so explicitly). A striking graphic that omits the date forces people to hunt for it, and most will not. A 4:5portrait feed post gives you one of the tallest canvases feeds allow — Instagram’s organic feed now accepts up to 3:4 (1080×1440), while 4:5 (1080×1350) remains inside its supported range (source, 2026-10-02) — which is room for all of those details at a readable size.

Repeat the details in the caption too. Captions are searchable and copyable; pixels are not. Someone forwarding your event to a friend will paste the caption, not retype your artwork.

Give people a way to save the date

The moment of announcement is when interest peaks, so make saving the date a one-tap action. Offer a calendar link in two forms: an ICS file in the iCalendar format, and a Google Calendar URL for people who live in the browser. If you build your event in the Studio, an event campaign carries date, time, and venue and generates both calendar links inside the promo package, alongside the graphics and captions. A saved calendar entry is a reminder you did not have to post.

Three facts, one date line, two calendar files

The Studio stores an event as three facts — an instant, a time zone and a venue — and derives every visible form from them, so the date cannot drift between assets. A fictional night market entered as 2026-11-13T19:00 in America/New_York becomes the instant 2026-11-14T00:00:00.000Z, formatted in the event’s own zone as Fri, Nov 13 · 7:00 PM (New York). That string is handed to the portrait, square, story, youtube formats together and opens the WhatsApp caption.

The ICS file is iCalendar — iCalendar data format per RFC 5545 (source, 2026-10-02); for the fictional event its VEVENT carries:

• DTSTART:20261114T000000Z
• DTEND:20261114T020000Z
• SUMMARY:Harbour Lights Night Market
• LOCATION:Pier 9\, Harbour Road
• URL:https://example.com/harbour-lights

The times are UTC instants (the trailing Z), so no zone is left ambiguous; the end is 2hours after the start because the Studio collects only a start time and the engine supplies a fixed duration; and the venue’s comma is escaped as Pier 9\, Harbour Road so it arrives intact. The Google Calendar link, at calendar.google.com, carries the same two instants. The QR engine’s separate calendar payload is covered in the payload guide.

The steady middle: reminders that stay fresh

Between announcement and event day, post reminders at a steady rhythm rather than in bursts. Keep the visual identity constant and rotate the angle instead:

• Introduce a speaker, performer, or menu item per post.
• Show the venue or a behind-the-scenes moment of the setup.
• Restate the practical details — date, time, price — on every single asset, even the fifth reminder. New people arrive at every phase.
• Mark milestones honestly: a program announcement or a ticket-tier closing is a reason to post; manufactured urgency is not.

Square 1080×1080posts work well here — they are quick to produce in series and sit comfortably next to your 4:5 announcement.

The final push: stories, with the safe zone in mind

In the last days, shift weight to the 9:16story format — it is full-screen, ephemeral, and suited to a countdown. On a 1080×1920story, the top and bottom bands can be covered by platform interface elements — Meta’s guidance is to “consider leaving roughly 14% (250 pixels) of the top and bottom of the image free from text and logos.” (source, 2026-10-02); approximate, and it varies by platform and device — so keep the event name, time, and any QR code inside the middle band. A day-of story with doors-open time and a last-minute ticket link gives fence-sitters one final, complete prompt.

Fitting a long title into the square and the story

The Studio’s text engine steps the font size down one pixel at a time from the preferred size until the wrapped lines fit the box; only at the minimum size does it truncate, and then with a visible ellipsis, never a silent clip. (A fixed stand-in replaces browser text measurement here so the figures are reproducible.)

Fictional headline “Harbour Lights Night Market: Food, Music and Late Trading”, the design’s default title-size setting of 72 taken directly as the preferred size in pixels, and a fictional minimum of 34 px: a fictional 510×230 square title box settles at 52 px over 4 lines; the taller 510×420 story box takes it at 72 px over 5 lines. An overlong 161-character headline in the square box reaches the 34 px floor and ends with Lantern Parade and Firewor…, so the truncation is visible before you post. The Studio derives the minimum title size from the canvas width and scales the preferred size from the canvas width, its aspect and the design’s title-size setting, so these figures illustrate the engine’s stepping rule, not the Studio’s exact output. Write the short title first and put the rest in the caption.

Print: one QR code, one destination

Flyers and posters still pull people in — if the jump from paper to phone is effortless. Put a QR code on every printed piece and point it at one destination: your event page or ticket link, the same URL your posts use. Print the code at least 2×2 cm for close-range scanning, and for a poster read from farther away, use the rule of thumb that reliable scan distance is about 10× the printed code's width. Both are rules of thumb: no standards body states either figure, so they keep their original wording and date (August 2026). Keep the 4-module quiet zone clear on every side, and print dark modules on a light background — inverted codes scan unreliably. Export from the QR tool as SVG for print, since SVG scales to any size without quality loss. For placement and styling decisions, see QR codes on promos.

Print-size arithmetic for the flyer code

The quiet zone is not optional in the QR engine: the standard asks for four modules on every side (source, 2026-10-02) and the renderer always draws 4. Encoding the fictional short link https://example.com/hl produces a version 2 symbol, 25 modules per side, 33 with the quiet zone. PNG export offers 512, 1024, 2048 pixel sizes; the readout is pixels divided by 300 dots per inch:

• 512 px → 1.71 in × 1.71 in (43.3 mm × 43.3 mm) at 300 DPI; module 1.31 mm.
• 1024 px → 3.41 in × 3.41 in (86.7 mm × 86.7 mm) at 300 DPI; module 2.63 mm.
• 2048 px → 6.83 in × 6.83 in (173.4 mm × 173.4 mm) at 300 DPI; module 5.25 mm.

Compare the readout with the size floor above. With a logo inside the code the engine forces error correction to level H (≈30% recoverable) instead of its default M (≈15%), as stated in the reference encoder the engine vendors (source, 2026-10-02), and caps the covered area; the decode-margin guide shows the measured limit.

Contrast is computed, not eyeballed

Both engines compute contrast with the WCAG 2.x relative-luminance ratio against the 4.5:1 AA minimum for text (source, 2026-10-02). The Studio’s default ink #14201c on its default content background #fbfcfa measures 16.28:1 and passes. A fictional accent orange #f28c28 as QR foreground on white measures 2.45:1 and the QR engine warns: “Low contrast (2.45:1). Scanners may fail below 4.5:1 — darken the foreground or lighten the background.” Light paper on the dark backdrop #14201c measures 16.28:1, yet the engine still objects to the inverted code.

In the Studio the same arithmetic is an advisory, not a veto: pick #f28c28 for the title and the advisory reports 2.4:1 against the content background — below the 4.5:1 minimum, so it is flagged — while the colour survives normalisation as #f28c28. Picked colours are honoured exactly; the QR tool warns at 4.5:1 for the same reason. Promo design basics explains the doctrine.

A short link for spoken mentions

Radio spots, podcast mentions, stage announcements, and word of mouth all strip away anything clickable. Prepare a short, speakable URL — one that survives being said aloud once and typed from memory. Avoid hyphens, digits that sound like words, and anything that needs spelling out. Say it slowly, say it twice, and make sure it lands on the same destination as your QR code and posts.

One identity across every asset

From the first feed post to the sign taped to the venue door, every asset should read as the same event at a glance: same colors, same type choices, same treatment of the title. Recognition compounds — the fourth time someone sees your promo, familiarity is doing part of the work. Generating square, portrait, and story versions from a single campaign in the Studio keeps them consistent by construction. For the design fundamentals behind that identity, start with promo design basics, and to see everything an export contains, read the promo package anatomy guide.

What the package records about the event

The manifest is the record you return to when a reminder needs re-exporting. For the fictional event it carries these fields: generatedBy, generatedAt, title, destination, routingDestination, campaignType, category, price, shortLink, startsAt, timezone, venue, sourceImage, captionPlatforms, design, designSchemaVersion, files. The event facts are stored in canonical form — 2026-11-14T00:00:00.000Z as the instant, America/New_Yorkas the zone, “Pier 9, Harbour Road” as the venue — while the graphics carry the formatted line above. A blank optional field is recorded as null rather than an empty string, and the manifest is stamped with design schema version 3so a later reader knows its shape. The README, in the engine’s own words:

• - graphics/*-square-1080x1080.png — Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp feeds.
• - *-event.ics — attach or share this calendar event so viewers can save the date.

The methodology sets out every engine on this page; social image sizes covers the placements behind the table, and verified barcodes the retail barcode on a ticket.

Questions

Should the QR code on the flyer hold the calendar event or a link?

A link: point every printed code at the event URL your posts use and let the page or the package offer the calendar files. The QR engine's own note on calendar payloads: "Calendar QR codes are less reliable than other types: native camera app support is inconsistent, and some phones show the raw text instead of an add-to-calendar prompt. Test on the devices your audience uses."

Can I print the PNG export, or do I need the SVG?

Both print. The readout gives each preset's size at 300 DPI — 512 px is 43.3 mm, 1024 px is 86.7 mm, 2048 px is 173.4 mm. The SVG carries a nominal size — 264 px per side for the fictional code at the renderer's default 8 px module, quiet zone included — but it is vector, so it rescales to any poster without resampling.

Why does the Studio warn about my colours instead of fixing them?

Because the colours are yours. The Studio validates a colour for format only and reports its ratio against the 4.5:1 minimum as an advisory; it never rewrites a picked colour. The one exception is the thumbnail overlay title, protected at render time because it draws over photographs the design cannot predict.

What happens if my event title is too long for the story?

The text engine steps the font size down from the preferred size until the wrapped lines fit; only at the minimum size does it truncate, ending the last line with a visible ellipsis so you see it before you post. The Studio derives the minimum from the canvas width and scales the preferred size from the canvas width, its aspect and the design's title-size setting.

Where do the pixel sizes on this page come from?

From a single specs registry on this site, described on the methodology page at /methodology, where each platform figure carries its official page and check date; this page's figures were last checked in October 2026. The two QR print rules of thumb had no official page and keep their August 2026 wording and date.