A Fortune Teller for Tech Crunch
Why just give people leaflets when you could do something more fun? Tech North was bringing 10 innovative Northern companies to Tech Crunch Berlin, as well as having their own stand. They wanted something that people attending the conference pack easily in their luggage to take to the event, but that would be fun and start conversations when they got there.
Since I’m totally obsessed with Japan, and fun, I realised that making paper fun is as simple as folding it. Creating origami fortune tellers would engage people at the stand, start conversations and still be light enough to carry in hand luggage.
Having a fortune teller allowed people working at the stand to start conversations easily and on a positive note - asking people at the conference if they’d like to play a game rather than immediately bombing them with a sales pitch.
Through playing the game, attendees would learn the name of the organisation, the name of a town in the North of England and in-depth fact about the tech eco-system.
If you want to make one, the design is very simple. Split a square piece of paper into 4x4 grid. You can use illustrators normal shape distribution options to make your lines evenly spread.
To get the fortune teller design, you also need to join your outer corners with diagonal lines to make a big X. Then join the middle of each side together to make a diamond in the middle.
Put all of your guides on one layer and lock it so you can follow them without disturbing them.
Your four outer squares will be visible on the outside, the blue triangles here are the first unfold and middle diamond is the final “fortune.” When adding text to the middle, make sure that anything you want to sit together sits in one diamond. You can see how the text needs to sit in the final design. If you align the text incorrectly, you won’t be able to read your full fact.
We produced these in a light, glossy card stock for the final design, and the printing company was able to score the paper for us so that people could fold them quickly, easily and precisely at the event stand.
