Designing for Good: Turning a Community Food Drive into a Print-to-Digital Solution

When the Douglas Elliman Huntington Sales Office partnered with Long Island Cares for their annual Thanksgiving food drive, the goal was simple: make it easy for our community to contribute — and make sure no family went hungry for the holidays.

The Sales Manager from the Huntington office asked me to design a print ad for Stroll Huntington Bay that would promote the initiative and clearly outline what donors should bring on each collection day. The challenge: balancing the warmth of the message with the strict space constraints of a print layout.

To make participation effortless, I built a four-color ad that highlighted the campaign’s mission and included a QR code linking to a printable shopping list. The list — hosted through Adobe InDesign Publish Online — was converted into a single-color black file to ensure sharpness and compatibility with a wide range of printers.

This hybrid solution bridged print and digital, allowing anyone who scanned the ad to download a clean, ready-to-print checklist for their home, office, or classroom. Even those with limited printer settings or aging equipment could produce a legible, full-page version thanks to the auto-scaling properties I built into the design.

The result? A campaign that worked across audiences and devices, turning a small ad into a shareable, reusable tool for community giving. The sales manager and her staff loved it — her team said it was “perfect.” The office has already discussed reusing it next year and expanding it into social media and email outreach to reach even more families.

It’s a reminder that strategic design isn’t just about making things beautiful — it’s about removing friction from doing good.

Production Notes (for Designers)

• Publication: Stroll Huntington Bay — four-color web press monthly magazine

• Color strategy: Ad was CMYK; printable list designed as 100% black (K only) for maximum clarity and printer compatibility

• Accessibility: Document dimensions were optimized so home/office printers could auto-enlarge to full page without cropping — useful for contributors with limited vision or unfamiliar printer settings

• Platform: QR code linked to a Publish Online InDesign document hosted by Adobe for cross-device viewing

• Outcome: Office intends to reuse the asset next year and expand it for social media and email campaigns targeting agent distribution and community awareness

Hope you enjoyed this breakdown of print-to-design solutions. Have a design challenge that you need troubleshoot? Contact me today.