Cover Image of Spruce Meadows 2026 Prize List Document (total of 60 pages)
What is an Equestrian Prize List?
According to FEI (Fédération Equestre Internationale) and Equestrian Canada, an equestrian prize list is the official document and governing booklet for a horse show, detailing all classes offered, entry fees, schedule, judges, rules, and stabling information.
The final 60-page PDF document you see below is the prize list I helped produce on behalf of Spruce Meadows for all of their sanctioned competitions, which includes the ‘Continental’, the ‘National’, the ‘Pan American’, and the ‘North American’, as well as the ‘Masters’.
It was a real privilege to work on this project and I greatly thank the collaborative and problem solving efforts of my colleagues at Spruce Meadows for helping make this project a successful one!
Sections Highlights
Tentative Schedule for the 'Continental'
Tentative Schedule for the 'National' presented by Rolex
Tentative Schedule for the 'Pan American' presented by Rolex
Tentative Schedule for the 'North American' presented by Rolex
Tentative Schedule for the 'Masters'
Section Cover for the 'Continental'
Section Cover for the 'National' presented by Rolex
Section Cover for the 'Pan American' presented by Rolex
Section Cover for the 'North American' presented by Rolex
Section Cover for the 'Masters'
Design Case Study: Explaining the Process
Why did this document needed to created?
It functions as a contract between exhibitors and Spruce Meadows' show jumping tournament office, often requiring approval from national and international federations, like Equestrian Canada and FEI. It is also a part of some contractual obligations for some of Spruce Meadows' partners.
This is the official document that gets sent to the governing bodies to ensure the competitions listed within get approved for sanctioning purposes at all sport governing body levels.
The Design Process
As this was the 51st iteration of the prize list, there were working files from previous years that already existed, which helped give me a head start on the framework of this document.
However, despite the initial framework that was provided to me, there were many elements that had to be reworked due to new external content from Spruce Meadows' Tournament Manager, the sponsorships, and other initiative representatives within Spruce Meadows.
This was a document that demanded the feedback and review of many parties involved (and yes, many sheets of paper copies were scarified in the process). At the end of the day, my job was to centralize all the commentary received from all parties into this document.
The Tools
Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps, specifically InDesign, were the tools that helped with solving the layout and “quick-swap” problems this project presented.
My role was not to be the decision maker on all the content, but to act as a catalyst to help and inform others to make the decisions they needed to make and the way I set up the document through the use of Parent Pages, Linked Assets that were prepared in Photoshop and Illustrator, and Paragraph/Character Styles expedited the turnaround process with colleagues’ feedback immensely.
Could I have used just one software tool to do the same thing? Sure, but the amount of time that was saved through this process helped save lots of time during the multiple revisions I had come my way from colleagues.
The Outcome
Because of this streamlined, yet flexible, approach, the project overall was very successful and delivered to the respective parties on time.
My aim was to be very transparent with my colleagues about status updates and present every issue I encountered that was outside of my control to decide on with a solution.
It was more about focusing on solving the problems with the content, which I think people appreciated.
