A communication plan is only as good as the situations it anticipates. Most plans cover the emergency and forget the ninety-nine moments before it — the welcome, the crowding, the weather turning, the last train. CrowdCows organises crowd communication into ten categories, from pre-event through to dispersal. This page sets out all ten, and the design reasoning behind each, so you can check your own coverage against it.
You do not need our library to use this list. If it prompts you to write three messages you had not thought of, it has done its job.
The ten categories
Each category has its own visual language — typeface, colour, border behaviour, tone. That is deliberate, and the reasoning is set out below the table.
| Code | Category | What it does | Typeface | Border |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PRE | Pre-event | Informs stakeholders in the days and hours beforehand: volunteers, neighbours, suppliers, crew. Start times, programme, where to raise a complaint. | Event house style | 1× per second |
| IN | Inflow / welcome | Welcomes visitors as a group, using social identity. Informal and credible. This phase builds the acceptance that every later message depends on. | Event house style | none |
| AW | Awareness | Informally draws attention to house rules, behaviour and surroundings. Three tonal variants per message. | Event house style | none |
| WAY | Wayfinding | Directional signage in the visual language of national road signage — blue, white lettering, rounded corners. Recognisable and trusted. | Frutiger | 1× per second |
| W | Warning | For areas becoming busy or reaching capacity. Deliberately breaks with the house style: attention first, directive language, pictograms for non-native speakers. | Frutiger | 3× per second |
| WEA | Weather | Forecasts that affect the event. Warn early, always pair with an action. | Frutiger | 1× per second |
| INC | Incident | For emergencies. Speed beats styling. Always followed by action advice. | Frutiger | 3× per second |
| PT | Public transport | Trains, metro and buses, used to smooth dispersal. In the transport operator’s own house style. | Operator house style | 1× per second |
| AA | Action advice | Always follows a notice or a warning. Priming and nudging toward the desired behaviour. | Frutiger | 1× per second |
| OUT | Dispersal | Keeping people calm on the way out. Clarity and reassurance about the journey home. Often paired with PT. | Frutiger | 1× per second |
A typical festival runs through them in sequence: PRE, IN, AW, WAY, W, WEA, INC, AA, OUT.
Two rules that catch most plans out
1. A message without an action is usually pointless
“This area is busy” tells someone something is wrong and leaves them to work out what to do about it — in a crowd, under time pressure, often in a second language. That is why every warning, weather or incident message in our library is paired with an action advice message: not just the square is filling up but head for the north exit.
It is also the point the statutory guidance makes about Martyn’s Law. Para. 7.48 asks the responsible person to consider what information should be communicated, and says it “should be specific to the actions required to follow the relevant procedure” (Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025: statutory guidance).
2. Emergency content must not look like everything else
Repetition costs attention. If your incident message uses the same typeface, colour and rhythm as the running order, people have already learned to look past it. That is why warning and incident content in our library breaks with the event’s house style entirely, and why the border flashes three times a second instead of once.
Para. 7.49 makes the related point for larger and more complex sites: the instructions for an evacuation “should be different to the instructions communicated for a lockdown procedure”. Different procedure, different message — and, we would add, different design.
Why each category looks different
The library is built on ten years of field research at large events. Six principles drive the design choices above.
- The unconscious brain decides first. Most decisions in a crowd are made fast and without deliberation. The library uses thirteen behavioural triggers — recognisability, freedom, social identity, scarcity among them — to steer behaviour without coercion.
- Three tonal styles. Awareness messages come in three variants based on Eric Berne’s ego states: Parent (instructive, avoid), Adult (empathetic, preferred), Child (emotional, humorous). The same message lands differently on a family audience than on a late-night crowd.
- Avoid content blindness. Emergency content needs a visual language of its own, or attention decays with repetition.
- Sharp vision is narrow; movement is not. Only a few degrees of the visual field are sharp, but movement in the periphery triggers alertness. Hence subtle animation throughout, and pictograms before text — faster under stress, and language-independent.
- Notice plus action. As above: the pairing is the point.
- In an emergency, speed beats styling. Priority order: content on screen, then precise wording, then animation, then design. The first step has to be possible in seconds.
Check your own coverage
Take your current plan and go down the ten categories. For each one, ask three questions:
- Do we have a message for this at all?
- Does it say what people should do, not only what is happening?
- Is it ready now — written, designed, on the channel — or would someone have to make it during the incident?
Most plans score well on WAY and OUT, patchily on AW and WEA, and have nothing prepared for INC beyond a phone tree. That third question is usually where it bites: not whether the plan exists, but whether the content exists.
That is the same question para. 7.48 puts to you when it asks how you will embed channels, processes and roles “prior to needing to use them” — by documenting procedures, briefing staff and testing that the communication procedure works.
Where our library fits
Our platform holds over 500 ready-made items across these ten categories, in the event’s own house style, with the design language and behavioural reasoning built in. You tell it about your event, location or incident and it assembles the set — screens, audio, social, WhatsApp, public address, handouts.
Nothing about that is required by law. Martyn’s Law asks for procedures, not products, and the responsible person’s legal duty cannot be delegated to a supplier (para. 6.1). What the library does is remove the reason most plans stay thin: writing 500 messages, in three tones, in four languages, in a coherent design system, is a job nobody has time for in the month before an event.
Read more about what the communication procedure requires, or about why the Act does not require you to buy anything.
Frequently asked questions
What scenarios should a crowd communication plan cover?
At minimum: pre-event information for stakeholders, welcome and inflow, awareness of house rules and surroundings, wayfinding, warnings for busy areas, weather, incidents, action advice following every notice, public transport information, and dispersal. CrowdCows organises these into ten categories, each with its own visual language.
Why does emergency content need a different design?
Because attention decays with repetition. If incident messaging looks like the running order, audiences have already learned to skip it. Warning and incident content therefore breaks with the event house style and uses a faster flashing border — three times per second rather than once.
Why pair every warning with action advice?
A notice without a next step leaves people to work out their own response under time pressure. The Martyn’s Law statutory guidance makes the same point at para. 7.48: information should be specific to the actions required to follow the relevant procedure.
What are the three tonal variants?
Based on Eric Berne’s ego states: Parent (instructive), Adult (empathetic) and Child (emotional or humorous). Every awareness message exists in all three so the tone can be matched to the audience and the moment.
Does Martyn’s Law require a content library?
No. The Act requires public protection procedures, including a communication procedure under section 5(3)(d). It does not require any product, equipment or service — para. 7.25 and para. 6.7 are explicit on this. A library makes a good procedure easier to build and to keep current; it does not replace one.
Last reviewed 29 July 2026. Statutory guidance references are to the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 statutory guidance (Home Office, published 15 April 2026, updated 18 May 2026). This page explains published government guidance and our own method; it is not legal advice, and only the SIA determines compliance.
