Background of Chaplaincy at Reading
The Chaplaincy is base in the center of University of Reading and they are the ones who offer support to students and also the staff in whatever their religious belief.

Their aim

• be a reflective, praying, God-centred faith community, respectful of and enriched by our distinct traditions
• resource a space in which students and staff are accepted, nutured, and can find confidence, healing and spiritual growth
• be a Christian witness affirming all that is good, promoting justice and peace, and respect and care for God’s Creation
• facilitate dialogue between people of all faiths and viewpoints in an environment of trust

Restated Brief
The task for this project was to create a create poster that advertised about Café Theologique which is a series of talks that are held in a town centre bar and also a e-newsletter that could circulate through emails amongst their team and people who are interested in those talks. They have requested the poster to be a simple one that allows them to do the editing on their own whenever the talks change every term so it will be done as a template and also the use of Mailchimp for the e-newsletter.

Research and initial ideas
Since they have requested for a template for the poster where they can edit easily without having to use different software, I have decided to use Microsoft Word that is a software that the client has. I find that Microsoft Word will be en easier choice for them as compared to Acrobat as I have tried it myself and I feel its much more complicated for them to understand how it works. They might not have the software as well.

The client had also mentioned and requested to have something related to café and science or café and theology. It could also have a spiritual context of God. The client had given me a few ideas that he wanted like for example an imagery with a perspective but at the same time giving off a high impact that could attract people to the talk or lectures. With that in mind, I went on researching on how I could combine café and science or theology together. A few keywords came to mind like coffee, molecules, chemistry and bible. With these few keywords, various research and experimentation, I came up with a few ideas that revolve around café and science or theology.

Work in Progress
Spoke to David, my supervisor for this task and he said to try something more spiritual and biblical to show impact and different perspective it. I was not very good with Photoshop so I went around searching for tutorials on how I could do digital imaging that could make images looked like there were various perspective and exposure to it. With many trial and errors and exploration of the software and images, I manage to come out with a few ideas that showed different perspective and are quite impactful.

After receiving feedback from the client regarding those ideas above, he said it was rather to strong and he feels that some people may feel a little intimidated by the images. That was something he was not looking for. He was going towards something that is softer and friendlier because it was like a coffee and talk session. He showed me a few samples that he found that he liked and requested to work around it. With his further explanations of what he actually wanted, I manage to fully understand better of it. The client also provided an image that he wanted to implement in the poster. With that, I manage to move on to something softer and more engaging poster where I feel that it is not intimidating and also would attract non-believers of Christ.

Final design
After getting to the final design, typography was taken into consideration as there was quite a bit of text on the poster. A level of hierarchy was needed, as there were many different information. The font had to be taken into consideration as well as I may have the font and the client did not have it. So we had discussion regarding the fonts and had settled down with Arial as he didn’t had the font that I used. This was because he didn’t had Microsoft Word in the computer that is in the office.

Difficulty with the client
I didn’t have many meetings with the client as we communicated through emails. The only difficulty that I have met was that the communication was pretty slow when it comes to email. I had to send out various reminders regarding the design of poster and typography wise. There were times that the client doesn’t reply to emails and I had no idea how to move forward with the poster. The email to the client was then forwarded to another person who also works in the Chaplaincy when it was talking about the e-newsletter. There was no notice or anything about a change in whoever is in charge as well. This made me quite confuse as I thought I was sending emails to the wrong person.

In regards to the e-newsletter, they have decided to work on it themselves after setting up an account for them on Mailchimp. This was because there were privacy issues that they were concern about and they are having second thoughts about using Mailchimp. I suggested using PDF but I could understand the reason to the idea of doing up an e-newsletter. But the main concern was they did not want to disclose any personal details on the website because of the security.

Reflection
Overall, the project went well though it took longer than expected due to slow communication. Besides, I have managed to learn a new way using of Photoshop that I wasn’t good at. I have also learnt how to go about meeting the client without a supervisor, which had taught me how to deal with the client independently. The client, himself, is satisfied with the poster that I did. But one thing that I regret not able to do was the e-newsletter. Though I am unsure about how HTML works, I really wanted to try it out and see how it works because I believe that it would be of good use and also a bonus in the near future when I start working.