Background

This is a project to design for the Reading Assembly. The Tate Exchange includes responses, workshops, talks and events, where you can join the conversation and collaborate in art making. This year the theme of the exchange will be ‘Movement’. The Reading Assembly is going to hosts some activities during the period 1 March to 3 March. The Reading Assembly was looking to create a printed programme for these events and activities.

The design aims to promote the activities held by the Reading Assembly and inform the audience on what activities are happening on the day. These programmes will be distributed and placed around the Blavatnik building during the three days events are happening. The Reading Assembly asked for the visual design of the leaflet to be consistent with that from last year in order to build a more consistent branding across time.

Design process

After some sketches, I created a few initial designs that have similar structures and visual design to the leaflet made for last year’s events but with a different way of organising information. The designs’ physical structure is a tri-folded A4 sheet. One side of the leaflet consists of essential information about the event and a brief description while the other side shows the detailed programme of the three-day event. After further consideration regarding the user scenario, I think the design was not suitable since the folded format may hinder the chance of visitors’ engagement as not much content was shown on the cover.

We decided to look into a more direct physical structure that would allow visitors to have a brief idea of the program through a first glance. The information is organised the same way where there is a side for promotional purposes with essential information and a brief description and another side for the detailed program. However, since the programme will not be folded, visitors can clearly see ‘Movement’, ‘Reading Assembly’ and, ‘Tate Exchange’.

The Reading Assembly is happy with the overall visual design of the leaflet. However, it was noted that the hierarchy of information was not quite right. They reflected that ‘Movement’ was taking too much attention and that it should associate more closely with ‘Reading Assembly’. My supervisor also flagged the importance of designing according to the genre of information so visitors can know what kind of information they can get from looking at the visual design.

With these feedbacks, I reconsidered the hierarchy and genre of the information and created a new design with a more functional purpose that communicates information effectively without unneeded elements that may distract or overpower the aim of the document.

 

 

In this final version of the design, the programme across three days are displayed in the form of a time table at the centre of the leaflet. This allows visitors to understand that this document shows the timetable of a particular event at first glance. Further information on the organisers and sponsor are also clearly displayed at the top and bottom of the leaflet. The final layout of the design only takes up one side of the sheet, which helped reduced cost and a higher quantity than expected can be produced with the original budget.

Overall, the design changed a lot based on the focus of the leaflet. In the earlier versions of the design, more emphasis was put to the promotional purpose of the leaflet. It aimed to be more eye-catching to attract visitors’ attention. However, after receiving feedback from the client and my supervisor, the focus of the design shifted to being more functional and transparent. The final design is definitely a more suitable and effective solution to the aim of this leaflet. Here are some images taken from the event that shows the design in the real scenario.

Reflection

Reflecting on the experience, there is definitely some room for improvement. The design of the leaflet shifted from trying to attract visitor’s information to being more functional. I believe that with more time, I could have done a better job at getting a balance between the two. More exploration should be done to find a solution that can create a higher visual impact to attract visitor’s attention without sacrificing the effectiveness and clarity or information communication.

This is a very valuable experience for me as a design student. Not only did I gain a chance of practising design thinking and skills. I also learnt a lot in terms of client facing and communication, print and production and project management. It is exciting to see the design go into the print and production stage. I learnt about how to prepare files for print and things to keep in mind during the process. Through this real job, I had a better understanding of the role of a designer. There is so much more to the process than the actual design. For example, copy editing played an essential role as the design developed into later stages. Under the guidance of my supervisor and the permission of my client, we made changes to some text in order to create a better information structure and flow.

Project management and client communication are some of the biggest challenges I faced in this job. This job was completed in one week from our first meeting to print. During this week, most of the communication with the client was through e-mails since she was not available to meet in person. We frequently communicated in the week so that the design can progress at a quicker pace to meet the deadline we set. This situation proofed that communication and planning is the key to making sure a job can run smoothly and effectively.

In the end, we are delighted to see that the leaflet worked effectively as a lot of visitors came into the venue with the leaflet in hand. The design created a positive impact, bringing more visitors to the event venue to participate in the activities.

Background

I will be working with two different teams in this project. This project is to help the clients create a professional image for their formal investigation. The investigation is about exploring multiple benefit delivery within the Emm Brook river corridor for an environmental agency and Loddon Valley residents. Through their research, they aim to discover the advantages of the ecosystem services around the Emm Brook river corridor. The clients will be creating a report and formal presentation for their findings.

Brief

In order to achieve the desired image of their team, different deliverables were set for each team. After our discussion, we concluded that a logo and presentation template will be created for both teams. Team C would also benefit from having a report template as they want to achieve a higher consistency in branding. The aim of the designs varies according to the deliverable. Since they are student teams, it was decided that the designs will be tailored to the content of their project instead of the team themselves. The logos aim to create a sense of identity and to give a brief idea of the project. The presentation and report templates aim to show consistency between their project’s output, presenting a more professional image. They should also support the content of the project outputs while adding a decorative touch. The clients have also asked to include the logo in the presentation and report to further enforce the project identity.
The project outputs should look like a series visually instead of separated items.

Design Process

In order to create the right image for each team, we discussed what feeling they would want to give the environmental agency through this investigation. After some discussion with the help of mood boards, We came to the conclusion that Team C would like to create a professional image through a minimalistic approach while Team P would like to create a more sleek and modern image.

logo

Since the logo will be representing the investigation as a whole, it should reflect the theme and results of their investigation. For Team C, the logo should reflect the close relationship between the Emm Brook river corridor and the local community. I created some sketches with houses and water motions to symbolise the two. After the first sketches, I then continued to explore different ways to capture the form of the river. To match the desire minimal visual style, we decided that the waved lines version would be the most suitable.

 

For Team P, their project focuses more on the natural ecosystem near the Emm Brook river corridor and how they have underlying effects on each other. The client also requested that the logo include a shield to represent the protection element they covered in their investigation. Since the main focus of the logo remains to be the relationship between the river and the ecosystem, I incorporated the shield element more subtly through using it as the shape of the logo. To highlight the natural elements, the design was created in a style that imitates woodcut. A richer colour palette is used to create a more sleek and professional image.

Powerpoint template

The design of the presentation template should be visually consistent with the logo. Since a large number of images and data will be presented, the layout options should also be suitable for presenting large use of pictures while the report template should be suitable for both pictures and
statistics. Therefore, I created a table style for consistent data presentation. Layout options with images as the main focus are also designed to aid better presentation.

 

For Team C, the design kept the animalistic approach of the logo using the same colour palette as the logo. Grey colour is also used to help hold information on the page visually while the two shades of blue from the logo acts as the accent colour.
Here are some layout options created for Team C:

For Team P, the design used the pattern of the river from the logo as the header to maintain a higher consistency throughout the different outputs. The layout option for the slides is the same as that of Team C as their presentations consist of a similar genre of information.

Report template

A report template is created only for Team C. Since there will be complex data and a high level of information hierarchy, I created a template with minimal decorations to ensure the content of the report is clearly delivered. The visual design remains consistent through using the same colour palette and fonts from the logo and the presentation slides.

Reflection

Looking back on the experience with both teams, many stages of the process was different for each team even though the project content is highly similar. There was a concern before I start the design process that Ithe designs I create for the teams will be very similar since the main content is the same. However, after meeting with both clients and understanding more about their needs and the content of their work, I learnt that the design and the development process depends on the needs of the clients. Therefore, the design solution and the results will never be the same.

This real job also gave me valuable experience in project and time management. Since there are two clients on the same project, it is essential to keep all records, communication, and the design process organised. There was one time where I made a mistake and sent a file from another team to the client. I understand that it is a severe mistake in a real workplace. I am delighted that this experience trained me to organise all related materials in a better system which became very helpful in the following years of my studies.

Apart from the points mentioned above, I believe that if there is one take away from this experience, it would be the importance of having a friendly and professional relationship with the client. Being able to understand the client’s situation and vision really helps to better the communication with the designer, which brings positive results in terms of the design process.