Student-led guides to university is a collaboration of guides with Reading Student Union (RSU) containing personalised advice and guidance to underrepresented and marginalised new students. This is so all students regardless of background or circumstance can feel supported, represented, and empowered during welcome week. Each guide is written by students and designed by students. This ensures the provided insights, diverse viewpoints, and understanding of campus life is more accessible to new students as they feel like they have been understood, creating a sense of community and connection.

Brief

We were tasked with creating two guides: Commuter Students’ Guide to University and First-Generation Guide to University. The goal was to create a coherent visual design across the two deliverables that also had the ability to expand for future editions. The guides need to provide an engaging way to relay key tips and contact information to students. We were provided with the copy, images, QR code and RSU branding but our clients gave us to have lots of freedom with the design of the booklets.

Deliverables 

• 2 print-ready, a5 multi-page guides for commuter and first-generation students
• 2 interactive PDF, a5 multi-page guides for commuter and first-generation students

Branding

In terms of aligning our design with current branding, we had a relative amount of freedom as the clients wanted to push the idea that the guide was made by students, and therefore steering the design away from the University’s branding helped us achieve this. We were directed away from using the University branding, colours, and recognisable climate stripes. However, we did have to include the Reading Student Union logo.

Audience

We identified our target audience to be new undergraduate and postgraduate students. This meant we had an advantage when designing as we were once the intended audience. We kept in mind that these guides were specifically aimed towards commuting and first-generation students, however we decided that it would be appropriate to design for all types of students so everyone could consume it easily. Understanding our audience was important in portraying an appropriate visual route so we carried out a range of document research aimed at students.

Research and ideation

When approaching this project, we decided it would be beneficial to research existing university guides. Although there were no existing ones that explicitly pushed the idea of being created by students, this process was still useful to recognise the norms of student guides, as well as highlighting areas of improvement so we could compete in the current market successfully. The main things we found out that we wanted to take forward were that coloured backgrounds are a useful tool in visually dividing sections, images can help to make the guide engaging, and icons are helpful in giving a quick overview of what is to come. We also researched varying forms of editorial design so we could understand how different layouts work for portraying different types of content.

Creative direction

After understanding the content of the guides, the target audience and investigating some existing guides, we began creating mood boards. We discussed ideas and showed the mood boards to our clients to make sure we were heading in the right direction whilst also ensuring the clients were on board with our visual approach. From this, we learnt they were not keen on the corporate style and wanted a more fun and approachable feel with lots of bright colours. The images we were provided with by the clients gave a corporate feel which we needed to steer away from. Therefore, we decided upon an illustration route to ensure our guide would stand out and was known that it was made by students, demonstrated in the fun illustration style.

Design development

After understanding the visual route, we needed to take, we created some initial sketches for the inside pages and front covers. Our clients gave us the feedback that they wanted a more fun and approachable design.

We then moved on to develop more sketches which took a more fun and colourful approach. The ideas that were liked the most by our clients and supervisor were concept two but with the line drawing style of concept one. These designs showcase university in a fun and inviting light making new students feel welcomed and accepted by the different communities.

These are the further developed sketches for both the commuter and first-generation guides. We developed them further by looking into different illustration styles and deciding which ones worked best for these guides. One comment from our clients was that the green could span across the whole page so that the speech bubbles weren’t cut in half. This meant we changed our half colour approach throughout. An element that we struggled with was coming up with a way to make the university services page more exciting and less text heavy. A solution to this was to include icons as well as relevant illustrations to the different points talked about.

Colour and typography

We experimented with typography looking at clear typefaces that would work well with the style of guides. We decided on using the typeface that the university use, Effra. This typeface works as it is very legible, versatile, and most importantly is accessible with clear letterforms and balanced spacing, making it easy for all students to read.

Picking the colour pallet was difficult as we wanted to have a different colour for each of the sections. We decided that a bright colour pallet worked best and found 6 colours that both contrasted and complimented each other.

Content page

We did lots of experiments in order to come up with an interesting and easy way to use the contents page. We ended up using the colours from each of the sections to make navigating the document easier. This content page works well as it gives the reader an insight of what is to come whilst sticking to the theme of our guides.

Our tips

This section’s main goal was to clearly differentiate the five tips. Using big numbers and highlighting the topics of each tip was a successful way in doing this. Changing the colour of the text halfway through proved to be distracting and broke up the flow of reading so we removed the colour from behind the writing. We decided the short introduction provided by the clients would work better as an additional tip so we changed this, which once again enhanced the reading experience as it gave the spread a better flow. A general change we applied to the whole guide was making the section titles sentence case so they were less harsh. Another change that was made throughout was the illustration style. This developed into a more interesting style that had varying line weights and the highlights were less prominent.

Frequently asked questions

For this section we wanted to separate each question with speech bubbles. We at first kept it simple by having the question and answer inside the speech bubble. Then we were asked to include some images that related to each question. However, after showing this to our client and supervisor we decided that pictures were not appropriate in this guide as we were limited to the student union’s image bank which weren’t relevant to these guides and looked too much like stock images. To ensure we had some visual interest for each question, we continued down the illustration route, creating a relevant illustration for each question. This broke the section up nicely, gives context to each question and tied in with the theme of illustrations throughout the rest of the guide.

University services

This section brought some challenges as it included a lot of important copy which did not allow for experimental design as it needed to be quickly and easily understood by the reader. Some tools we used as a way of bringing visual interest to the pages were colour, illustrations, icons and typographic hierarchy. We created icons to represent “website”, “email” and “phone” as this emphasises the information rather than the descriptive words. Once we moved away from the half colour spreads, we drew this landscape illustration to break up the text so it did not look so heavy. We knew this orientation of illustration would work because the guides were being bound by staples so it could open out flat.

Glossary

Once again, this section is very text heavy so we had to ensure we created a design that would make it easy to read and highlight that there is loads of help available, avoiding creating an overwhelming scenario for the new students. We started off by using a rule to divide each definition, but this was deemed as too harsh. We then adapted our design to reflect a dictionary which was effective as it helped with navigation of the section, but it created too much white space and made the glossary too long. To develop it further, we stripped it back to just typography but used space and typographic differentiation to create an interesting but accessible design.

Union

The union page was a page that was introduced later in the project. We created and illustration of a band playing at the student union as well as the outside of the union building. As each guide had different amounts of copy for this section, we adjusted to this by moving the band illustration down to allow for some more room.

Cover

Our approach to the covers was to reflect what could be seen on the inside, illustrations and coloured pages. We went through many iterations in order to find a suitable combination of elements that sat nicely together on the page, as well as act as a tool in attracting people to pick up and read the guide. We introduced this blue colour as it is bright, fresh and positive which is a nice message to put across to new students. The illustrations had to represent the overall theme of each guide, first-generation students being relatively difficult to sum up but we decided that an image of students together and supporting each other was the appropriate message to put across.

We experimented with the placement of the blue block with the illustration on top and were advised to ensure there was a white section on the cover where the text could sit as we have kept typography on white backgrounds as a general rule. There was a stage in the process of designing the covers where we proposed the tagline of ‘for students, by students’. We thought this would be a useful way of emphasising the fact that these new students will be getting first-hand advice from current students. Our clients and supervisor were very fond of this tagline and we were suggested to create a sticker motif. However, after experimentation this did not work with our design as apart from the illustrations, we do not have any rounded graphic elements within the guides. The last major change we made was changing the text from all caps to sentence case. This made a huge difference in how approachable the guide felt as before it could have been portrayed as harsh, especially as the title was seen in a heavy weight of the typeface.

The RSU was requested to be added to the covers much later on in the project. This further solidified our choice of where to have the blue section as generally, logos are found in the top right corner of documents.

As for the back covers, we chose to reflect the design from the front cover, just with illustrations that appeared as those you were looking at the ones used on the front covers from the back.

Interactive pdf

As part of our brief, we needed to make interactive pdfs for each guide that will be hosted on the university website. To adapt our design to this function, we made buttons for the top right corners taking you back to the content, enhancing navigation throughout the document. We also made sure that all the links were clickable making it easier for our users to get the help they need.

Our own reflection

Overall, this project has taught me many things, number one being how to interact and communicate with our clients on a weekly basis. We learnt to address design challenges creatively and find solutions that met our client’s objectives. To meet our deadlines, we needed to have good time management skills sticking to our schedules. After completing this project, I feel more confident working on real briefs and look forward to working on more. – Daisy

I have learnt and improved on lots of skills throughout this project which I will be able to take forward and build on in future projects. We learnt to collaborate effectively by identifying each other’s strengths ad using them to our advantage to efficiently create these guides. This job brought about my first experience dealing with clients, but it was a very positive one as we worked well with them due to frequent contact and honesty from both clients and designers. Another skill I have had the opportunity to improve is file management and how to present work in a professional manner to the clients. We did this by creating annotated documents of our work so when we couldn’t show them a printed prototype of the guides and verbally go through the reasonings behind design decisions, the clients could understand the justification and edits we made in order to give us relevant feedback. Additionally, regarding file management, we had a shared folder that contained everything we created and needed for the project which ensured for a coherent experience when designing collaboratively. It helped that us as designers were often communicating with one another as well. One thing we could have improved on was proofreading the copy. Although we were assured that this had been done, we ultimately should have read through it thoroughly ourselves to ensure no mistakes were made. – Jasmine

The feedback we received was positive from both our clients. “We quickly built a friendly working relationship with you that enabled us all to synergise well as a team. I was very satisfied with the level of communication and the quality of the product. You were always both highly professional. Jasmine, you impressed us with your client management skills and struck a diplomatic balance between incorporating our suggestions and pushing back on them where necessary – I appreciated that. Daisy, you impressed us with your illustration and design talent, lending a unique hand-drawn style that enhanced the aesthetic and appeal of the design.”- Matt

Background

The client Bethan Miskell does press flower artwork and wants to sell her artwork online. Bethan had not started the business and she wanted to set up a brand to promote her artwork and her message. As her business was in the beginning stage, she did not have ideas for a particular style yet, but she mentioned some preferences she would like us to follow on the design in our first meeting.

Restated brief

Bethan wanted to use her artwork to emphasise and celebrate the importance of plants or weeds that may be overlooked or not seen as typically ‘pretty’ but were increasingly considered to be ‘hero’ plants and essential for biodiversity. We needed to create a unique brand to convey Bethan’s intended message.

The three deliverables are a logo, a business card, and a ‘thank you for your purchasing’ card. The brand logo will be used across all platforms like Bethan’s website and social media. Also, it will be applied to the cards. Our client also mentioned she did not need a physical mock-up of the cards, so we only need to create them digitally.

The target audience for Bethan’s business is people who are interested in floral decoration and the preservation of nature. These people tend to be women around the age of 50 and above. The effectiveness of the deliverables was measured by receiving customer feedback from a set of questions, and by frequently reviewing the brief to ensure the items meet the client’s requirements.

Research and ideation

First, we explored different kinds of logo designs like monograms, wordmarks, symbols and lettermarks and explained to Bethan about their characteristics. Bethan did not like the lettermark. We thought wordmark could work best for introducing Bethan’s business as she wants to use her full name as the brand name. It is simple and recognisable to combine words with images.

We found that businesses usually have some logo variations so that they can fit on different platforms more flexibly. For example, logos with a longer width can be used on website banners. However, it is not suitable for an Instagram circle icon, so they need a more abstract one. We therefore decided to create a primary logo, a secondary logo, and one for social media.

We also did research based on the keywords that Bethan used to describe her business which were ‘biodiversity’, ‘botanical’, ‘organic’, and ‘wildlife’. She created a moodboard with mainly plants and a layout of logos she liked and wanted us to get inspiration from. Besides her moodboard, we studied other competitor websites and their social media which are related to botanic for inspiration like Jam Jar Edits, Pressed Floral, and Refined Studio.

Bethan especially mentioned that she liked the style of Heidi Clover’s logo, so we knew that she wanted simpler illustrations and typefaces. It helped us to develop some suitable initial sketches for her.

Design development

Logos

Bethan did not like the handwriting style or rounded and curvy fonts, but she wanted bolder spaced-out typography. Based on her requirements, we found a range of simple and neat san serifs for her to choose from for example, Josefin sans, Articulat CF, Serenity, and Quasimoda. We also experimented with different weights of the same fonts, but we could not make a decision before combining them with the illustration to see how they balance. I personally did not like Josefin with the sharp ascenders as it did not look friendly and Serenity because the bold soft strokes looked weird on Bethan’s business. We suggested she choose Quasimoda which looked fresh with a thinner width and a normal x-height.

For the illustration, at the beginning, we tried to combine illustrations of plants into Bethan’s name and showed them to her. Bethan liked fern more because she thought fern could represent the ‘hero’ plant. Therefore, we carried on designing different styles of ferns for the symbol. For example, the line illustration, without or with strokes and details, and the shape of leaves. Bethan and my team chose the thinner fern between her name for the primary logo because the other looked more decorative and heavier.

The secondary logo is based on the primary logo but just changed the layout to make it narrower and could be used on other suitable platforms. Our supervisor suggested we show three options to Bethan for both with and without filling. They were with or without dots surrounding the fern, the horizontal ferns between Bethan’s name, and the vertical fern next to her name. We all liked the filled option and the vertical fern placed next to Bethan’s name. It incorporates the primary logo better as both of the ferns are vertical. The fern with dots option was not suitable because it was too complex for Bethan’s style.

For the social one, we provided four plant options and two different layouts for Bethan to choose from. Because she chose the primary logo with the fern, we suggested using the same plant across all the logos to make them consistent and the brand identity could stand out more. She liked the idea of placing the plant in between the two letters to make the logo look balanced. In the end, we created the logo sets in both white and black so Bethan could use them according to her needs more easily.

Business card

The business card is 85mm in width and 55mm in height. For the front, we considered two concepts mainly. One was used illustration that was connected to the logo. Another one was to use Bethan’s artwork. We asked Bethan if we could borrow one of her artworks and scan it for the press flower elements. She liked the idea of including her artwork’s elements on the card as a mini version of her artwork. It can promote her business more effectively because people can immediately understand her style instead of spending more time to search her artwork.

We explored different layouts with the press flower elements placed partly on the bottom, in the centre or close to the edges. At the same time, we changed the black background that Bethan usually uses to some natural colours based on the keywords Bethan mentioned like, beige, brown, mint, teal, and dark blue. We found that dark blue worked the best because it balanced the style of Bethan’s original artwork with a formal business card style.

Our supervisor thought the idea which had a dark blue block in the middle with a press flower could be further developed. Rather than the one with flowers surrounding the block, she commented that keeping the format from Bethan’s artwork would be better. To make it look more interesting and livelier, our supervisor also suggested we extend the flower outside of the block.

We tried to use illustrations to decorate the card at the back, but we were given feedback from our supervisor that it was not consistent with the front design. So, we continued the press flower block. The icons that represent different contact methods look minimal, so it does not make Bethan’s artwork ‘overshadowed’. We used the ‘Lexend deca’ light typeface which is balanced with the icon’s weights and Bethan’s requirements on typefaces.

‘Thank you for your purchasing’ card

For the ‘Thank you for your purchasing card, we decided to continue a similar style and layout with the business card. It was the same size as Bethan’s business card. We kept the continuity by using the press flower from Bethan’s artwork instead of creating a new illustration. We showed a range of options to our supervisor for feedback.

In the beginning, we experimented with a block in the centre surrounded with flowers, it just looked like the business card with another format. Therefore, we did not keep the idea. To show the consistency of the two cards while making them distinguishable, we chose another geometric shape, a circle. We placed a similar group of press flowers from the business card into the circle, so they looked similar in style. We chose the typeface ‘Montserrat’ for the text from a range of San serifs because we liked the clean and elegant strokes. The size contrast of ‘Thank you’ with ‘for your purchase’ emphasised the sincerity.

For the final version, we wanted to show the consistency of the two cards while making them distinguishable with different geometric shapes. We placed a similar group of press flowers from the business card into the circle. We used the social logo for Bethan’s brand instead of the other two because the card is sent with the customer-purchased items. The customers must already know about Bethan’s brand so this logo is used like a sign so we did not want it to look too extra.

Reflection

We expected that the project would be completed in December, but our deadline was extended until January. Even though it was agreed by the client, I think we could manage the time better. We spent too much time exploring the logo design at the beginning which made us not have enough time for the cards by the end of the expected deadline. We can show more variations to the client at the same time so she can pick one that she liked earlier.

The thing I learnt from this project was to always ask for more details to ensure what you are making is what the client likes. The client may not have an idea of how they want the design to be presented sometimes because they are not professional designers, but they have their preferences and thoughts. We should not be afraid to contact the clients often to check if they have any updates or further requirements during the design process.

Also, this project improved my confidence in communication. I feared expressing my concepts and showing opposite thoughts to others, but I feel comfortable communicating with my teammate as we respect each other’s ideas, and the client is supportive of our work.

Introduction  

This real job involved creating weekly posts of the departments events and students’ projects throughout the year. This year we wanted to change the perception and aim of the Instagram, by broadening the design content for prospective, current and alumni students. Previously, the account has focused on events and design-based posts, however this year we wanted to boost engagement through trending posts, such as; Spotify and Barbie, as well as informative posts, such as; tutorial reels and Adobe shortcuts.  

Our goals 
The main goal we wanted to achieve when taking over the department’s Instagram was to create a broader design community. We felt it was important to broaden our online community, as it would help boost our engagement and further the creativity of account. Additionally, we also wanted to showcase the department to prospective students by creating a more engaging feed. To do this, we created a wider variety of content ranging from  informative posts and  current Instagram trends.  

Updating the account  

Rebrand
We decided that the Instagram would benefit from a small rebrand. This is because we felt this would help the feed look more consistent and part of one identity, as we had a varied number of design posts. We also changed the profile picture to the TGC logo, adapting it to each season or holiday e.g. Christmas, Halloween, Easter theme. This is because we felt this better represented the department than the previous profile picture of the yellow doors that no longer exist, and would be potentially confusing to prospective students.  

Profile picture
Within this rebrand we were able to improve our feed layout, as our feed looked very one dimensional due to only showed design-based posts and the occasional photos of the department. As a team, we wanted a more varied and personal feed and to achieve this, we began to post more ‘in class’ posts of student’s progress work and final deliverables, to help the account feel more connected to the people in the department. We also introduced posts that gave tips such as the Adobe shortcuts series as we wanted to create the sense of community, as well as posting digital mockups of final work. The improvement of these posts has helped increased our engagement.

Posting schedule 
One of our goals was to continue posting consistently and to post more varied content. To do this, we created a schedule each month on an excel spreadsheet which allocated a post to each team member. We found this strategy was successful as it helped us be organized and make sure that we weren’t posting similar types of content. One problem we faced with this strategy was that sometimes team members would forget to post their allocated content. A solution we found to this, was to schedule the posts earlier on Instagram so that the post would still go up in time.  

New content

To increase our post insights and better our follower engagement, we researched into current Instagram trends and related them to typography and graphic design. Examples of this include; creating a yearly ‘Spotify Wrapped post’, a ‘Barbie post’ and conducting interviews with our lecturers to find out ‘designers icks’. Out of these three posts, the post that was the most successful was Spotify Wrapped which earned over 130 likes, reached 1,351 accounts, 188 non-follower accounts and 3 comments.  

We also introduced more informational posts to our feed. This is because in our research we found that informational posts help followers feel like they are part of a community. We felt that these posts would be helpful for current students, designers and people who are interested in graphic design and typography.  

The informational posts we introduced are:

• Tutorial reels
  Tutorial reels were one of our posts with the highest level of engagement, as it reached over 1000 non-followers, with a total watch time of 5 hours and 18 minutes. These posts consisted of quick design demonstrations on  different Adobe software’s that can benefit our followers’ future projects. The tutorials were aimed at current student followers, and aspiring designers.  

• Adobe shortcuts
  This is a post that showcased some basic shortcuts for Adobe software’s. This post had a high level of engagement as it reached 89% of non-followers to our account and had many impressions, meaning it was accessed through home, profile and hashtags 2086 times. The reach is the number of accounts that have seen the post. These posts were aimed at current students as well as designers within the industry.  

Reading list 
The idea behind this post was to share what we felt were important design books that all designers should have a look at. This post also had a high level of engagement, with 198 account interactions through likes, saves and shares.  

Q&A stories
These posts on our story brought a sense of community as it allowed us to talk to people. Although these posts did not have the highest level of engagement, it was still rewarding to be able to talk to people and answer their questions about design, the department and our course. 

Engagement and following  

The most successful posts have been the reels we introduced, providing the audience with short, informative illustrator tutorials, with the ‘how to merge type and shapes in illustrator’ reaching nearly 2,000 accounts. This shows that reels were incredibly successful in boosting the Instagram accounts engagement, due to the wider accessibility Instagram gives to reels throughout the platform. This accessibility has enabled the Instagram account to reach 69% of non-followers, helping to boost the accounts audience reach. Further to this, since December 2023, the reels have boosted the interactions by 320%. Further to this, the following has grown by 70% over the last 3 months. 

Our thoughts  

Being part of the department’s Instagram team has enabled us to get experience with understanding what makes a post engaging. We learnt that reels were the most engaging type of posts for non-followers due to Instagrams pre-existing algorithm. Whereas, the most engaging post for the current followers were the regular posts. By creating a consistent balance between the two types of posts, we were able to boost the accounts interactions and engagement levels.

As well as this, we consistently posted and maintained a monthly posting schedule which allowed us to introduce new types of posts. We felt this was important as before we took over, the posts were mostly submission/process posts and we felt it was important to offer informational posts that would help designers and students. Including informational posts has helped create a more varied feed and increased engagement with our followers.  

What we learnt
This experience of running the department’s Instagram account has taught us how to effectively work together to run a design team, the importance of group collaborations on new design ideas and problem solving, and lastly it improved our time management skills as we created a posting schedule for when the account would gain the most follower interaction.  

Background

Taking over Baseline Shift for the 23/24 calendar, myself, Habibah, and Ben had new ideas from our experience on the previous year. As with the previous year, we wanted to provide a more diverse range of speakers – whether this be in the sense of design sector, backgrounds, race, gender etc… We also knew we wanted to make Baseline Shift feel more approachable and interactive for students: we noticed the way our own year group felt about Baseline Shift was not aligned with our goals: some students attended, but most did not interact with the sessions or speakers, which is what we felt the sessions are all about.

This year, our goals were to bring the students into an environment which was more laid back and encourage them to get involved. This meant:

• Making ourselves known as members of the team
• Interacting with students and talking about the weekly speakers
• Starting relaxed conversations with speakers
• Encouraging in-person sessions over online sessions

Having been on the team for a year, we were aware of distaste towards the branding for the project and is something we also wished to consider. Unfortunately, due to the team’s availability over the summer, this took a backseat and we were restricted with our time to completely rebrand. Instead, we adapted the previous branding to feel more simple. We wanted to involve the new team members in this process and took on creative director roles, assisting the new team in creating the branding.

We wanted the team to feel excited about our calendar in hopes to pass this enthusiasm onto the students. We invited speakers whose work we found inspiring ourselves (such as Jake Paul, Kieran Mistry, Katarina Duvnjak) as well as designers and professionals who we felt offered important messages. We wanted to do our best to create a calendar which aligned with the projects running. As a result, the Autumn term was heavily print related to align with the Part 3 magazine project, while Spring Term had a digital focus to work alongside various UX, UI and motion graphics projects. From our end of year feedback, students left the following comments about the selection of speakers and design sectors covered.

‘Hearing from less traditional speakers (motion graphics etc) was really useful as it’s something we don’t get much experience of in the course.’ – Part 3

‘Good variation, but would have been nice to have had more people from a print background’ – Part 1

‘There was an excellent range of speakers from several disciplines/career paths.’ – Part 1

Overall, it appears that students still enjoy hearing about print work. Despite our Autumn term calendar being nearly exclusively print speakers, it could have been beneficial to hear from a wider range within this sector – our calendar focussed largely on magazine work to support Part 3, but we could have incorporated poster design, exhibition design etc to have a more varied schedule. It does seem however, the introduction of other specialities was appreciated and raised new areas of interest for many.

We also noticed a vocal preference for in person sessions, which we did our best to encourage with our speakers. This naturally is not possible for everyone, and due to the rising costs of public transport it is very understandable for speakers to present online. Technical issues occurred in video presentations, which was not optimum, however for the most part speakers were able to present their sessions smoothly. Interactions between student and speaker were lower in these online sessions, which was a challenge to change. People were far more inclined to network with guests when face to face or in private. Despite the challenges of online sessions the team has been pleased to hear of students contacting speakers after sessions. For these reasons, the online sessions have still been of great value in assisting networking within the Department even if we do not see this first hand.

Team roles

To run the calendar smoothly we maintained weekly blogs, promotional posts, and emails. To manage this, we divided the roles with myself as team and promotional leader, Ben leading blog posts and Habibah leading the hosting. Considering their specific areas of interest and preferences, we agreed with Tilly to assistant host sessions and Amber to assist promotion. We also ensured to rotate the roles across all team members. This way, the new team members could learn how they would run the roles themselves in the future and avoid boredom among the team.

As team organiser, I have been responsible for ensuring the team was comfortable, happy, and meeting their weekly responsibilities. In attempt to automate some of this, we created a schedule sheet denoting the team weekly roles and the expected criteria/deadlines. Despite this, we struggled with members of the team not engaging with their roles and responsibilities. This affected the team and meant others were carrying more of the weight than others, but also meant that the distant team members would not benefit from the connections the rest of us were making.

I approached this sensitively through politely reminding and correcting as needed. As time progressed, deadlines were consistently not met on time or to a suitable standard. To maintain a positive relationship across the group, I ended up correcting or taking on extra roles to keep the schedule running properly. In hindsight, the co-leaders of Baseline Shift and I could have been more assertive to the situation. We tried handing more autonomy of the roles over to the new members of the team, but this still resulted in last minute cancellations, late, and poorly executed deliverables.

Working with this team member and managing the issues which came as a result was difficult: being sensitive to all members of the team and distributing roles equally resulted in hurried outputs, which was noticed by students. A Part 1 student said, ‘There was slight issue some weeks with a lack of clarification if the session was in person or on Blackboard.’, which came as a result of last-minute information because of these inconsistencies. We noticed lower attendance in weeks where this was an issue, and it highlighted the importance of consistent and reliable information.

Weekly feedback and highlights

Through contacting speakers and attending the sessions, I feel connected with individuals and design companies as well as being more prepared for the realities with the industry. Many speakers this year highlighted the importance of ai, which we had not heard much about before. The industry insight on ai from speakers including Aanand Tank and Sam Asplen was refreshingly positive – these two speakers both explained that ai is a tool and not a threat so long as we learn to adapt and develop parallel to it.

Greg Bunbury and Geri Reid provided great sessions about design approaches and professional relationships. The focus on approach instead of content was beneficial across all interests and raised important questions about professional practice especially coming from people working in the field currently and adapting to changes.

Reflections

This role has given me confidence in networking first and foremost, while also showing me how to manage a team under time restrictions. Working with the team as a whole has been a positive experience, especially since this is the largest and most active team project I have been a part of. Reflecting on the two years, I have found that I often extend beyond my assigned responsibilities to ensure the job is completed in a timely and good standard. Although this made the sessions run smoothly from the outside perspective, it meant that a lot of the weight landed on me when other members did not follow through on their roles. Learning to allow other people to make mistakes has been a tricky adjustment, but has allowed others to see the weight of their responsibility and consequences of their actions. We could see the attendance to sessions was lower when promotional roles were late or incomplete, and students were far more encouraged to interact with speakers when the hosting was confident and enthusiastic.

My main takings from the time on the team has been the power of networking and communicating with other designers. Particularly, our approach this year has encouraged relationships between different years more so than in past years. Our roles on the team have made us known to students and professionals, which we are hopeful will benefit us in our careers and professional relationships to come.