About

Baseline Shift is a student led weekly talk, held every Wednesday, between 11am to 1pm during autumn and spring term. Available to attend by both undergraduates and masters’ students of the Typography and Graphic Communication department as well as members of staff, the sessions host former alumni of the University and well-established designers in the industry. These talks are in place to not only inspire but provide insight into career and networking opportunities to prepare students for the future. With James Lloyd as the client and supervisor, the student team are required to plan, promote, blog and host the sessions, through contacting speakers, creating timetables, and publishing digital and print material.

2022/2023

I was recruited to join the team at the end of my first year on the Graphic Communication course, for the beginning of the next academic term. As a confident speaker looking to develop communication and branding skills, this felt like the perfect job for me. Initially attending meetings in the summer break before hand with then team leaders Adam Powell and Sara Noguiera Perez, we discussed other suitable candidates to form a larger team. These positions were then filled with Mia Bryan and Ben Brown, two other Part Twos on the course. With a complete group of five, the team leaders gave us a debrief on expectations and tasks in place to carry out the job, and then allocated roles based on our existing skills and preferences. I was the designated lead host alongside Sara, introducing and contacting speakers, presenting the sessions whether it be online or in person. Ben and Adam coordinated the blogs, writing and editing after each session with Mia on socials, printing posters and publishing announcements across Facebook, Instagram and Slack. With the decision to slowly move over all roles to the three of us in Part Two and Adam and Sara taking a step back, it was important to have a few weeks each to complete another role to experience everything to run a team of our own the following year.

With the new team, and autumn term fast approaching, we still had a lot to do, including deciding on speakers, contacting them and fitting into a calendar, in order to begin the promotion. We each researched into designers in different fields of design and bought the names forward, using a carefully designed template to email them providing potential dates to talk. There were a few complications with doing so, such as availability, however after a few rearrangements and shifting, we were able to accommodate everyone, with the audience’s interest at heart, separating topics with different ones as well as having a mixture of both online and in-person talks. Based on experience, attending the talks as a student, I valued the in-person talks more as they felt more engaging than sitting behind a screen. We then tried to implement this where possible, which initially proved quite difficult returning from a COVID affected year, where majority of sessions were online. However, we aimed to fix this through even splits of online and in-person, so not too many sessions of the same location were bundled together.

We collectively decided the previous branding could be improved and updated, in terms of colour, type and logo. Due to different locations over the holiday period and busy schedules, it was difficult to arrange times to meet in order to progress. We solved this by individually designing elements. I chose the typography, whilst Mia focussed on colour and Ben logo. We each contributed to these to select the best options. Coming back to campus, the different parts could be pieced together to publish a term calendar as well as weekly graphics.

With the initial session being year tutor briefing, the first experience I had hosting was alongside Sara, introducing Malcolm Garrett. Following this, we each took turns hosting the likes of James Hunter, Rob Waller, Nick Sexton, David Pearson as well as previous alumni and staff for the Time Management and Feedback Jam sessions. Not being experienced in talking in front of such a large audience before, this was a learning curve. Understanding new word patterns and how to introduce speakers in an engaging way to prompt questions later on from the audience. With some people missing sessions or wanting to revisit, we saw the value that recording could be, so began doing so, later available to our students and staff.

Doing the social media, using a formatted template, made the process of designing weekly graphics a lot easier. Changing names, dates and titles as well as short description to match the session and the publishing these both around the departments as well as across social media; Slack, Facebook and Instagram. Whilst Mia was predominantly in charge of this, I spent the majority of Spring term controlling the socials as we swapped roles.

Completing blog posts meant having to note take during the sessions to write up an informational summary with pictures, quotes and a run-down of what the speaker said.

All blogs for Baseline Shift can be accessed at https://typography.network/baseline-shift/

Though the plan was to hand over roles gradually, it felt quite rapid, and Mia, Ben and I were left with the majority of tasks to complete ourselves and had to then adapt quickly to the changes. From this, we learnt a lot of things that we could take away as well as develop from to lead a team of our own.

2023/2024

The Real Job was again advertised by our supervisor to recruit two new people to join the team as the three of us had become team leaders. These spots were filled with Tilly Dobson and Amber Jones. Again, because this was during summer, we had to arrange calls accordingly to everyone’s schedules, with some working, travelling or busy to not only introduce Mia, Ben and I but also begin planning for the fast-approaching Autumn term. This often meant we third years felt responsible so resulted in us redesigning the calendar ourselves involving talks from Toshi Omagari, Steve Watson and Jake Paul as well as many others. We initially did want to create branding changes, however, ultimately ran out of time. To compensate, we made minor edits to elevate the existing brand, in terms of colour as well as pattern. We chose a more refined palette as well as discarding the use of texture. We found this made information more legible. Establishing both Tilly and Ambers preferences, we could distribute roles much to everyone’s liking, this led to myself and Tilly hosting, Mia on socials and Ben and Amber on blogs as well as having alternating weeks for everyone.

Taking on board advice and feedback, we found first years were not using Facebook like the second and third years were, therefore would miss out on notifications and reminders about the sessions. We then requested to become moderators on Blackboard where we could send out emails to the whole course. This taught us new ways of communicating, however as a new addition, we did find ourselves forgetting to do this in the first few weeks. Becoming moderators, also reduced the amount of technical difficulties we would having during online sessions as we could fix these juxtaposed to the lack of control we had in our first year, where James had to be present.

From our experience in the first year, we noticed how the team were not well known through the department. This is something we wanted to change. We wanted to feel approachable by everyone, to understand new inputs and insights to not only improve but connect and network on a deeper level. We did this by introducing ourselves and the new team members instantly whilst also remaining good relationships with both students and staff as well as being vocal about sessions. This resulted in many keen first years as well as masters giving their feedback and notifying their interest to join the team for the next year, with staff thanking us for the work we do repetitively.

Kickstarting the term, we showed the new recruits how to complete tasks straight away, including the recording of sessions and upload of blogs and slides as well as contacting, as this is something we felt we did not learn enough about during our time as second years. We took the lead during the first three sessions, where Tilly and Amber could assist, to letting them do their own sessions the following weeks, this enabled them to build confidence and understand how things work from an early stage, preparing them for the future.

However, not everything ran as smoothly as mentioned. Quickly, after term started, we noticed, not all members were attending nor were blog posts being published on time and the social media and posters were delayed in publication. We as well as our supervisor saw that from the rotation of roles between the second and third years were not consistent and the high-quality deliverables produced were lacking.

After becoming aware that team members had other commitments, we organised a spreadsheet where we could write roles to accommodate the days where people are available. This meant for myself and Mia taking on extra roles where necessary, which became more frequent than anticipated. I often had to make socials edits and send reminders to those on duty that week, often feeling like I was being pushy or bossy. However, understanding how team members work, we overcame this by creating schedules for publications of posts, posters and blogs for everyone to understand their responsibilities. Though this was created, it was not stuck to as we continued to see the drop in blog uploads. Another factor affecting this, was failing to remind our supervisor when blogs were complete, therefore leading to a backlog in publishing.

We found that during our first year on the job, people would get confused for in person sessions and where they would be hosted. Especially for first years, the campus is fairly confusing, so many students would get lost or arrive in the wrong place. This was resolved by having the same room for all in person sessions in the Agriculture building, a short walk from our department. When in person, the only files which could be presented were PDF’s in order to be recorded successfully, however where this had not been communicated with the speaker, they came with Keynote, where they would display motion graphics, This unfortunately led to no recordings being produced for the sessions and people missing out. However, this encouraged more people to come and promoted this way where we saw attendance dropping towards the end, due to submissions. These became compulsory for first years, with second and third years only having to attend a proportion maintaining a steady amount of numbers throughout the year.

Other technical issues we had when hosting the sessions include, team members forgetting to remind the speaker of their talk resulting in them to join late, where they couldn’t test if their material works whilst screen sharing, or having internet issues. This resulted in myself having to briefly explain the Blackboard tools to the speaker as well as take over hosting to ensure the rest of the session runs smoothly. Where James was not present to moderate, like he was in previous years, we felt responsible for the mistakes and told the speakers to join 15 minutes prior to the start time to test everything out. This taught us how to overcome issues and have accountability. One instance where a team member forgot to contact the speakers and send reminders resulted in only having one alumnus for our Alumni Talks session instead of between three to four. Though sending out frequent reminders to the team, to contact people as we all had different roles, this fell through. However, through previous networking, we were able to find someone short notice to fill in a space, so the session would not be too short further highlighting the power of connections within the industry.

Another issue we had was the miscommunication between both staff and students regarding strikes. Unaware of the strikes due to take place, the Baseline Shift sessions were still expected to happen, until a few days before, where we had to then explain the cancellations and let down many that were excited to attend. This taught us how to communicate in an empathetic way whilst also remaining professional. Similarly, we had unexpected change of plans where we had to reschedule sessions, due the speakers’ circumstances. Though under pressure, this taught us a lot about time management, trying to book these sessions back into the calendar, in hopes to accommodate everyone.

Conclusion

Being a team leader for Baseline Shift has been both one of the most rewarding yet challenging experiences. From opportunities such as networking, to organising a team, communication was the most essential tool. Understanding how to communicate, tone of voice and delivery of message was crucial to ensure the efficiency of the team as well as building relationships with fellow students and staff. By making ourselves known, we became friendly faces throughout the department, easily approachable by many. By sending out a feedback link at the end of every session, we could gather insight for the speakers as well as how we did as a team, however by sending out another survey, more team based, we could understand how we were as leaders, and how to improve team organisational skills as a tool for the future.

Overall, we received a 4.5 out of 5 for the diversity of speakers and topics, with follow up responses being how it was valuable to hear from people in different design careers compared to previous years. This is something we wanted to do as even we as viewers felt, we were mainly seeing people from the same field, often getting repetitive. We wanted to have more people of colour as well as more females, in which we successfully did. This feeds on to respondent’s comments of how these sessions have impacted them, with students mainly saying about networking opportunities and the power of Linked In. We were glad to see this, as not only do we feel connected to speakers through organising but everyone else also has points of contacts within the industry. The additional comments in the survey thanked us with one comment from a Part One sticking out in particular for me,

‘Most of the team have made themselves visible to the rest of the students, which is hugely important as they feel approachable (important for something like Baseline Shift which involves everyone). Everyone on the team came across professional and passionate when introducing speakers, and Habibah went a step further to reach out personally asking for feedback, and just having general extended conversation about Baseline Shift, helping to spread the enthusiasm. Well done to everyone involved!’

It feels very rewarding knowing that we have made an impact in the design course and our organisation is inspiring for others to join the team.

Upon reflection, I find myself to enjoy competing tasks immediately and gain satisfaction when things are according to deadlines. However, working in a group with a range of demographics, I have learned to become mindful of this and how to work around other peoples commitments to ensure fairness and an efficient team. When leading a team in the future, I aim to be more sensitive to create a cooperative group encouraging discussions and to foster collaboration.

Having hosted over 40 sessions, taking the lead on the last 22, we have learned how to organise, plan, promote and lead a small team and understand how to rise from issues and struggles we faced along the way. This job has been extremely beneficial in adopting key skills and values needed for the world of design and management such as;

• Time management
• Leadership
• Communication
• Networking
• Public speaking
• Social media management
• Blog writing
• Contacting professionals
• Event planning
• Technical skills
• Flexibility

I now have new skills and contacts in the design industry which wouldn’t have been possible without completing this. It was a pleasure being a leader for this team and wish the next group the best of luck!

*There is no Trello Board for this Real Job as advised by our supervisor

Background

The Canvas Magazine is a student led University arts publication. The client was looking to build on the existing website to enhance reading experience, add new functionality, support more types of content, and give a fresh visual appearance. The result is a new ‘issue’ of the magazine. The third issue follows a similar layout as the previous to create a consistent feel to the magazine however applying small changes such as typefaces and colour will allow the issue to stand out as its own creation too.

The Audience

The magazine is the accumulation of art, poetry and written pieces of work from English and Art students at the University. The audience therefore is all students and staff across all departments at the University. The website is accessed online meaning people from outside the University can also read it, such as family and friends of the people who have submitted work.

Goals

• To add a new third issue of the magazine with new content.
• To improve functionality of the website using UX/UI design.
• To improve/change the layout from previous issues to support new types of content such as video and image files.

Deliverables

• A new third issue uploaded to the website.
• The issues will contain a table of contents and approx. 30 pieces of creative writing/poems aswell as new image and video files.

Development

My first task of the project was to produce an Instagram post that would be used to promote the new issue of the magazine and to encourage the submission of new art works (shown in Figure 2). I used the main image from the title page of the website as I felt this was the most recognisable for the website. This task was relatively easy and I had to just make small adjustments, mainly to the typography, such as left aligning text and using a typeface that was consistent with the typeface used on the website.

When I started this project, I had very basic coding and html knowledge. This meant I have to spend some time watching tutorials and doing extra HTML practice to build on what I already knew. By doing so I was able to better build the new issue of the website and improve UX and UI aspects. One of the first things I decided to change from the previous issue was the balance of the columns throughout the issue. In the previous issues there was an even 50/50 split between the navigational column and that of the text column containing all the poetry (Figure 3). I felt as though this didn’t give accurate prominence to the pieces of art and poetry which is what the user is there to read. So I managed to code the layout so it was rather a 30/70 divide with more space given to the content of the issue (Figure 4).

To also improve the user experience I changed the format of the navigational menu. The previous issues had all pieces of both poetry and prose in one long list for the user to click through. I instead wanted the user to be able to differentiate between the two categories so that, if for example, they first wanted to only look at pieces of poetry, they could do so. My first attempt at this was to imbed headings onto the navigational column which would divide the content into the categories (shown in Figure 5). I also produced a version whereby the I added a previous webpage that more clearly separated the three catagories which the user could click through (shown in Figure 6). After altering them slightly with my supervisor, I showed both examples to the student editors that I was working with, and the both like how version two (Figure 6) acted as a welcome page for the users when they first clicked onto the issue. This would also work with having the ‘Meet the editors and designers’ introduction which would then be separated from the rest of the submitted content for the issue. One downfall of this was that from a UX viewpoint, it meant that the user would have to click back to access different parts of the magazine instead of being able to read it fully as of before.

To develop this going forward I included not only the option to click backwards to the ‘Issue 3 Contents’ but to also click forward to the next section in the magazine when you reached the last piece (shown in figure ). This created a seamless flow through the website which would get the user from point a (being the first entry page onto the issue) through even submission to end at point be (the last piece of content of the issue) in as few clicks as possible.

Something else that was new in this issue was the submission of both a video and audio file of art and spoken poetry. As the site was originally built in the cargo site maker, it was relatively easy to import this files onto the website. What became difficult was designing these specific pages to follow the pattern of the other pages in the issues. For example, the video file would input onto the page as a really small thumbnail and the user did not have any control in playing or pausing the video. This was another aspect I learnt how to code as I felt it was important with it being a video of an art piece, that the user could control the video so they could watch it as many times as they wanted and also pause when they desired.

Some other small changes that happened over the course of the project was changing the typefaces used and the accent colour. This was because Issue two had introduced the colour red to differentiate pages in their design, so I wanted to carry on this pattern of each issues having their own colour and type choices.

Reflections and Improvements

The main thing I found difficult in this project was balancing the communication between multiple student editors from both the art and English departments. I found that a lot of the submissions of poetry and prose were handed in last minute which meant I had a quick turnaround time to get them uploaded onto the website and formatted properly. I also found it a challenge at the start in expanding my knowledge of coding in HTML and CSS. Even though I only had a basic understanding of this at the start I do feel as though it helped push me in learning techniques in coding I wouldn’t have otherwise. Overall, although this project had tighter constraints such as deadlines and only having small parameters to change the design of the website, it taught me new skills I would not have gained otherwise. Being pushed to publish an issue of a magazine by a certain date helped me understand the importance of time management whilst also needing to chase up people and manage the timescale as a whole group.

Real Job by Edna Camplin

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Real Job by Zack Redshaw

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Background

Our client, Dr Patrick White, received a PhD in Social Sciences from Cardiff University. Since then, Patrick has written various books and journals for The Statistics Education Research Journal, started a YouTube channel, and lectured at the University of Leicester in Media Communication and Sociology.

Patrick’s previous books, 3 individually and 1 in conjunction with other academics have not had good covers in his eyes. Patrick told us in conversations that publishers usually take the cover designs out of his hands, something he feels strongly against. With the book being personal to him and his work, the cover design should embody this, bringing together the themes and ideas of the book into a single visual image.

Looking at beginner’s statistics books, which is what this book intends to be, they are often minimal, featuring just colour blocks and text. They often seem very unwelcoming, clinical and academic. Patrick told us that he wants to make his book seem accessible and welcoming to beginning undergraduates, seeming less intimidating than other competitors.

Brief

The brief was to essentially create a book cover design for a new textbook called ‘Straightforward Statistics’, a stand-alone academic asset. The design should be simple and approachable, using negative space to achieve this. The design should be more abstract, less of a conventional portrayal of a subject, and more visually engaging, being sold predominantly online. It would be aimed at undergraduates and those learning about statistics for the first time. While having an interest in reading about this subject, this is more of a beginner’s guide, so it should be directed towards those who may be sceptical of the topic. This should act as a gateway into the topic, with the jacket’s design reflecting the welcoming nature.

Deliverables

• A single, complete cover for the academic textbook ready for use by the publishers and in-line with the publisher’s requirements. This will feature the front, spine, and back cover.
• An ebook variation, showing just the cover with an appropriate file setup.

Research and ideation

Before meeting with Patrick, our client, my partner and I did some research on our clients’ previous books and other books related to the topic to get a general idea of the structure and layout of the cover. After meeting with Patrick, he provided us with an image that we were very keen on using as the book’s cover and a quick draft he put together on Word to present his vision to us.

Design development

My partner and I then created a few different designs on Indesign to bring his vision to life more meaningfully. We experimented with typography, alignment, layout, and colour.

After showing these to the client, he preferred the first design because of the “blue space about the main image” and he liked “the fact that the photo continues to the back page”. He also liked the typeface of the first, fourth and fifth designs. He was less keen on the beige-coloured spines and the image being too zoomed in. Therefore, we reflected on his feedback and came up with a few more designs. He also raised some issues about image quality and whether we could redraw the image using Illustrator or using AI to enhance the quality.

Image quality

As the image was taken on a phone camera, upscaling the image became an issue. My partner and I tried tackling this issue in various ways, such as importing it into Illustrator and auto-tracing the image to transform it into a vector shape. However, this made the image grainy and unrealistic. Eventually, after exploring different software and speaking with the department’s in-house printing experts, my partner used a new software to upscale the original image to achieve 350 ppi. From our own testing, this new resolution image was the most appropriate but it was ultimately determined by the publishers and printers as there were many factors that could alter its success. This worked effectively and the client was very happy with these results.

Final stages

After receiving feedback from our supervisor, we decided to tackle the legibility of the back cover elements (‘Book subject area’, and the Policy Press logo) by adding a darker gradient and slightly moving the text to ensure it does not sit across both a light and dark part of the image.  It was recommended to remove the ‘Book subject area’ as this element was a point of difference across the two formatting examples sent by the publishers, but the most recently sent one did not use this so we removed it entirely. We then created more box space around the sides of the barcode to appear less tight. Additionally, although the front and back cover would not be viewed together, it was still important to align the doors on both sides in order to create a neat line. Our supervisor reminded us to include hinges to help the printers line elements up without it looking “broken”; however, from research, we found that our client’s previous books had no hinge, assuming the printers are reasonably accurate. Therefore, we decided to not include a hinge. Last of all, we changed the spine to have capital letters to follow the conventions of a typical book spine.

After these further adjustments, we sent the final version to our client which received praise from him.

“I’m pleased to tell you that the publishers have agreed to use your cover! I’m very pleased about this and will send you both a copy of the book when it’s published (which should be about September). Thank you so much for all your hard work on this project. I’m delighted with the final design and can’t wait to hold a copy in my hands.”

–Patrick White

Straightforward Statistics Book Jacket

Reflection

Overall, this project was a fun and practical experience that was completed within a short period. The image already being decided as the cover photo enabled me to explore various typographic and layout options in depth.  This, however, limited the options of my partner’s and my own interpretation of the cover, which could have had a greater impact on the audience. Despite this, our client was very eager to use this photo as he had personal connections to it, which we respected. By using this low-resolution photo, we had a chance to explore different software and talk to experts about solutions to increasing this which we eventually did successfully. We regularly sent over ideas to our client and he was mostly quick to respond to our emails. However, receiving information from an external printing and publishing company was a little slow and the unexpected problems faced due to tackling the image quality resulted in a few weeks delay of sending the final design to the client.

We received lots of positive feedback from our client and useful guidance from our supervisor and Real Job meetings. This range of feedback ensured we covered every detail on the cover, which led to a successful design, which the client was very pleased about.

Real Job by Matt Perks and Clara Tsang

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