With the logo created, the co_LAB project needs some promotional printed materials informing students of the project’s existence, details of what it is and how to apply.

We decided that the best way to promote the project was by doing a “walk-on” in level 2 Media Production lecturers and by asking our colleagues in Art & Design to do the same. This would be backed up by posters placed throughout the Media and Art buildings as well as flyers placed in several lobby-type areas throughout the campus.

These, of course, needed designing. So once again I was called upon to the turn the promotional materials around in double-quick time!

At least I had a start point for this project due to the fact that the branding has already been created and approved.

Flyer

I started with the flyers as these had the most restrictions on space. Therefore, by starting with these, I could ensure the posters contained exactly the same information (and more if required).

The flyers were to be A5 and double sided. I wanted the “front” to be all about the branding with a very brief, high-level, description of what the project was. This is to grab people’s attention:

The “back” was then to feature as little as possible information about the project and application process as we could get away with. We didn’t want to give too much away, as we wanted to get interested students to a meeting about the project before they made their minds up about potentially participating. The design for the “back”:

The challenge here was getting the balance of information correct. It was also a design challenge to communicate the core principles (labelled benefits to the students) without using too much text. I decided to implement an icon-based approach to help visualise the information without having to read too much copy.

Poster

Finally, once I was happy with the flyers, I set about the poster design:

In some ways, this was easier to design than the flyers as I had a lot more space (plus I had also created most the copy and visuals). However, with more space comes the temptation to include more information – sometimes, too much information. The key differences are the inclusion of an introductory paragraph that informs students that this is an open call and the number of “benefits” listed.

It was felt that, as the flyers would be handed out after a lecture talk they wouldn’t require as much contextual information. Also, there really wasn’t room on the front of the flyer for this – without disrupting the eye-catching balance of copy & visuals. As for the amount of the “benefits”. There were 7 mentioned in the official call paper (where I got the information for the promotional materials) but only the 5 most appropriate to gaining student interest were to be included on the flyer (for the sake of brevity). The 2 that were left out were included on the poster, as there was room and we felt these would be of most interest to staff, who were more likely to see the posters than pick up a flyer.

When completed, these were sent off to the University’s preferred printer. Can’t wait to get them back and start putting them up around the campus. Keep your eyes peeled and you might just see them out in the wild!