Welcome aboard.
Easy, accessible onboarding for all.
Sleek, streamlined training for student employees, now available in five lovely department editions! Complete with QR code walk-throughs and interactive activity pages. Onboarding is more efficient and more accessible than ever.
CLIENT
Centre of Experiential Learning at Vancouver Island University
TEAM
Sitayesh Cheryl Malik - Editor
Danielle Johnsrude - Director
PROJECT YEAR
2024
THE TASK
For the Center of Experiential Learning at Vancouver Island University, onboarding had long been a tedious and confusing process for new employees. This project, to redesign and build a structured and streamlined onboarding process using interactive booklets, got moved up to the top of the to-do list, just as I started my summer internship.
During the time these handbooks were produced, Vancouver Island University was in the process of developing new branding guidelines. I was able to take the colours, graphics, and fonts, and experiment with them to create pages and layouts of my own, that were later approved by VIU’s own design team.
Booklets from past
years, for inspiration
THE CHALLENGE
One of the biggest challenges in this project was working within the limitations of Canva. It’s a useful tool for quick, accessible design and made collaboration easy, as it was already integrated into the university’s workflow. However, for an 84-page publication, it lacked the precision and control I’m used to with Adobe InDesign. That said, it was a valuable opportunity to adapt to client-preferred tools while delivering polished, effective results—and ultimately, another tool added to my skill set.
First drafts, colour troubleshooting, and VIU’s new branded graphics
THE SOLUTION
These five handbooks were a labour of love, produced in collaboration with my director, Danielle Johnsrude, and my editor, Sitayesh Malik.
Sitayesh had provided the content for me, as well as some ideas for graphics or layouts. I found that the most effective way to make design decisions for this project was to take ideas, inspiration and insight from the only other person as close to this project as I was. In that way, I share the credit of these books with her.
I hadn’t known it at the time, but everything from the cover, to the graphics and maps I made became a template of sorts for other departments to develop their own booklets from, which is really exciting.
The final product! 6 total student employee handbooks, 5 of which contain department-specific content.
8.5 x 11 booklets, ranging from 46-82 pages each. Produced with uncoated paper to be written on.
Take a peek at some pages below!
