Extra! Extra!
Your guide to the Italian Riviera.
In this issue of The Atlas, we explore the highlights of Cinque Terre. The publication is broken up into the five villages with the best restaurants, accommodations and must-see views wrapped up in just 8 beautiful pages.
PROJECT TYPE
Editorial Design, Print Design
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.
THE CHALLENGE
The biggest challenge (massive challenge, actually) I faced in this project, was the limitations of Canva. The university uses the software for most of their graphics and posters, and as it was already a part of their workflow, it made collaboration very easy for my team. However, as someone who is adept with years of experience using Adobe software, Canva is a far cry from InDesign and I found it extremely limiting for a project of this size. However, I absolutely made do with what I had, and exceeded expectations, while making the process simpler for my team, and the final files accessible and editable for other departments and campus designers.
THE SOLUTION
These five handbooks were a labour of love, produced in collaboration with my director, Danielle Johnsrude, and my editor, Sitayesh Malik. 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.
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. I was working within the Centre of Experiential Learning, but I was certainly hoping it would extend to other departments.