View the Comparative Before and After Version on my Colleague's Account:

https://www.behance.net/gallery/24940523/Compass-(Before-After)-Design-Comparisons

Background - Compass is a study about youth behaviour that works directly with high schools to implement positive changes in health policies and programs. Participating schools receive a customized report that includes evidence-based recommendations/feedback for policy and program improvement. These reports are presented to parents, teachers, and potential investors.

The Challenge  - Although Compass’ existing report focuses on serious areas such as underage drinking, marijuana use, tobacco use, and bullying, the child-like illustrations and lack of prevalent data organization heavily detract from the study’s significance. It does not appeal to its main audience consisting of professionals. The overuse of colours fight the text for attention and leads to poor visualization. This further trivializes the message Compass wants to convey: that youth need YOUR help. 

The Task - My group was tasked with redesigning this report; specifically the main template that would be customized by Compass employees for individual high schools. 

Ideation and Development - We focused on enhancing the precedence of information, data visualization, professional branding, continuity, and simplicity. “Info boxes” were used to showcase the data. These squares simultaneously allowed for continuity and versatility without the sacrifice of clarity. Fonts were enlarged and shown against white or light grey backgrounds for easy readability. Large images were utilized to keep the design current and relevant while further enhancing the document’s overall appearance. Photos were edited to be black and white and faces of youth were not shown in order to maintain focus on the data.

Limitations - My team and I could not explore the full extent of our design creativity. The reason? Since we were to create a template that would require constant edits by a Compass designer who was not familiar our software, we had to keep things simple. Time and money is a factor when customization for each school is necessary, so we did not represent data by way of info graphics, charts, graphs, or similar variations that might be tedious to alter. We needed to facilitate this process of changing statistics to create a seamless, simple, user-friendly experience for our client. We also had a difficult time finding royalty free, cost-free stock photos. With no budget, our team needed to find both royalty free and cost free images for use in the report. This was especially difficult because we did not want to show faces in any of the images and the content of the report itself required specific imagery.

My Role - I was the Lead Designer of this project. I derived the initial concept and design elements, created branding guidelines, implemented all revisions, found and edited the stock photos, and fully designed 26 of the 28 pages, including the front and back covers. I also pitched the concept and design to the client who loved the initial look — but because I was not satisfied, I took it upon myself to go above and beyond and redesign the document to look even better. There is always room for improvement!

The Outcome  - I am proud to say the client loved the design of the new brochures and had nothing but positive feedback to provide us with. Not only will they be using this design for their existing work, but they have also decided to present it to the federal government as part of their pitch/presentation. My team and I are honoured!