Publication Design for Transforming Community Colleges

Transforming Community Colleges

Five Design Questions to Shape the Future of Learning

Role*
Graphic design, publication design, art direction
*completed in partnership with Education Design Lab as Associate Designer for Visual Design + Impact

Tools
Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe Photoshop

Timeline
October 2022–June 2023

Background

Established just before the pandemic, the Community College Growth Engine (CCGE) is a design accelerator that empowers over 50 community colleges nationwide to serve as regional talent agents in a skills-based economy. Since 2020, the Education Design Lab's CCGE team has designed 100+ employer-validated micro-pathways.

Map capturing the number of colleges/systems engaged through the Lab’s CCGE.

Designing Transforming
Community Colleges

The “Transforming Community College” thought paper focuses on five intentional design questions grounded in the Lab’s experience working with community colleges, employers, and learners, along with examples and resources to support community colleges.

My design approach to publications with the Education Design Lab team is thorough, collaborative, and adaptive, with a focus on meeting the needs of both the content experts and our target audience. I prioritize meeting the needs of all contributors and refining the design as the content evolves.

In every publication design at the Lab that I’ve done far, I know the co-authors of the content are very close to the work itself. They are the knowledge experts, so I ensure they’re involved in my process to align my design with their vision of how they want their research to be presented.
The co-authors provide their content in a Google Doc, allowing all contributors across our remote organization to suggest changes. By the time 80% of the content was solidified, the team had already divided it into sections, allowing me to start storyboarding the publication in Adobe InDesign.
I leverage our organization’s brand style guide and our previous publications to aid in my design decisions for use of color, accessible color combinations, typography, and overall style. Regarding size and orientation, I decided to stick to 11x8.5” in case our audience would like to print these pages for themselves. The landscape orientation would also allow the project team to convert these pages into Google Slides for future conference presentations, with minimal editing.
From there, I allot myself space towards the beginning and end of the publication for front and back matter respectively, then plot the major sections in first. The number of pages between sections is determined by how much copy it has and how much weight the team wants the visuals to have, like a big headline, a callout quote, an image, or a graphic. From there, I get granular, dividing each page to troubleshoot placement of said content.
I recognize not everyone at our organization has an Adobe Creative Suite license, nor are familiar with Adobe design software, so I export each draft as a PDF and upload it to Google Drive so that the team can view it and comment any changes they would like me to make. Whenever a copy change was made in the original Google Doc, I would also reflect this change in the InDesign file.
Leading up to the public release, this publication was redesigned 10 times over the course of the 9 months. Drafts 1–7 was largely implementing copy changes, and troubleshooting agreement of content, placement, overall flow, and any visual aids I created. Draft 8 was a final review for copyedits by my Communications Director. After implementing those changes, Draft 9 was sent to our partners for approval, with the 10th iteration as the version launched to the public.

I also recreated the cover in multiple formats for our organization to use on social media, our website, and for our e-newsletter.

Created in Adobe InDesign, with assets created in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Designing the Infographic

Alongside designing the publication, the co-authors requested an infographic/diagram of the 5 design questions (at the time, they were called criteria). It was a dynamic and iterative process that resulted in a unique solution that aligned with the co-authors' vision. Responsiveness to feedback, creativity in exploring alternatives, and a collaborative approach way key to meeting the co-authors' preferences.

The co-authors provided a few images, encouraging me to replicate them, but also populate it with their content. I complied but I also provided a counter solution to avoid plagiarism.
Despite presenting exactly what they asked for, the co-authors were not in favor of the table and cone drafts. They disliked the rainbow color scheme of the table because each criterion looked too distinct from the other, and they disliked how the table and cone presents the information in a sequential/linear order. However, they did like the idea of containing all of the information within a shape, so I explored possible containers for the information.
In the assets the organization uses to graphically represent what human-centered design at the Lab looks like, we already use a circle and a triangle. To distance ourselves from a similar solution, I played with the idea of overlapping shapes, like venn diagrams, because they show intersectional relationships.
The co-authors gravitated towards the hexagon shape because of its modular quality, but wanted it to look off-balance/off-center to signal possible additional modules in the future. The tilted polygon shape ended up being the infographic to represent their 5 design questions.