Brief
To create a printed and digital PDF Academic journal, funded by the Diversity Fund for a collection on ‘Promoting Racial Justice in Teaching and Learning’. The collection has around 20 pieces of around 600 words each, plus a Foreword from the Vice-Chancellor, another from the Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Dean for Diversity, and an editorial that was written by the clients Anne-Marie Henderson and Dr Eileen Hyder.
The journal is culminated of many authors writing different content on the topics of race, equality and inclusion. This was a challenge in itself by creating a grid system that worked with personal reflections, poems, academic pieces and more. The clients and I decided on this style to highlight the urgency and steps being taken for racial justice in teaching and learning.
This project allowed me to delve deep into designing for social change, researching current designers and their thoughts on how to effectively and correctly design for social change. Such as Warren Berger who uses the term ‘Design thinking’. He described it in an interview,“When designers usually talk about design changing the world, it tends to sound a little grand and ridiculous because they are trying to solve all our problems. What it can do, is solve problems on a case-by-case basis.” This is a great way of embodying designing for social change, it made me as a designer think and focus on impactful change for the reality of the audience, rather than a small change on a big scale and trying to change the whole world.
It was a new experience designing over 60 pages from scratch for a digital single paged PDF, spreads PDF and print, including skills in typography, illustrations, photography, infographics, image treatment, professional printing skills and more.
Thr University of Reading’s library exhibition of the journal
University of Reading library exhibition
The journal was exhibited in the University of Reading library. It was great seeing the work on display for people to interact with and read. It was great to see how the work I had done had created a recognisable brand for the journal.
Teaching and Learning (T+L) Showcase
I was also asked by the client to present at the Teaching and Learning (T+L) showcase about the process and reasoning for the journal’s designs. Some of the points the client asked were to talk about how I developed the design and a way to promote the Real Jobs scheme. This was a great opportunity to develop my communication and presentation skills, while articulating my design choices to an audience with little to no design knowledge. Overall this project has helped my employability skills, and design skills and I have created something I am proud of as a designer.
Presenting at the T+L showcase
"Bethan Williams played a key role in developing the visual identity of our ‘Promoting Racial Justice in Teaching and Learning’ journal. She was totally committed to achieving maximum impact for this project and ensuring that our vision was realized.
... Working with Bethan on this project was a very positive experience. She built a relationship of partnership and collaboration and the final result surpassed our expectations due to the energy and commitment Bethan brought to the project."
– Anne-Marie Henderson (client), March 2022
See the full reference on my LinkedIn page