An organisation known as Barnardo’s contacted us through the university. They are an organisation that specialise in helping young carers and supporting them in any way they can.
According to their website, this is what they do:
We don’t abandon children because of who they are or what they’ve done. We listen to them, fight for their rights and do whatever it takes to protect and support them – because we believe that all children have the right to a happy and healthy life. Read more about our values.
It was very interesting to work on this project within a small group of us. We organised to have a meeting with one of the representitives of Barnardo's, and they visited the university and told us everything we needed to know. with the amount in our group, it was the ideal size for us to get the work done.
They sent us over their most current designs, and we had to redisgn them. We thought the best applications to use were InDesign and Illustrator as these offered the tools we needed.
Barnardo’s also sent over their style guides for us to follow. This meant we had to stick to certain things like the colours they use, and also specific typefaces and fonts.
After working on their posters, we came up with a few redesigns which we showed them in a meeting.
We each took it upon ourselves to redesign one of these each, or more if we felt it to be suited. Within our group, we came up with many designs between us, as we thought coming up with as many designs as possible would offer Barnardo’s a range of options for them to choose from.
After redesigning some of their psoters, fliers and banners, we went down to Barnardo’s to conduct a meeting with some of the people who work there. We went to their building in Mold and reviewed our work with them.
They were very happy with all of the work we produced, they asked us if they could keep the print outs and to send them some digital files so they could show people higher up than them and their designer team.
We displayed all ur work out on a table and allowed the client to choose their favourites, what they liked and disliked, and just some overall feedback for our work.
our next task was to redesign their A2A logo, and redesign what the cards the young carers carry would look like. We decided the best way to determine this would be to actually talk to the young carers themselves. Before we went back to meet with the carers however, we wanted to bring some work with us, so we decided to redesign the logo before we went and see what they thought.
Once we designed a variety of cards for them, we met up at the same place for another meeting, this time with some young carers present as well. This was a lot more helpful, as this feedback was coming from the people who would be carrying the cards themselves. They had a lot to say, and these are the most beneficial points of feedback I took note of during the meeting:
- They liked varying colours
- Blue was their favoured colour
- Clearer to see helped them more
- A library-card style would be ideal
- Leave space for an ID photo
- As there were two designed, they preferred my more professional/adult style
- My last two designs would look better if colour was added
- Blue was their favoured colour
- Clearer to see helped them more
- A library-card style would be ideal
- Leave space for an ID photo
- As there were two designed, they preferred my more professional/adult style
- My last two designs would look better if colour was added
- One discussion we had in particular was to have two different cards for different age groups; mine for the older age groups and the cards designed by the other people in my group for younger age groups (under 10s, 10-17, 18+)
-Place words under the main a2a on my last two
- Front side = design
- Back side = Things you can use the card for and ID photo
- Use more green, but not too much
- Instead of lower case a’s, use capital A’s
- Include “access to action” on mine
- Use approachable colours for posters (blue, green , yellow)
- Try to avoid red if possible
- Front side = design
- Back side = Things you can use the card for and ID photo
- Use more green, but not too much
- Instead of lower case a’s, use capital A’s
- Include “access to action” on mine
- Use approachable colours for posters (blue, green , yellow)
- Try to avoid red if possible
There was a lot of feedback to go off of, so our next step was to apply this feedback and continue to redesign the card and also the posters.
I decided that the next best course of action was to take my original design and re work it, not only with their advice, but to a standard that I was also happy with. Here are some decides that I came up with while keeping to the design I originally made.
I kept in mind the fact that they wanted the “a2a” in capital letters, and to also include the tagline “access to action” underneath. I really liked the idea of including the A2a smaller and repeating in the background, but wasn’t happy with how it looked, until i came to a final decision on a design.
For me, this allowed me to keep the design choice while also maintaining a slick and stylish aesthetic. One change I did made however was the make the lettering smaller and to also change the A2A to just A2, meaning it wouls say A2A when it repeated itself.
Now I am at a place where I am happy with the card design, but it is still just in black and white. I decided to use the Barnardo’s style guide for help, and thought about using their colours within the cards. This helped me to come up with a few more designs, this time with colour.
here are all of my designs:
SInce sending over these designs, we heard back from BArnardo's a few weeks later. They said they liked the blue variants the best, which were designed by me, and decided to go with them.
Since hearing this, we are yet to hear from Barnardo's.