The HE prospectus is the key marketing publication to promote the higher education courses available at Vision West Nottinghamshire College (West Notts). The prospectus was printed lithographically and is also available to view and/or download online.

The target market were a combination of mature students undertaking study alongside work and/or family commitments, and current Level 3 students with the college to encourage them to continue studying to a higher level (the local community suffers from very high NEET figures and low aspiration levels with many families experiencing three generations of joblessness).

My role:  project manager and graphic designer

Responsibility for:  concept work (team), concept development (sole), image research and art direction of photo shoots (sole), content management (sole), project management (sole), artwork (sole), print management (sole)

Stakeholders:  the college executive team and Principal, the Director of Marketing and Communications, Head of Marketing, Head of HE and International, relationship managers from partner Universities (University of Derby, Birmingham City University), Programme Area Leaders, tutors, HE support team, copywriting and proofreading team, students, alumni, guest speakers, external photographers, image libraries, litho printers

Concept:  What did you dream of being when you were a child? Whatever your dream/ambition, you can achieve it with West Nottinghamshire College. The visuals used a series of 1940s/50s black-and-white images, with very tongue-in-cheek humour, which were used alongside the college branding guidelines for layout and typography.

Biggest challenge:  to find/create the cover and subject-area images I had visualized within the £700 photography budget. I explored the idea of creating the images from scratch utilising college studios and hiring an external photographer, but the cost and logistics of finding props and models was prohibitive. I therefore took the image research route, researching royalty-free images wherever possible in order to keep the project on-budget. Image manipulation was required for some images, and this was done using Adobe Photoshop. The other, colour images within the publication were shot by an external photographer to a brief provided (and art directed where necessary) by myself.

Print and production notes:  the artwork was created using Adobe CS6; the publication has a gatefold cover (front and back), UV lamination to the outer cover, and uses white silk paper stock

Result:  the publication was sent to print 2 weeks ahead of schedule, delivered on budget, and feedback to date has been extremely positive.