Graduate Programs Guide
The School of Visual Arts at Boston University wanted to create a Graduate Programs Guide to showcase each of the post-grad programs offered at the school. The guide would be a take-home piece at graduate school fairs. The writers of the book began with a unique approach—university program guides are often verbose with many pages of program details, but the writers focused on consolidating the written content to provide informative but concise descriptions of each program. The approach to the written content made me realize that prospective students at a graduate school fair with many other programs will likely only spend a short amount of time viewing BU’s guide. Considering this, I designed the guidebook to be a vessel to consume a large amount of information in a very short amount of time.
I achieved this by using the original version of the Helvetica typeface (Neue Haas Grotesk) for the body text. I set this neo-grotesque typeface at a larger-than-average point size for optimal legibility. I also heavily utilized photography, from close up shots of student work, to wide views of BU’s facilities. Many parts of the book are comprised of consecutive full-page or full-spread images, with some images split from one spread to the next to further encourage a quick flip through of the book while still providing an accurate landscape of the programs. The design is accented with a simple, rotating color palette that helps the viewer navigate easily through the book, without having to continually return to the table of contents. Finally, because the guide would be one of many take-home pieces prospective students would receive at a fair, I made the size of it compact (4.25in×7in) so that someone could easily carry it home with them.
