ACADEMIC REENTRY HANDBOOK
publication design, 2022
CLIENT: Saint Louis University Prison Education Program, Saint Louis University initiative providing high-quality liberal arts education to people who are incarcerated and prison staff
AUDIENCE: Justice impacted individuals who are interested in pursuing higher education
GOAL: Design an approachable, easy to use handbook that invites individuals to pursue higher education and helps keep the process as simple as possible.
PROCESS: For this project, I played a lead role on a small team within the student-run graphic design studio Tidy Projects. Individuals seeking to pursue higher education as a non-traditional student often feel outcasted from academic institutions and overwhelmed by the processes required to further their education. For this reason, ease of use and accessibility were top priorities when designing this handbook. One tactic we used to accomplish this goal was incorporating color. This kept the text more engaging but also made it look more approachable and less like an overwhelming official document. The colors we used also served the purpose of delineating the different sections. This helped the workbook feel less overwhelming because it was visually chunked into a few sections, each with its corresponding color along the page’s edges and in headings. By coordinating each section with a color, users of the workbook could easily orient themselves as they flipped through to quickly reference information. We also used an easy to read sans serif font throughout the workbook, to, again, maintain the friendliness of the design. Finally, we designed a cover that utilized all the colors in a series of shapes suggesting forward movement to emphasize the effort workbook users are making to create forward progress in their education.
OUTCOME: We designed a handbook that could appeal to formerly incarcerated individuals through accessible design choices to ensure all potential students feel like they have a place in higher education.
