Collaboration is essential for successful teamwork. When I contacted the in-house agency for Boston University’s Marketing and Communications, they quickly shared the importance of relying on each other and believing in their colleagues. The strength of their team guides them to trust the creative process while staying focused and organized, understanding their audience, and concentrating on details. Yes, as designers, it’s always the details that matter and often what makes the difference. Boston University’s School of Public Health This Year, 2021 magazine was awarded the Excellence and Silver UCDA Design Awards at the 2022 UCDA Design Conference in New Mexico. Boston University’s Marketing and Communications design team's award-winning entry speaks for itself.
After reviewing the personnel credits for the Boston University, School of Public Health’s, This Year 2021 magazine, undoubtedly, this was a team effort. Please share the collaboration process for an assignment as large as this project.
Thank you for highlighting the collaboration between Marketing and Communications’ Creative Services (CS), the in-house agency for Boston University (BU), and our SPH colleagues, the School of Public Health (SPH). In addition to those listed in the credits, there are at least a dozen more personnel who contributed to this project. Our process includes leveraging SPH expertise by having early and in-depth conversations on the strategy, communication goals, and key themes for each issue of their annual publication. We share our workflow for producing the publication with our SPH colleagues and onboard new staff to the project. SPH supplies the content for the magazine along with existing photography assets. CS is structured like a full-service agency, offering account management, photography, design, creative direction, marketing writing, copyediting, print production, and project management services across digital, print, and environmental media. We use OmniPlan for scheduling and Trello for tracking, supplemented by email communication, a dedicated Slack channel, and meetings. With an established workflow in place, team members can focus on their individual and collective contributions to the project.
Please discuss any challenges the team faced while creating the School of Public Health’s, This Year 2021 magazine.
This is always one of our bigger projects with the number of articles topping off at 45 (mapping to SPH’s 45th anniversary), along with 80 images, including 25 bespoke illustrations. We were also working with a mix of content—the majority supplied by our SPH colleagues; the rest developed by us. This required an enhanced editorial approach to the content to ensure that messaging and style were in alignment. With a project this large and sprawling, there are bound to be additional and sometimes unexpected challenges, but the versatility of the teams meant we were able to pivot and don different hats as necessary.
Your award-winning entry is an exceptionally stunning piece, and as a higher-education publication, it shines in contemporary composition and presentation. Was there any question or pushback about the design concept from University leaders or colleagues?
Sandro Galea, dean of Boston University School of Public Health, serves as the catalyst for this collaborative endeavor, every year inspiring the team to further innovate and exceed our previous achievements. He engenders a spirit of partnership shaped by trust, creative freedom, and an unflagging pursuit of excellence. Another key element is CS’ working culture, which gives creatives ample time and space for creative exploration and development. In short, there was no pushback from Boston University leaders or our SPH colleagues.
What advice can you share on best practices for a project of this scale?
From our SPH colleagues’ intake to printed piece, this 11-month project is a concerted effort of many team members, akin to a well-tuned orchestra. It is imperative to accurately forecast scope, budget, schedule, and resourcing of creatives, and to establish a well-conceived brief as the foundation and springboard for the team to begin concepting. For strong and effective conceptual work, ensure the creative team receives adequate time and space to explore, incubate, and develop ideas. Have fun while concepting and during critiques with creative leadership. Commission illustrators and photographers who will vivify your concept and narrative. Trust skillful account management, art direction, and project management talent to keep all the moving parts on track, including bimonthly or even weekly internal status meetings. Engage expert editorial services to ensure consistency throughout, top journalistic standards, and an overall high-quality product. Entrust your project to print professionals who are passionate about print. And, of course, savor the moment when you hold that final printed piece in your hands.
Please share the project’s evolution to become an award-winning publication, from the initial design mockups to the final printed piece.
Trust the creative process. Believe in your colleagues’ work—in this case, SPH’s. Understand your audience. Use the brief as your springboard. Ask questions. Invite flow. Rely on the expertise of team members. Problem-solve together. Be organized. Balance visionary thinking with attention to detail.
A granular description of the evolution of the project:
- Questionnaire completed by our SPH colleagues (informs the creative brief)
- Intake meeting with our SPH colleagues
- Creative brief development
- Concept development (3 phases) including moodboard of proposed illustrators
- Story list review (SPH-supplied)
- Content inventory of SPH-supplied manuscript review
- Content analysis to determine the different article types, e.g., section openers, features, profiles, long articles, short articles, etc.
- Page map development
- Marketing writing
- Photography, illustration, and infographics direction
- Proof 1 development—including design/layout and color palette exploration
- Proof 2 development
- Proof 3 development
- Liaise with print production
- File collect for printing
- Printing/finishing
- Fulfilment/mailing
- Retrospective
Reviews are conducted by creative leadership, internal leadership, and our SPH colleagues for each round of concepts, marketing copy, illustrations, and proofs.
Critiques during the design evolution often provide growth opportunities for the project and the team of designers, writers, photographers, directors, and anyone else participating in developing the finished work. How does this process work for your team?
The creative team is given ample time for concepting. Generally, the marketing writer and designer work independently, generating ideas for the cover and format, then meet to share ideas, brainstorm, and riff of off each other. During this time, the designer also consults with the production manager to discuss and explore format options, paper stocks, printing, and finishing techniques. When the creative team is ready to share concepts, they present to the creative director and/or senior associate creative director, who offer feedback, i.e., approving some concepts, narrowing down the options, and identifying which concepts should be further developed. These critiques also serve as opportunities to stretch the creative team and to challenge them to test out new ideas and approaches. A second round of development is followed by a refinement phase, during which concepts are finalized for presentation to our SPH colleagues, who select one (and may ask for minor refinements before approving the final concept). At this time, SPH also approves illustrator(s) proposed by CS. For the review process, we use the sprint model, sharing all stages of image development with our SPH colleagues for their feedback, from early black and white sketches to color finals.
How significant a role did University branding contribute to or hinder the design process?
At BU, we have “brands-within-brands” that allow each school, college, and entity to have their own voice as long as it fulfills the BU brand messaging of vibrant, smart, bold, and authentic while properly using the University logo. This allows various units to compete in their own sectors in order to stand out, yet clearly present as being from BU. The SPH brand voice comes through the marketing writing in headlines, subheads, and introductory copy, contributing to the design process. Visually, this piece incorporates a light lift of the University branding in the form of the Boston University logo on the cover along with the School of Public Health sub-branding and on the envelope. Their typefaces and the use of purple from their color palette are the main contributors from SPH’s visual identity.
Judge Mike Robinson offered: “This entry blew me away. From the creative use of a tear-tab enclosure on the cover to the bold but consistent color palette, illustrative elements, approach to type, and use of a grid, this piece checks all the boxes.” Could you give me some insight and the decision to incorporate a tear tab in the cover design?
The goal was to engage the viewer in a tactile, emotional way that only print can do. With optimism as this issue’s theme, the viewer literally “opens optimism” by pulling the strip to reveal the cover flap copy, “Why we’re optimistic about the future of public health.” The tear strip makes you “part of the action.” You’re in it. Elements of the cover illustrations enhanced by metallic and iridescent foils are also revealed under the flap, contributing to the idea of a brighter future set up by the outer envelope’s teaser copy, “The future is bright,” printed in fluorescent ink.
Creatives often rekindle inspiration while away from their office desk, relaxing with unique downtime, a book, a film, or a favorite pastime. So how do you approach this to recharge your creativity?
From Carla Baretta, Senior Associate Creative Director: The exciting part of the creative process for me begins with the strategy and figuring out how to speak to the audience to engage them and incentivize them to act—whether it’s buying a product or choosing a college. Research gives me inspiration.
I’m looking for inspiration every time I, myself, engage with the world. Design and creative work are all around us, impacting every decision we make. The combination of the science and art of creative is the thing that gets me excited and inspired to connect with the creative teams and the brands to help make that alchemy happen!
And of course, it’s sublime looking at work Susan and her writing partner, Ken Lewis, created. Dotting every “i” and crossing every “t.” While I’m looking at the big picture, they’re in every nook and cranny of the work, making it sing.
Putting me alone with a blank canvas and paint, though, would give me pause. Give me an advertising or branding project and you’ve got me going
From Susan Prentiss, Prinicpal Designer: As 21st-century citizens and designers, we are constantly consuming visual stimuli. While it is our professional duty to be aware of visual culture and trends, it is equally important to free ourselves from external influences to tap into something uncreated. Meditation clears my mind and acts as a reset button at the end of each day. Listening to music that takes flight from stillness such as Ralph Vaughan Williams’ The Lark Ascending or returns to silence such as in Arvo Pärt’s Fratres engenders receptivity to new ideas. J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, with its 30 variations on one musical theme, is the soundtrack for creativity itself, inspiring through its infinite permutations and iterations. I also recharge by taking walks in Boston, hanging at my favorite café, or ambling along the garden courtyard and galleries of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. A book I return to for creative inspiration is Rainer Marie Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.
As an award-winning Senior Communication Lead with Virginia Commonwealth University, a mixed-media artist, and photographer, Gary Garbett is a design nerd and a creative. He believes singer-songwriters are poets, prefers sans serif fonts over curly ones, and won second place in a national Cap’n Crunch drawing contest when he was nine.
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