Friday 8th March 2013
Publications & Design Team in Girl Guiding Headquarters
The day started very early for me, as I my placement started
at 9.30am I arrived in London at 8am, this gave me chance to go four stops on
the Victoria line tube in rush hour. The dress code was smart but casual and on
first impressions the office had a great atmosphere and all members were really
friendly yet professional.
The Team
·
There are fifteen members
·
They cover a wide range of aspects of
publications including the following – Guiding Magazine, young & adult
members publications, online documents, downloadable PDF’s and anything else
inbetween
·
In Guiding there are a wide range of publications
starting for Rainbows from 5 years old way up to adult leaders up to 65 years.
So the target audience changes dramatically and this affects the design, the
material and the language.
·
All skills are in house, including photographer,
flash gaming designer, editors etc
Process
1. The
Girl Guiding Volunteers will have a committee meeting
2. They
then talk to the editor
3. They
then prepare a schedule and brief
4. They
then talk to the designers about format and design
5. The
production controller estimates the cost of the item
6. So
then the editors will receive text that has been written by Girl Guiding
volunteers (or previous texts if they need updating)
7. They
will then look at three elements called structure, sense and copy editing. The structure
editing stage consists of introductions, different sections and headings. Sense
editing is the consistency of the text, the way it flows and that it doesn’t contradicted
itself, and finally the copy editing stage which is type errors spelling
mistakes and grammatical errors.
8. They
then send it back to the volunteers for them to sign and approve and then sent
from the editors to the designers.
9. once
the designers have finished it will be given back in a prototype format for a
final check and then off to the printers (the designers will then go and see it
through at the printers)
Design
Designers are given what’s called a ‘Publications designer brief’
and this helps the designer with a successful design, it usually has the target
audience age and other details like this. The more information the guidelines
the designers have the better the chance of a successful design. Editors and
designers work very closely together and this helps being next to each other in
the same office.
The website editors have live access to all websites; there
is the main website for adult members like leaders and commissioners and then
the four youth websites – Rainbows, Brownies, and Guides & Senior Section.
The editors of the websites work very closely with the design team especially
the flash designer who designs the games for the youth website. These prove very
popular with the younger girls!
They create the websites with a system called CMS (Content
Management System) along side a system called DotMailer. They also use Google Analytic
to measure how many times each page is viewed and on what device. Recently they
have had trouble with the colouring on the downloadable PDF’s from the Senior
Section website when viewed on an iPad this caused trouble for the team and are
still trying to amend this. They also have increasing difficulties with the
different internet providers such as Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Firefox. They
have to test each server when editing the sites.
There are three main ways of creating a website, the first
is with CMS, the second is known as coding and then the third is through an
editor which is known as a ‘WYSIWYG’ pronounce ‘whis-ee-wig’ which is short for
‘what you see is what you get’
AFTERNOON TASK
After lunch I was allowed on a computer and design my very
own interest badge. This is something that a designer was already working on
but they wante my take on it as I am a member myself.
The badge was the Rainbow Overnight badge and originally looked like this, it had a historical aspect of it with the bear and the large hat.
I started my design by drawing a few on paper by hand
.JPG)
Then I started designing it on the computer using Adobe Illustrator
This is my final design
Girl Guiding have a very distinct style and recently have re-branded the design to keep up to date with its members. The old logo is directly below with the slogan 'girls in the lead' and then the new one is below that with the slogan 'we discover, we grow'. I really like the new logo and slogan and i feel it really does reflect the aims of Guiding, they have also incorporated it successfully into the web design.
Examples of Publications
Brownie Annual 2013
Notice how this would appeal to Brownies that are aged 7-10 years old. In previous years there has been a foil effect on the cover but this does come at an extra cost. They tend to go for a different illustrator or designer each year to have variety.
Camp and Holiday Scheme - A resource for adults.
this resource is very useful and to the point, i have used this publication myself and feel that the layout inside is very clear and precise with clear headings and useful tips in seperate boxes. There is also a very clever feature - ring binder holes to keep it nice in a folder, it also lies flat so that I can photocopy pages if needed. Notice how this is very different in design and colour because the purpuse and target audience is different.
I really learnt a great deal on my placement with regards to editorial and design based roles and how closely they work toegther to create publications that support the movement of Guiding. Guiding has continued to keep up to date with technology and the needs of the girls and leaders alike. We have a Twitter and Facebook account and we are constantly updating publications and elements to keep up to date with the girl of today and tomorrow but not forgetting our Guiding traditions.
Girlguiding enables girls and young women to develop their
potential and to make a difference to the world.
______________________________________________
Girlguiding CHQ
17-19 Buckingham Palace Road
London SW1W 0PT
Tel: 020 7834 6242
Fax: 020 7828 8317
Email: chq@girlguiding.org.uk
Website: www.girlguiding.org.uk
http://guidingmanual.guk.org.uk/who_we_are.aspxhttp://www.girlguiding.org.uk/home.aspx