Winning the Pitch
A range of local design agencies (Newport and Cardiff) were invited to pitch for the project in response to the Council's brief. Response to our thorough pitch documentation was extremely positive and we were thus one of five agencies invited to pitch at a meeting in the Council Offices. During the meeting the Chief Executive stressed that it was essential that all council members were brought on-board with the aims of the council. These were 'Aspirational People', 'Modernised Council'. 'Resilient Communities' and 'Thriving City'. The Chief Executive mentioned being inspired by vinyl and paint work that had been applied to the walls and corridors of the local Lliswerry Comprehensive School and that he would like similar design to be applied in the Civic Centre. "Well, you've come to the right place" we replied…"we designed and applied all the work at that school". We got the job!
Designing the Five Year Plan document
The brief identified 4 core themes for the council: 'Aspirational People', 'Modernised Council'. 'Resilient Communities' and 'Thriving City', and so our first job was to set about creating a colourful, contemporary and most importantly vibrant colour scheme that could be applied throughout the printed and wall-art design work. This is when things got interesting…
"You can't use blue, because that means Tory. You can't use Red (Labour). You can't use purple (UKIP). You can't use yellow (Lib Dem). You can't use green (Plaid and Greens)."
So that's five of the rainbow colours that we couldn't touch for fear of being seen to promote on political party over another. Happily, we soon came up with a 4 colour palette which every party that makes up the council could agree on — colours we called 'Lime', 'Seychelles (aqua)', 'Feather Boa (Magenta)' and 'Mango (Orange)'. We added to this an off black text, and the council's existing dark green (British Racing Green) and yellow, and we had our palette sorted.
Each of these 4 colours were then attributed to one of the council's 4 themes (Aspirational People, Modernised Council, Thriving City, Resilient Community), and then the process of designing element that could be used over all the various outputs (the book, the wall designs etc). Chevrons were adopted as a positive, directional device to indicate that the council was moving forward with all of these core themes.
The Printed Document
Once design palette, typeface selection and design devices were all chosen, we set to work on designing the five year plan document. Here is a selection of double page spread designs from the book.
In addition to the 5 Year plan, we were also commissioned to design the 'People and Culture Strategy' document, with design style to match the style of the five year plan document. This document was for online delivery only and we designed both an english and welsh version. Here's a selection of the designs.
Next was a range of posters to be displayed throughout council premises to get staff on board with the new 5-Year Plan Principles:
Wall Art
After finishing the print work detailed above, we were commissioned to decorate two meeting rooms at the Civic Centre, with designs based on the 5-Year Plan.
First we had to take accurate measurements of the walls, marking any obstacles like fire alarms, cable trunking etc. We then designed the walls in Illustrator before cutting the vinyl elements using our vinyl cutter, Additionally much of the wall content was painted directly onto the walls. This involved projecting the design onto the wall first, then masking out the various areas with tape before applying the paint and vinyl. The last job was to clean up the wall, removing our tape, pencil marks, paint splashes etc.
Photography
Webber Design were also commissioned to shoot some photography which was used in the 5-Year Plan document. Here's a selection:
And a shoot at newly opened Welsh language school Ysgol Gyfun Gwent Is Coed:
And a photoshoot at Newport Marathon:
