Gordonated

Contact

September 26th, 2007 | by gordon |

It’s pretty interesting when the designer gets a say in the content of what he is actually designing. Given a space to sort out ideas and generating content instead of merely arranging a layout. I think it would be fair to mention that this is another different level of design, differing from the idea that designers only receive the finalized text and go through the entire process of seeking approval from the client based merely on making things neat, legible and nice.

British American Tobacco Malaysia approached a few agencies to pitch in search of an agency to take on the task of redesigning their internal magazine, Contact. We got our hands on the job with a pitch that emphasizes more on the idea of an internal newsletter that acts more like a community builder instead of a very work oriented technical booze. Emphasizing on topics that displays about what colleagues are like, how they work in the office, things that they love doing most, family moments and also displaying shared experiences across.

Pretty much a job that took about a month and a half to complete, we took the task of hunting for a translator, attended countless meetings, arranging interviews, attending luncheons, taking photographs for events, giving suggestions, building ideas and finally, start designing.

The first issue I encountered is that this is the fact that it has to be in two languages, English and the Malaysian national language, Bahasa Malaysia. Borrowing from the idea from the later Colors magazine, distinguishing them with colors. English shown in Cyan while Bahasa Malaysia in black. Headlines were also distinguished by colors of BAT’s Corporate Signature blue for English and Signature Yellow likewise. It gets tougher as the headlines and sub-headlines, info-graphics, charts and pull-outs come into the picture.

A typical magazine would always open up with a section dedicated to News and Announcements. Rather than the typical given name, we thought that it would be interesting to give it a little twist, naming the section “On the Surface”. Since it is usually the first hit that a reader will read through. To push it even further, we built on the idea of visually displaying the text on the surface of a notice board.

Moving on, large companies usually have certain initiatives where employees are informed about each other’s whereabouts and current job positions within. Previously, this article was presented in a pretty serious monotonous way where ID images were shown with absolute seriousness in copy when read. So, instead of a typical spread showing plainly pictures of the promotees or new hires, the client requested for a more human touch. We then created various questions which were then sent out to all of them to be answered to give readers a better idea of their personality. We named the section ‘Voices!’ and bummed speech bubbles for each employee shout-out.

A new article was introduced featuring ‘A day in a life’ of a Process Specialist. I went with the copywriter to conduct the interview in a very loud, filled with machines factory hall. Its pretty interesting to see the entire process of how the inspections is actually being handled in there. Plugged with heavy-duty ear-plugs, I was actually trying to figure out pretty important stuff that I was being told by doing analytical lip-movement reading.

We also suggested names for various sections: Where to Eat? was changed to Escape! (Since food is one of the best things in life).

Some other spreads:

Primary Typefaces: Gotham Rounded, ITC Stone Sans, Helvetica Neue & some hand-drawn typefaces! Printed on matt art (text) and art card with matt lamination (cover). 52 pages total.

Post production, what was needed is a loud event to create a huge ‘bang’ effect to create absolute awareness about the magazine. Realizing that they had pick up trays all over the company for employees to pick up the magazines, we figured out that it would be pretty interesting to have a shout-out to persuade people to grab a copy of the magazine from the trays. Since we wanted to get rid of as many issues as possible from the trays, the results were:

Upon launching the magazine, instead of just plain boring banners announcing the launch, we proposed them to go roaming: Loud-hailers, clanging cymbals, lucky-draws, spontaneous games, etc. brought directly to each department over Virginia Park. We got good feedbacks on this one. Everyone had a great time during the launch, instead of the typical stage, speech and stomach thing.

It’s rewarding to build ideas across the corporate platform and seeing them slowly evolving from one to another. Simple ideas turn complex. Corporate jobs can be fun really. The client brought Kay & me for lunch at Alexis afterwards. (Thanks Eileen & Janice!)

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