Background:
The flyer and poster (below) were designed for IDP, an organization representing more than 1000 Australian education institutions, with offices in 30+ countries around the world. And although the main office handles generic worldwide promotional material, each local office produces their own for education exhibitions as well as other needs. IDP faces stiff competition in Brunei, as a high percentage of the local students and all of the western expat students opt for education overseas. Australia is a growing first choice due mainly to the strength of the pound and the proximity of the country.

Design Brief:
The Director of IDP Brunei requested a meeting to discuss their next education exhibition. After brainstorming several hours, it was decided to keep to a local touch and match the colours with the main offices' promotional material. After the swilling of much coffee, all agreed to the use of the tagline 'a truly multicultural experience' along with 'Think IDP' for the exhibition. Pieces needed were posters, flyers, brochures, newspaper ads, banners, and calendars. All to be designed to get the biggest impact as possible. And all within the budget. The only design restrictions were their logo (colours, placement, etc), and the font specified by their corporate identity package, Helvetica Neue. As IDP Brunei was a relatively 'neue' office, one of the main points was a pressing need to brand the local office, especially as the previous designs didn't hang together. Put that with their competition having years on the ground, IDP needed to come in strong, and stay strong. That was my brief, in brief.

BEFORE:



BEFORE design elements needing attention:

Fonts: On the poster, the first thing that jumped out at me as a designer (besides the kangaroo) was the use of far too many fonts (I stopped counting at 6). In my neighborhood a good design sticks to two fonts at the most, varying the balance with bold, thin, italics and regular. In the new design this clearly wasn't going to be a problem as the specs demanded Helvetica Neue.

Not a bit of balance in sight: We have a kangaroo, too much text (and did I already mention the fonts?), people in a three ballon blob, and text sitting in glaring white boxes, all on a very dark background. There was nothing to take the eye anywhere but off the page, no grid, no balance, nothing to tell the viewer where to look, and nothing to focus on.

No continuity: Looking at the exhibition poster and flyer, except for the dark background and the twin swooshes there wasn't anything to the design that says "we belong together". Granted, in the inside of the flyer I found another fuzzy animal (yes, I know you cannot see this so you'll have to take me at my word) but not of the style that matches the poster or the front of the flyer. No seven different fonts, no text in boxes, no group of people in bubbles. Instead (except for one that's blue and in upper lower case), it's got all titles in sans serif capital red letters (some centered, some left justified), serif bold bits are peppered around in a mixture of left justified and centered, and regular serif text in boxes of yellow. Body copy is in regular serif. The graphics are a mixture of clip art and photos.

See the AFTER results»