Calderdale College Course Guide

Heather Swinfen

Heather Swinfen

September saw the beginning of a new academic year, and what better way to start than with a spanking new course guide for our client Calderdale College.

Having launched their new brand in the summer, the guide was the perfect opportunity to showcase their vibrant, professional and beautiful re-brand, whilst advertising their range of courses for students.

We have designed and created the course guides for Calderdale for the past three years so have managed to establish a good flow between artworking, amending and client feedback. This year the college wanted a more mature approach, with university prospectuses used as inspiration. We started with initial ideas to get an overall clear and concise design running through the guide; keeping their main brand at the forefront but changing it up by adding new typography and graphic assets. The difference in typography helped create a new campaign, so it didn’t blend into the rest of the brand – or the rest of the competition…

It was important to the college that the guide clearly showed progression, as Calderdale offer a large amount of FE and HE courses, meaning students can continue to study up to university level. To achieve this, we developed a level flowchart that featured on every course page, as well as tables that showed different levels within FE, Apprenticeships and the University Centre. Ensuring that all the courses and levels were correct was one of the trickiest stages of creating the guide, so attention to detail was very important – and a lot of proofreading was needed!

“It was important to the college that the guide clearly showed progression”

Calderdale College commissioned photography which featured throughout, to show off their courses and facilities, along with adding a personal touch that stock imagery can’t really achieve. Colour coding was also introduced to highlight the three main courses areas, Science & Health Industries; Creative, Digital & Enterprise and Trade Academy – so overall it looked pretty amazing, even if we do say so ourselves.

The last piece of the puzzle was sending to print, and a beautiful design needed an equally beautiful finish. To keep with the professional and mature vision, the course guide was printed with a soft laminate cover with spot UV titles. Plus, the covers were printed in four different colours, to really flaunt the new brand colour scheme. Part of the team went down to the printers to see the process and ensure the covers matched the colour scheme accurately, especially as special finishes can affect the vibrancy.

We enjoyed working on this project and both Browndog and Calderdale College were super happy with the end result!

We enjoyed working on this project and both Browndog and Calderdale College were super happy with the end result!

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