This project is a redesign of an Intramural Sports Department Employee Handbook from Western State Colorado University.
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Project Specifics
Semester
Fall 2020
8W2
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TECM 5280
Tools
Role
Document Designer
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Category
Assignment
Team
Me
Background
Why a Redesign?
I was given the task to redesign the Western State Colorado University Intramural Sports Department 2013-2014 Employee Handbook after learning and understanding about "layout and design sins" and principles of design to increase the effectiveness of the document. I created this using Adobe Indesign and deployed a variety of design principles.
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For this revision, I could only use the content of the original document; I could not add or subtract anything, and it needed to have an interactive table of contents with bookmarks. Below are a few key changes I made to the document before linking to the redesigned document itself.
Document Changes
Table of Contents
The original document did not have a table of contents, so I created an interactive one in which users can click on sections of the document they wish to see and jump to it directly.
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New Table of Contents
Centered Text
The original document had centered text where it was inappropriate to have it. In my redesign, I moved contact information and the title on the cover page of the document to be left-aligned.
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Centered Text on Original Document Cover Page vs Redesigned Left-Aligned Cover Page
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Centered Text on Original Document Contact Info vs Redesigned Left-Aligned Contact Info
Improper Use of Underlining and Hierarchy
Throughout the original document, headings and subheadings were underlined which gave readers the false sense that each heading was a link to another resource. Since I added the interactive table of contents, I was under the assumption that this document was to be viewed on a computer which can lead to reader confusion if coming across underlined headings. I replaced the underlining with colored bolded text to reassign proper hierarchy of headings.
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Original Underlined Heading vs Redesigned Bolded Heading
Lack of White Space
The original document, instead of leaving one page for each section, combined multiple sections in one page, not leaving enough room for white space. When there was an opportunity for white space, it's filled in with the university logo. Below, in this specific instance, it breaks the section in half as the next page for the Discipline section is a form that has the possibly to be printed and turned in.
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Original Document with Lack of White Space vs Redesigned Document
Lack of Proper Labels for Tables
The labels for one of the tables in the original document was inside the table itself and the heading for this section was missing from this page. Without context, the table could belong in any section. I added a continuation heading and moved the labels to the top of the table outside of it.
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Original Document Table vs Redesigned Document Table
Original Handbook and Redesigned Handbook
Here I've included PDF files of each handbook for better viewing.
Original Handbook
Redesigned Handbook
Challenges and Thoughts
Challenges
This was one of the first Adobe InDesign projects my class did, and I had to apply what I learned about the program from a LinkedIn Learning course and my knowledge of design principles and "sins" to come up with a proper redesign that can be used in the real world. Since I was still getting used to how InDesign worked at the time, I kept going back and forth between guides and the document. It took much longer than I expected, but the final result shows the hard work that I put into redesigning this document.
Thoughts
I really enjoyed working on this assignment. Redesigning inspired my creative abilities despite the fact that I still had to use design guidelines and principles for the entire project. I kept certain aspects of accessibility in mind while redesigning (as mentioned above, the underlining of text and links) and I plan to bring these skills into other future work I do, whether it be from short Microsoft Word documents to entire reports for presentation.