MPW Anniversary Book
Overview
As a celebration of the companies 50th anniversary, the CEO wished to make a book highlighting the story of the company along with some of their accomplishments.
Goal
To make a book that would perfectly highlight the development of the company and give a sense of pride to those that have worked there.
Scope
To make a book that is inclusive and easy to read.
Target Audience
Primarily the target audience for this project is the CEO of the company as well as employees that helped make the company what it is today.
Team
Patrick Conlan - Lead Designer
Boone McAdams - Secondary Designer
Scott Rowdon - Editor and Copy
Role
Researcher, Designer - Wire Framing Prototyping, Research, Design, Auditing.
"If we make this right, there are going to be a lot of people in the company wanting one"
- CEO, Monte Black
Challenge
Last year the company was producing newsletters every month. Each newsletter touched on a topic about what made the company successful. I was given the project of taking all of those stories and make a 50th anniversary book with that content.
Solution
I designed the book with a coffee table aesthetic in mind, emphasizing large visuals, compelling typography, and clean layouts. Historical photos, employee interviews, and milestone timelines brought the stories to life while reflecting the company's evolution.
Gathering Content
I went through the companies archive and collected all the issues of the newsletters celebrating the 50th year mark.
Understanding Theme
There are a lot of different ways to highlight the history of a company in a book. I wanted to make sure I was staying away from feeling too much like a year book. I wanted to make sure that there was equal parts art and context. So I started looking at other book layouts.
We had decided to stay in a design that was a little boxy. Knowing the CEO, he wanted a streamlined and sharp look to his book. We wanted to make sure all the content was clear and easy to digest.
Early Designs
I then started adding content as I found it in the companies archives to fit the theme and have a footing to start from.
Meetings and Notes
So. Many. Notes.
Which is good, we wanted to make sure that we were producing a product that the CEO could be proud of.
Every time we met, I took down notes for myself on how I can adjust the book layout, what needed excluded and what the CEO wanted to add.
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New Additions
After the meetings, new content was requested to be added to the book. So we had to collect, re-write, take photos, getting customer quotes and design some of these new requests
We made mosaics, collages, took scans of old historical photos, took new photos of staff and awards, time stamped images with dates, made a map and a timeline, added quotes that were legendary within the company. All of this was introduced into the project.
Reworking
Once the information and content was populated from our meetings. We started to put them in their places.
Resizing
We decided that we wanted to go from a standard 8.5 x 11 and stretch it out to more of an 14 x 11
Final Product
Takeaways
Impact
The book serves as a reminder for all those that work within the company the history of where they came from and where they are today. Showcasing all the tools, events and people that made such an accomplishment happen.
What I learned
While designing the book I was reminded to insure layout prior to any major design choices. Obviously sometimes that can not be avoided, in this case we put everything in the book and then decided that it would look better with a different scale. However, that wasn't a huge undertaking seeing as how we had most the content and layout already decided.
Next Steps
Distribute the books
Making sure all the team members of MPW get a copy of the book for their own use.