USAID 

Higher Education Retrospective Brochure

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Group was tasked with:
Longform Publication Design for Digital Distribution 
2019

• Brand Extension
• Component-based Modular System
• Iconography
• Inclusive Design (508 Compliance)
  
• Sourced Photos from National Archives
• Print Management

Team Members: Elizabeth Kirk

Background

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) works around the world with the aim of transforming families, communities, and countries so they can thrive and prosper and ultimately, become self-reliant. Working on issues like health care, the environment, agriculture, and education, they develop and support programs for underserved populations across the globe. Having dedicated people, time, and resources to Higher Education has been a priority since late 1950. USAID wanted to showcase their impactful achievements across the last seven decades.

Challenges

• Limited options via full organizational guidelines
  
• Short timeline once the text report received federal clearance
  
• 508 Compliance
  

The Design Plan

We created a design system plan that was flexible as the final text was being created for the report. With an expansive 160-page document that needed to be designed before having approved content, we needed to rely on the efficiency of the system.

Success

USAID’s brand parameters dictate that designs utilize only the primary blue and red colors. Using the brand colors with an additional gold hue for the purpose of this piece, I created and manipulated an expressive colored texture that helped tell the legacy story of USAID’s education work. The geometric shapes within the texture also helped maintain a somewhat distinguished tone throughout the piece.

The original scope dictated that this would be primarily a digital document, but the client liked the design so much that they found funding to create physical copies for distribution.