Mind Your P’s & Q’s
and other stuff about letters
Duration:
January - May 2021
Senior Capstone Project:
This project was produced in Barbara Sudick’s Senior Project class at California State University, Chico in the Spring semester of 2021.
Problem:
Create a tool to introduce rural high school students to the basics of typography.
Background:
With the continued growth of the digital divide in schools, many students do not have adequate access to information available on line. One of my main goals was how to bridge the educational equity gap and reach students that might otherwise not learn about typography.
My Role:
I completed this project solely on my own under the direction of Professor Barbara Sudick. I was responsible for identifying a problem of interest, researching further into the topic, identifying a target audience, designing a solution, prototyping, writing all the content, and creating all visual elements. In addition, I outsourced printing through Ocean Shore Printing and Blurb.
Research | Survey
After defining my problem, I developed a short survey with Chico State students focusing on their high school experience with the digital divide and accessibility to design classes or education. The majority of participants stated their high school did not offer any design-related courses. Almost ninety-one percent of participants had homework in high school that required consistent internet use and were or knew someone affected by the digital divide at their school. Ninety-five percent of participants felt their school had adequate funding, but just under twenty-three percent of people felt that funding was distributed evenly throughout the school. This survey helped me to identify the three main constraints my solution needed to work within:
My answer needed to be analog, so those without internet access could still benefit.
Because most high schools do not have design courses, the content needed to be formatted in a way that did not require students to have access to a design teacher.
My solution needed to be relatively inexpensive for schools to be interested and purchase the product.
The results from this survey immediately cut down my potential solutions. Creating an entry-level design curriculum was not feasible as it would be more costly, possibly require some internet access to be most beneficial, and require a design teacher that the school most likely didn’t already have.
Research | Annotated Bibliographies
I began reading through nine design-related books and textbooks to determine what type of content, tone of language, attitude, and difficulty level would be most appropriate for new designers around high school age. This research step-shaped my final product the most significantly. During my reading, I discovered that my solution needed to be self-contained with inviting language and enjoyable game aspects to promote learning.
Process Book
During my capstone project I gathered a significant amount of research, ideas, sketches, and writings that I organized into a process book.
Challenges
I had a few challenges to overcome with this project. The first challenge was creating a project that would fit realistically within the timeline of the course. This was my first time being granted entirely free rein to explore and design for any topic I wanted. I had an exceptionally easy time coming up with different points of interest and potential projects, but I struggled to recognize what was doable within the time restraint of a semester. Having an advisor for this project was extremely beneficial to help foresee potential conflicts and narrow down the scope of what is realistic.
Once I had landed on a problem and defined the solution working through the content and visual design was very rewarding. Where I struggled again was the printing process for the deck of cards. I originally intended on printing these cards through Moo.com but found out reasonably late into my designing process that their “infinity print” was very misleading. I initially thought Moo could print unique faces and backs to every card in the one hundred card deck. Instead, Moo required that the card’s face remain the same throughout the whole deck, but the backs could all be different prints. If this issue had become apparent earlier, I would have brainstormed how to redesign this set to function with only one unique side. However, I couldn’t afford to scrap most of the content I had already created due to time restrictions. This caused me to print at a smaller business that ultimately did not follow the print guides I had set out and led to some very disappointing card prints. This drastically affected the further production of a player manual as I had to decide how I wanted to proceed with damaged cards quickly. For the sake of reaching the deadline, I choose to move forward with the cards as is and work in Photoshop to clean up any obvious printing errors in my product photos.
Learnings
This project taught me a lot about typography and how much I enjoy creating teaching material. Teaching graphic design at a university level is a long-term goal that I hold, and this project outlined the enjoyment I feel when I get to create material aimed to teach, explain, and aid in understanding. Although challenging, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of creating and managing my project with semi-regular check-ins with an advisor.
Final Presentation
This is my final presentation of my capstone project. I discussed my process work for creating my typography cards as well as explain my design choices.
Solution
After extensive research, I choose to use analog means to provide an opportunity for curious design students to access a brief introduction into the realm of typography through a card set entitled “Mind Your P’s & Q’s and other stuff about letters.” This 100 card set is accompanied by a player’s manual that includes explanations of various styles of games to improve understanding.