Branding - Final report unveils 54 recommendations for a more inclusive UBC
The Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Task Force formed in April 2021 with six committees representing Work and Study constituencies and Equity Deserving Racialized Groups. The Task Force was created as part of the response to UBC’s commitment to build a more inclusive university community.
Castlemain Group was engaged to complete the design for the 300 plus page report in March 2022 with only three weeks to final approval and launch of the digital copies to appear on UBC’s website. The deliverables were completed in both digital and print - the print assets included a 300 plus page bound report, as well as individual committee reports that worked as a box set, housed in a branded slip cover. Also included were a poster and bookmark to commemorate its launch.
The design team at Castlemain gleaned meaningful insight from collaborating with the Task Force Chairs and other UBC stakeholders at the project’s outset, creating a branding system that conveyed a feeling of openness and inclusivity, while maintaining a professional look and feel for a university of UBC’s calibre. The result was a cohesive set of committee reports that differentiated themselves from each other through imagery and colour, yet tied together through consistent typography, layout and supporting infographics and other branded elements.
One of the most striking features was the slipcover case that was wrapped in a custom word cloud graphic that could also be found within each of the separate committee reports. Its intention was to garner interest in the box set and entice the reader to explore the committee reports found within. Also of note was the design team’s interpretation of the theme ‘54 Steps on the Pathway to an Anti-Racist and Inclusively Excellent UBC’ - a coloured brushstroke was featured on each committee report’s cover and linked the set together to form one continuous pathway.
An excerpt from the report explained the Castlemain design team’s experience in managing and executing the project at hand:
“…we are very grateful to and appreciative of Peter Arkell and Brooke Jewell at Castlemain Group for their diligence, creative response, and hard work in the graphic design of the ARIE TF final report. They were outstanding in interpreting our ideas in the most creative and expressive ways that reflected the optimism of the deeply moving work of the ARIE TF and its recommendations.”
- Shirley Chau & Handel K. Wright
ARIE Task Force Co-Chairs
