In the summer of 2019, I revamped the Annual Summer Mailer that ASSU and SSE (Stanford's Student Union and its financial arm) send out to incoming freshmen.
The Summer Mailer is meant to give incoming freshmen a quick overview of Stanford's student union, ASSU, and its various bodies (including SSE). As such, we wanted it to be an easy but informative read. Additionally, we also wanted the mailer to clarify the main structural issue that new students face when learning about ASSU i.e. how its three branches operate in conjunction to fulfil ASSU's function. Finally, since the project involved revamping a document that had remained largely unchanged for over 5 years, we wanted to update the mailer's design to reflect modern design trends i.e. a cleaner and sleeker aesthetic. This was a departure from the mailer's previous design, which was busy and text-heavy. Part of the motivation behind aligning the mailer with current design trends was to push for design longevity. We wanted to create something that could work well for a couple of years without requiring major design changes.
Cardinal Red
#AE3849
Mustard Yellow
#E2A268
Mild Green
#9DC480
Light Blue
#88C2DE
I decided to use a color hiearchy to achieve one of the goals i.e. clarifying the internal structure of ASSU and its devisions. Since the Summer Mailer is primarily a Stanford/ASSU publication, I decided to go with a bright Stanford red for the primary color. This red is used in the booklet's cover and its header/footer. Next, I wanted to establish how ASSU further comprises of three separate bodies: the Exeuctive, the Legislative and Stanford Student Enterprises. In line with our previously set design principles, I chose three flat shades of yellow, green and blue respectively to delineate these three bodies.
In previous years, the background had been two stripes of red and blue that would act as a border for the content in the middle. The problem with this approach was twofold: first, it was cutting off space for content since the border carried so much overhead, making the page look busy. Second, the stripes didn't seem to carry any symbolic significance in terms of being as ASSU+SSE publication. Therefore, I wanted to create a background that would not take away too much space from the actual content and would be representative of ASSU. Eventually, I decided to settle on a faded word-mural for the mailer's background. The mural consisted of words commonly associated with ASSU, such as Senate, Student Union, Legislation etc. Additonally, since the mural was created as a faded vignette to hang in the background, it carried virtually no overhead since content came above it.
Click here to access a PDF of the final publication.
This was my first time working with Adobe InDesign on a project. Since several things remain similar across the entire Adobe Suite, it wasn't too hard to pick up. That being said, it's always good to learn some new tools and tricks. In particular, the ease of designing multiple publciation pages in InDesign by creating A/B master layouts is pretty convenient.