Here’s a recent response (with a few edits to protect confidentiality) to a question by a PR person who wanted to know how I’d redesign some single-page flyers for a client of theirs.
“I think {your client’s} projects are as much “information design” as they are graphic design. In other words the project isn’t just “how do I make this look better” but also involves thinking about how to categorize and “chunk” the information so it has more of an impact, and then design a layout that does a good job of both branding the client and getting the information read.
I’d be looking at the text not just as a graphical element, but also offering suggestions as to what parts of the text could be pulled out of the text body and be placed as bullet points at the top of the page for a quick scan (to increase the chance that {specific target} will see a point that matters to them and read the whole page), what generic information needs to be repeated on all printed items (similar to the “about us” footer on many press releases) so the documents could have all that in a unified header or footer area, and what fonts/colors/sizes need to be used to make the information read more quickly (since I feel that’ll be more beneficial to your client than just having the information look nicer).
Since the website uses photographs to make the message friendly and welcoming, I’d also be looking at how to integrate a key image or two with the same friendly feeling (maybe as sketches based on photos) into the layout, perhaps as part of the header/footer area so they aren’t taking up real estate needed for the main text — that way there’s more consistency between the website and the printed talking points than just using the same logo, which hopefully will make the information and the overall mission of {end client} more memorable. And finally, I’d also be looking at how those design choices could possibly be re-purposed in email footers and Word templates to make all the {end client} communication consistent.”
