When I started at Otago Polytechnic in 2010 they had a very corporate style with photos of hands to reflect the hands-on nature of tertiary study. I felt that the images were not quite right for the audience and wanted to create a more emotional connection through the photography.
We partnered with Isabella Harrex to develop an image library. This needed to cover all of the 7 career pathways and in turn all of the programme areas. It was a huge task but we did a massive amount of work, mainly in the first two years.
The Polytechnic produced a programme guide for each upcoming year. They were usually 72 pages or so, and one of the big challenges was coming up with a cover that was different each year, didn't favour one study area over another and tied in with enrolment campaigns that were being run. They also had to differentiate themselves from the competition.
2013 (below) was about capturing a real moment and the joy and pride attached to completing your study. We used real people for all of our photography.
2014 tied into the 'I love OP' enrolment campaign and each image has a heart in it. Can you find all 7?
2015 celebrated Otago Polytechnic's amazing national ratings. I found two design students and challenged them to draw them up on a whiteboard which would form the front and back covers. We also shot a time lapse video to go on the website.
2016 was my last cover and also the Polytechnic's 50th anniversary. We asked one of the Culinary Arts students to create a celebratory desert incorporating the logo somehow. We filmed and photographed the making of the finished product. We had fire, smoke, meringue and ice cream. It could have been a recipe for disaster but was a lot of fun, as were any projects we did with the students and staff.
The internal pages were a variation on a theme each year, as it wasn't practical or desirable to reinvent the wheel. I wanted people to get used to our way of laying out information. And we started capturing student stories as another way to relate to potential students.
