Year: 2020

Tools: Adobe Illustrator

Employer: ELSI (Earth-Life Science Institute) is an international, interdisciplinary scientific research institute hosted by TITech (Tokyo Institute of Technology). TITech is a national research university and one of the most prestigious universities in Japan.

The annual public lecture is series of public talks given by researchers and aimed at the general public. They are held every January in tandem with the ELSI International Symposium. Preparation typically begins in late spring/summer so that there is plenty of time for the Public Relations Office to print material and advertise the event via printed and digital materials.

This project involved creating numerous items for the annual public lecture: a poster and flyer, social media material (banners, mobile banners and website banners), and wallpaper.

I began with this part of the project. The first task was to create an editable banner to promote the annual public lecture on Twitter. The theme is "fieldwork" and the Director of Science Communication requested either something abstract and attractive, or a design that alluded to this topic. For designs inspired by the topic of "fieldwork", I researched online by searching for images relating to fieldwork, landscapes and research.

After fruitful discussions with another PR team member, I came up with the following draft designs:

Two of the designs were inspired by the idea of researchers exploring a landscape and altitude maps I had stumbled upon during my own online research. The Director of Science Communication and PR team all agreed on the final design as it could also be interpreted as biological in addition to geological.

I set about making some adjustments and different colour combinations so that it was both clear that the announcement was about the same event, but it was also fresh and new to catch people's attention. This was because the Director of Science Communication decided to release small pieces of information over a set time period to maintain interest and curiosity.

How it looks on the ELSI Twitter account.

Mobile phone banners, which are basically the same but redesigned for mobile display.

The website banner.

On the ELSI website.

I added some more graphics to make it clearer that there is also a biological aspect to this public lecture. The images below show how it developed through both my own decisions and the requests of the Director of Science Communication and the PR team.

Please note that, in Japan, there is a particular format these posters and flyers must follow that means they appear text-heavy from a western perspective.

For these two below, there was an issue with the rules and guidelines of logo usage, so the PR team asked to see colour logos on a light grey background. Yes, I already knew this would look bad, but non-designers have to first see how bad it is before they understand! I also created one with the white logos on a solid dark background because this kept it congruent with the rest of the design and I was sure everyone would agree after comparing the two.

I had hoped to keep more of the background design visible, but we all agreed that it looked more cohesive with all semi-transparent boxes the same width as the white-outline box at the top.

The next issue brought up by the PR Office was legibility versus visibility of the background design. So I made one design with the boxes remaining partially transparent, and another where they are completely opaque.

From here on, it was mostly rearranging, resizing and tweaking... It is always a challenge to include all the text demanded by following the Japanese format, include both Japanese and English, keep the text large enough it is legible to an ageing population, AND try to avoid it looking like one over-packed mess!

After I left ELSI, I was asked to make another 6 minor edits and this is the final version of the poster:

And now for the flyer, which was double-sided: one side Japanese and the other English. I'll focus on the English side. The flyer was created in tandem with the poster, so all changes and design decisions made with the poster were likewise applied to the flyer.

After my departure, I was asked to make a further 11 minor edits and this was the final version:

Registration and attendance for this event in 2021 was boosted by 181% and 283% since 2016.

Here is the poster on display! I also made the basic design for the poster on the right, which can be seen here: 9th ELSI International Symposium

The other three posters to the left were also designed by me and can be found here:

Finally, the wallpaper. This was offered as a free gift to attendees and was a resize and redesign of the poster and flyer background: