The Queen’s prospectuses are colossal.

I am an in-house designer and photographer at Queen’s, and the prospectuses are my children. Each year evolving, becoming something bigger and better than before. 

Let’s be honest. There is a lot of competition out there with Universities, and students leaving schools are getting bombarded by information from everywhere about where they should go next. We need to make something that works, and works very well.

In 2016, I was handed the gargantuan task of redesigning and rethinking the prospectus from the page size up. This is my bag.

With everything, a lot of research starts. This wasn’t just trawling through the internet and grad fairs, this was talking to students at focus groups about typography, imagery, sizes and shapes of other prospectuses they’d seen. We really wanted to get down to what exactly was cool. What we discovered was the beginning of a winning formula. They wanted different. They wanted big. They wanted really cool photos. I listened.

After a lot of trial and error. I ended up with a nice obsure size of 195x220mm. Almost, but not quite, square. To make it better, I used a really even 7 columns on this page, giving 14 columns in total on a double page spread. This might sound a bit nuts, but once you see it and how it works, it really made my life so much easier. This is what it looks like:

Which, believe it or not, allowed me to be super flexible and super creative with each spread, making everything look different, but the same. Here it is in action:

Next was the imagery. I had taught myself photography outside of work. It is an obsession. A passion. A creative release.

I had a vision for each empty area on every page and needed see it all through myself. Year on year, THIS has been the evolution in the prospectus. From location shots around Northern Ireland, to students in labs. It has changed how I look at this job.

Not only did I add this to my job role, I had decided I needed to get a drone and complete the really intense training to get my PfCO license which allows me to use it for the university. I mean. It’s a camera on a mini helecopter. It’s awesome.

With all of this, I created something I could call my best work. Design wise and photography wise. Below is a mix of shots from the last few editions. Individual publications are on my blog.