This year I was part of the Catalogue Committee for our end of year publication to accompany our Degree Show. Initially we started thinking about fundraising and how we might raise money through an auction, clothes sale or bake sale, but in the end we did not need as much money as we initially thought. We had already done one clothes sale however, so we decided to use the money for an opening night celebration for the students and staff etc.
One of our main jobs on the committee was to find, meet and work with a designer to develop the visual layout of the catalogue. We were recommended Andra Priboi as she was already working with other students and had a good variety of publications and work in her portfolio. We set up a brief meeting where we explained the job and the deadlines, we also gave her some initial ideas about colour layout etc. Later on she gave us samples of her own thoughts and ideas and we discussed them as a group and then again with Andra so she can realise the final product.
Another part of my role was to review statements from fellow students and format them for the catalogue design. This was a challenging task as they were all so different and needed different levels of editing. However, I never edited too much of the statement other than grammar, I wanted their statements to be true to how they reflect on their work and practice. After all it is everyone’s catalogue and should not represent just the committee’s preference.
There were many challenges throughout, mainly to do with the short amount of time we had and the difficulty of organising multiple people to a single schedule. It was also at times hard to have conversations around design and layout as some members had strong opinions and compromise was difficult, whereas others were sometimes not vocal or expressive enough.
In the end we worked through the issues together problem solving with meetings and using WhatsApp to stay in contact and on top of deadlines. This was also a useful resource, as well as OneDrive, for exchanging files and keeping information synchronised.
