Baseline Shift: Branding & UX/UI Design Case Study

design process

Mission

Baseline Shift is the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication's guest lecture series. The goal was to redesign the branding for and curate the 2024–2025 Baseline Shift lineup.

This was a multifaceted brief involving branding, communication, event organising, and written blog posts.

Approach

Branding
Poster design
Stationary design
Social media
Organising speakers
Hosting events
Written reports
Copy editing

Outcome

The 2024–2025 Baseline Shift sessions have been a great success, seeing a skyrocket in attendance and an overwhelming amount of positive feedback from students, staff, and speakers alike.

User

Students (BA & MA)
Industry speakers
University lecturers

The image above illustrates the final stages of developing the new Baseline Shift logo. A key breakthrough in the process was the integration of the Fractul typeface. The logo’s forms, and the broader visual identity, draw directly from Fractul’s letterforms, most notably the double-storey ‘a’, where the upper terminal that arches over the counter forms a sharp right angle rather than the smooth curve seen in most typefaces.

To allow for updates to the Baseline Shift lineup and timetable, the old physical, printed timetables were replaced with an editable, digitally hosted PDF. To make this easily accessible to students, I designed a business card featuring a QR code that linked directly to the digital timetable. These cards provided the perfect opportunity to showcase the wider branding in action while creating beautifully crafted printed artefacts – with every student receiving one.

To ensure the poster remained easily editable as speaker information frequently changed, I initially designed a modular poster with each speaker on a separate peel-away card. Feedback suggested the poster should remain intact as an archive of previous speakers, so the concept was revised into a modular design with cards sliding along runners, allowing details to be updated as needed.

Each speaker was assigned a colour drawn from the vibrant lines used across the wider Baseline Shift branding.The individual speaker cards overlapped, and when slid along the runner for the week of a talk, the poster revealed a piece of the designer’s work displayed alongside their profile.

The image above shows the materiality of the printed posters, including the runners and fixings. The runners were made from two layers of mountboard – one shorter to create a lip for the speaker cards to slide along. Holes were drilled through the runners so that pins could secure them to the wall. Where pinning was not possible, the runners were mounted on foam board and fixed with adhesive Velcro strips.

Blog posts have always been a part of Baseline Shift’s history. This year, the team committed to writing, editing, and publishing them consistently each week following each talk. Every post was either written or edited by myself, and I am hugely proud of each one, as they celebrate the incredible speaker lineup we were able to curate. To ensure brand consistency, I also designed a website header to lead into the Baseline Shift blog page.

client testimonial

testimonial

I now have a new baseline of excellence

I don’t think I have ever seen such a successful student team. Through thick and thin, they have supported each other and made the Department proud. I now have a new baseline of excellence in how these things should work. I can’t really take the credit for that. Every year, tremendously able young people find our BA Graphic Communication course and sign up, not quite knowing what to expect. When the most able take on the biggest challenges, the best I can do is get out of their way and be there when they need to talk.

James Lloyd

Teaching & Learning Director, Typography & Graphic Communication, UoR

tommymol

tommymol