The Heritage Alliance was awarded an Innovation grant from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to explore how they could improve the Heritage sector’s access to business support resources.
They had collected views through stakeholder consultation and surveys across three main groups - a sample of the Alliance’s membership, Alliance Staff and Trustees, and Heritage organisations in the North East (looking at whether support needs a regional approach). They wanted to produce an illustrated report which would demonstrate their findings from the Innovation: Explore project.
I had previously worked with the Heritage Alliance on a similar project creating infographics which summarised their Rebuilding Heritage support programmes findings, and it was great to be asked to work with them again.
The report was to be delivered as an accessible pdf, with icons and illustrations used as visual cues to support the narrative. I initially sent over a design for the cover and a couple of the inner pages for feedback, before working up the rest of the report.
The overall theme was signposting members and heritage organisations to business support information. My illustrations use barriers, a maze and signposts to covey the message and contain a diverse range of characters to show inclusivity across the sector. The colour palette and typefaces for the report were taken from the brand guidelines to keep consistency across communications.
I created the final document as an accessible pdf which means it’s universally easy to use and meets established accessibility standards. The result is it’s accessible for a wider audience, including people whose vision, hearing, mobility, or cognition may be impaired.
Here’s some feedback from Aisling on how she found the process.
"It was excellent to work with Sharon on the design of our report. She fully embraced the theme of our study and brought it to life with her creativity.
We had complete trust in her suggested design ideas and are really happy with quality of the end product. Communication was great, everything delivered on time and with a friendly approach."
Aisling Parrish, The Heritage Alliance
