Context:
Project Name: Palouse Ranger District FAX Cover Sheet
Year: 2007
Media: Sketching, MS Word, Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, InDesign CS,
Client: U.S. Forest Service Palouse Ranger District, United States Department of Agriculture
Client Type: Government
Client Background Information: The Palouse Ranger District is the northern most ranger district administered by the Clearwater National Forest in North Idaho. It is part of the United States Forest Service (USFS) an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 154 national forests and 20 national grasslands. Office operations for internal, public, and interagency use, but principally with the forest’s headquarters, require that multiple daily faxes from multiple departments in the district are required to be sent. The cover sheet used at that time was deemed not acceptable by new office staff management who wanted a digital one that could be printed on demand and in good quality that identified the ranger district in a more professional manner both internally and externally.
Medium: Print
Services Provided: Design, Illustration, and File Creation
Project Overview:
- Design a fax cover sheet for use in MS Word that will be used on a PC and can be both modified using word or hand written upon for daily office use. The cover sheet needs to have working fields for enter data. The cover sheet needs to be official in appearance and identify the U.S. Forest Service and be representative of the Ranger District.
Project Requirements:
- Must be monochromatic - Black
- 8.5 X 11
- Final design must be in MS Word for use on a PC.
- Must be a fillable form with fixed appearance so that any text added over a line does not move the line.
-When the form is empty it must serve equally well as a cover sheet if all the fields are desired to be filled in by hand.
- Contain the same information as the old cove letter (Date/ Phone & Fax Numbers etc.)
- Provide more space for “Remarks” on the page.
- Must contain the U.S. Forest Service Logo – Client provided High Resolution Color Image.
- Ideally would also contain the U.S. Department of Agriculture Logo – not provided.
- Must be usable throughout the office from access on a shared network.
Concept:
Visually center the work on the most iconic piece of publicly identifiable recreational property in the district to help differentiate it form the other districts in the state and nation. Illustrate this property and then incorporate the Illustration with the business needs of the cover sheet using large fonts and bold shapes so they cleanly display after being received by fax.
Development / Process:
The project was unique, as the distortion that naturally occurs while faxing had to be considered in the composition. Knowing that a professional appearance needed to result and having to use larger text, graphics and additional elements that were going to be distorted once sent posed serious considerations. Additionally the end product needed to be in MS Word and limited a fair deal of the flexibility in composition I am use to working with.
The client logo provided logo was scanned and cleaned up using Photoshop. Then it was altered removing any parts that would appear gray and saved as a high-resolution black and white jpg.
The USDA Logo was not available from my client. Fortunately from a previous project where I needed the same logo, that I recreated from a 72 DPI screen download, I was able to quickly converted my work from color to black and white. I then saved the black and white logo in Photoshop as a high-res jpg.
I drove to the Bald Mountain Lookout Tower and photographed it. The lookout is one of the most recognizable features in the region, the last remaining fire lookout on the district, and is iconic of the region’s timber production and fire suppression past. It is also a common point of local reference as well as being managed entirely by the Palouse Ranger District.
After downloading the photos I used one as a reference to draw the lookout-using Illustrator. The completed illustration was then again saved as a jpg for ease of import into MS Word. After sketching a number of ideas out then I created several rough drafts using InDesign CS to speed up my process. These compositions were presented to the office staff of the ranger district for their review. After feed back and additional rework a final composition was chosen. The approved design was built in MS Word adding security and fields so that text could be added to the sections such as: To, From. Date. Remarks, etc., while preventing the over all composition from being altering once data was added.
About:
This is another personally favorite project because it was so fun! I would love to be able to do more like this. Not only was I able to be outdoors to get the images I needed, but I was able to work with an awesome bunch of people who supported me and were great in constructive feedback as well as really clear about what they needed the project to do. I personally consider this to be more of an illustration project as I was allowed to spend time drawing in illustrator and not having to work 100% in layouts, as was the normal requirement I would get in the past working at a printers.
The work was done at night after I got off working at the ranger district and on weekends. This was all free work, and I was really happy to do it! Sort of giving something back to the ladies who in my regular job at the time made sure my crew members and I could concentrate on our job in the field and not worry about the financial side of things … I can’t express enough my gratitude for all they did for us.
