The Peer Privacy Protectors Project was a two-year project run in Canadian high schools by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and funded by the Office of the Ombudsman. Over that period, teens learned about online privacy and security, and then collaboratively produced the content for a guide to online safety — "by teens, for teens." CCLA reached out to Visual Creative in Spring 2017, for help creating the printed guides and web presence that were the final deliverables for the project, in both official languages.
We wanted the design to be colourful and fun, and not too long. The booklets came in at 38 pages, in each language. There were some elements of the content that loaned themselves well to information graphics (lists and maps) and some did not, in which case we used colour, shapes, and pattern for visual interest.
I chose quirky, playful fonts, and cheerful, jewel-bright colours. Each chapter has a different colour scheme, and different iconography. Each page was a custom layout, and required finessing to make both languages match in page order and page count. The design we established allowed for this with a very slight adjustment in text kerning and leading in French.
Junior designer, Brynn Schandall-O'Donoghue, took some of the graphic concepts the teen participants had come up with and developed them into a more polished form. The thumbprint / key logo used on the booklet covers is one of several concepts that came from the students, which Brynn rendered and gave professional polish. A tiny sticker was created with this logo as a webcam cover to prevent unwanted surveillance; these were distributed at the project launch event. We really wanted buy-in from the teen participants, and there was. They were very proud of how we presented their work, and to know it will be shared widely over the next few years.
