Baseline Shift
– Project nameBaseline shift
– RoleBrand designer
Photographer
– DateAutumn – Summer 2025
– SpecsAdobe Illustrator
Abobe InDesign
Adobe Photoshop
For this project I worked alongside three fellow classmates to facilitate the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication’s speaker panel Baseline shift. Baseline shift invites industry professionals to give informative talks to students. The primary goal of the department was to increase the attendance across all year groups.
By the end of the academic year, Baseline Shift saw an increase of 75% amongst first year students, 167% amongst second years and 400% across third years.
In a departure from the previous year’s logo design that featured a shift key symbol, the 2024–25 team began individually sketching new, more appropriate concepts, developing the logo gradually with each round of iterations.
One early sketch (marked with a red dot in the image below) represented the idea of ‘baseline shift’ in its most literal form, achieved by shifting the baseline itself. This concept was then developed further, with the underlining rule evolving into the outline of a speech bubble in order to more clearly communicate the event’s focus on speakers. A summarised overview of the development process, from this iteration through to the final design, is shown below.
Above showcase the core stages of developing the new Baseline Shift logo; the most significant development being the implementation of the typeface Fractul. The character of the logo are directly influenced by the letterforms of Fractul, for instance, the upper terminal of the double-storey ‘a’ arching over the counter at a sharp right angle, rather than in the shape of a smooth curve seen in humanist, non-geometric typefaces.
This is the poster of the 2024–2025 academic year depicting each speaker, of which was assigned a colour drawn from the distinctive Baseline Shift branding we developed. The board itself was mounted using runners made from two pieces of mountboard – one being shorter to create a lip for the speaker cards to slide along. To secure the poster, holes were drilled through the runners to allow pins to be hammered through into wall. The areas of the wall which did not allow for pinning instead featured the runners were mounted on foam board and fixed with adhesive Velcro strips.
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.
To seamlessly communicate updates to the Baseline Shift lineup – such as speakers no longer being able to make it – the old physical, printed timetables which often were lost by students were replaced with an editable, digitally hosted PDF. To make this information readily accessible to students, a soft-touch-laminated, spot-uv-varnished business card was designed. Crucially, a QR code linking directly to the digital timetable was printed on it. These cards provided the perfect opportunity to showcase the wider branding in action while creating beautifully crafted printed artefacts – with every student receiving one.
Upon deciding on the design for our poster and printed assets, we came up with ideas on how to structure our social media templates in the style of our poster design to ensure consistency across deliverables. To maintain a regular social media presence and keep students updated during the Baseline Shift seasons. We began by sketching ideas for posts and arranged group feedback to decide on which designs work well and which are less successful.
To ensure a regular social media presence and avoid conflicts with the T&GC department’s existing schedule, we liaised with the department’s social media team to establish agreed-upon posting days. As part of the handover of responsibilities to newer team members, we refined existing templates and developed tutorials, alongside collaborative training sessions, to clearly outline expectations around content, tone, and posting timelines.
In line with our email review process, we also implemented a sign-off system requiring at least one additional team member to approve each post prior to publication, ensuring consistency, strong execution, and a high standard of grammar across all content.