For Canadian voters, I make democracy approachable
With over 60,000 books distributed across Canada, we created a Federal Election Handbook to equip everyone with the basic knowledge they need to vote.
With over 60,000 books distributed across Canada, we created a Federal Election Handbook to equip everyone with the basic knowledge they need to vote.
When I got contacted about this freelance opportunity to design a booklet to help people vote, I got excited. The turnaround was short: 3 weeks to design a 48 page booklet and website. While I had decided I wanted to specialize in digital (web + product), I would be working with award-winning Illustrator, Emma Jenkins, incredible female-run news publisher, Pressed News, and The Democratic Engagement Exchange, an organization with a powerful vision — I was committed to put my evening hours to get it done.
Make democracy sexy. With most political documents and marketing materials being very bland and corporate, The Democratic Engagement Exchange wanted to make this toolkit engaging and approachable. The goal is to equip non-voters and first-time voters with the foundational knowledge needed to feel empowered. The challenge with politics is many people will run far and fast with a few triggers, committed to “not talking politics.” The goal is not to tell readers who to vote for or being a resource outlining specific party policies.
I was provided a Google Document with over 20 pages of straight text, written by academics, condensed into conversational language by Pressed News. I took this copy and laid it out into the booklet, rearranging the copy as sensibly as possible if necessary. I visualized data, incorporated graphics, and worked with Emma to fill in areas that would benefit from custom illustrations.
When all the copy was finalized, I went in to ensure all the correct content was implemented and to make final touches to the design.
There are over 60,000 booklets in distribution across Canada at political offices, voting booths, libraries and more. Ryerson University alone has over 40 volunteers and over 10,000 students spoken to learning about how powerful they truly are.
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I kept to the same sections used in the book for most parts.
Limitation: I would have loved for the bottom navigation items to turn purple when they have been visited, to reduce revisiting the same pages and providing the feedback of a completed page. How I got around that problem was by adding numbers to the sections to help readers keep track.
I broke down really long sections into two to make it more digestible. I included the numbers to the section so users could keep track of their completed reads.
I scoured the web for plugins that could help make this tool interactive for users. I used the same graphics from the book and simplified the typography. I made the extra effort to add custom CSS to change the colours of headings and callouts.
Limitation: I wanted to find a way to make the worksheets fillable on the site itself, instead of as a printable PDF. Ideally, users would have been able to fill out the worksheet and email it to themselves. The only resources I was able to find were forms that sent the collected data to the business email.
I added a scrolling indicator to see progress. This is to make longer reads feel shorter.
I finished the website (deisgn + Squaresapce dev) in ~8 hours on one late Friday night. I took these designs and built them out on Squarespace on the client’s previous website. They were already familiar with working Squarespace, so they had free realm to edit copy as they needed directly on the platform. Since, the project has been a tool used across Canada to educate upcoming voters.
