‘Bicycle Booklet’ is a graphic design project I began a while ago, and continue to be involved in. It means a lot to me because it has started a life with meaning beyond my original purposes, and it has the potential to make a positive impact on my town.
I designed the booklet back in April to be an educational guide for bicyclists. I got the idea when I wanted to find out whether I should ride my bike on the sidewalk or on the road, and realized that this information was not accessible without a lot of online research. Also, even if I followed the ‘correct’ way, I would be in the minority of bicyclists and receive harassment from drivers.
I needed to do a pro-bono project that semester in order to graduate, so it was an easy decision.
It wasn’t long after I’d conceived of the booklet that I discovered the Sustainable Transportation Committee (part of Ozark Greenways) had been working on the same idea! This is how I got to know Andy Cline: He was writing the content of a “Utility Cycling Booklet” but didn’t know when or how it would get published. Andy’s blog, Carbon Trace, is all about biking as transportation, so writing this book was waaay more his expertise than mine.
So we shot photos, drew maps, and I got underway designing the graphics and illustrations. By the end of semester I had several finished mockups via Kinkos and my teeny weeny shaky hands.
From the school perspective, I was done. But we had kept the Committee updated as the project progressed, and by the time the booklet was finished, the Ozark Community Foundation had supplied the money to get it printed in a big run!
So, now these booklets are getting distributed all over the place by the City and other community organizations. It’s been so exciting to be involved in this project every step of the way, and see it going in such a good direction.