Sophie and Melissa’s work is at the heart of University’s strategy

Date 18.12.2017

A key document mapping out the University of Northampton’s future showcases the work of two talented Illustration students.

Course-mates Melissa Polkey and Sophie Kennedy were chosen by Vice Chancellor, Professor Nick Petford, to summarise the University’s strategic plan in graphic form.

The final year students produced a hand-drawn infographic to summarise the content of the 2015-2020 strategic plan, Transforming Lives + Inspiring Change, which was updated this year.

Download the pdf of the infographic here

Melissa said: “The information we needed to include in the infographic was set in stone, but the brief was quite open and to have that freedom was equally terrifying and brilliant.

“We were told the information had to ‘flow’; there is a recent trend of hand-drawn infographics as people are realising that complex pieces of information are conveyed so much better when laid out visually.”

Melissa added: “Normally the media and techniques I use are vastly different, but for this I stripped back and really thought about the hierarchy of information – after that the styling came organically.

“The little ‘what’, ‘how’, and ‘why’ guys are all Sophie’s genius idea and are the cutest things ever.

“We wanted to do justice to the very well thought out and thorough principles of the strategy; so the main challenge was fitting all of those big thoughts into such a little rectangle!”