updates
December 21, 2011
To commemorate the opening of BCIU’s Confucius Classroom, we produced a variety of posters to serve as wall art. Several featured manipulated images representative of Asian culture along with stylized typography and graphical elements. Particularly colorful ones announced the Confucius Classroom opening and the Colorful China performance.
September 15, 2011
Another Opening Day Inservice has come and gone, and as usual, we had our hands full in the weeks leading up to the multimedia presentation that is at the core of our companywide meeting. Requiring a healthy mix of photography, copywriting, print design, digital design, and video production, there's always plenty of Opening Day work to go around.
Each year, the PR Department supports the Opening Day speakers by providing rich Keynote slide presentations and video components; this year's main presentation contained 239 unique slides. In addition to short videos showcasing the Keystone STARS childcare centers and BCIU's Asian Studies Collaborative and its use of distance learning technology, we produced three slightly more fanciful video projects this year.
The first project was a BCIU trivia module designed to entertain attendees before the official presentation began, similar to trivia games often seen in movie theaters before the previews begin.
Continuing with the movie theme, the second project yielded an attention-grabbing, computer-animated homage to the 20th Century Fox Studios introduction, replacing the text with "Berks County Intermediate Unit."
Our third fanciful project told the story of our ongoing River's Chase renovation project in a novel way. We mixed vintage footage of the city of Reading (culled from a nuclear attack preparedness film from 1956) with footage shot by BCIU's PR Department. We then processed the modern footage to mimic the look and quality of the vintage footage and produced a thematically appropriate soundtrack. The result was a lighthearted, yet informative, look at the renovation project.
Of course, our full-color, 16-page annual report and agency overview also contain a wealth of information, and you can find PDF versions of them here. There's also an animated flipbook version of our annual report for the adventurous!
June 7, 2011
With the ongoing renovations at BCIU's River's Chase offices, just about everyone has had to relocate to temporary quarters while their new offices are being prepared, and the public relations office was no exception. The PR office will share an office with some of our technical support staff until the end of the year, when we hope to move into our new permanent office.
On the bright side, we seized the opportunity to clean out and recycle some of the older materials that have accumulated in our space over the years. Evaluating what items will join us in our new office and what materials will find new life as recycled goods provided quite a trip down memory lane and showed us just how far BCIU has come during its 40 year history. The entire PR staff pitched in to ensure a smooth relocation.
April 29, 2011
A benefit of public relations work is learning of the accomplishments of co-workers and being in a position to acknowledge and publicize them. When staff members of the Child Care program completed college coursework to advance the STARS rating of their classrooms, our photographer commemorated their achievements in a group photo published in the April edition of  Emphasis.
April 15, 2011
Our friends at the Early Learning Investment Commission wanted to overhaul their website to make it serve their mission more effectively and be more in tune with their partners in the corporate sector. We redesigned it with a bright, crisp new look and feel and simple, efficient functionality. We used JOOMLA architecture to take advantage of various built-in features, including the easy-to-use content management interface. Check it out here.
March 31, 2011
Variety is the spice of a photographer's life. Even though most of what we do is about teaching and learning, the photo situations we find ourselves in run a fairly wide gamut. Last week it was therapy dogs and early learners, this week it's an RMCTC alumnus who's a masonry instructor. Never a dull moment--and that's a good thing!
March 21, 2011
Since barcodes are expanding into more and more areas of daily life, we decided to give them a try. To advertise the upcoming Virtual Conference on Online and Blended Learning to our Technology Advisory Group, we created business cards featuring a QR (quick response) barcode. Scanning the code with a smart phone or iPod Touch with an Internet connection takes the user to a web page that provides additional details about the conference. Although its use is limited to users with barcodes readers, this technology has both advantages and appeal, and we are eager to make use of it in future projects.
March 9, 2011
Our peer members of the Pennsylvania School Public Relations Association judged one of our projects worthy of an Award of Honor in the recent publications contest. Here's a look at the cleverly designed cover. See the Dec. 21 entry below for the story and views of the inside and outside of the brochure.
March 1, 2011
Employees from a local Target store visited BCIU Child Care classrooms last week to read to the children and donate some books to their classrooms. The staff got to sit back for a few minutes, the volunteers read enthusiastically, and the children listened attentively! Dr. Seuss and Sesame Street stories work every time.
February 25, 2011
In early February, BCIU's Green Committee, champion of all things environmentally friendly, suggested that BCIU take its biweekly employee newsletter, Unison, completely online. Although Unison has existed as a traditional print publication for decades, the Public Relations team viewed its transition into a fully digital format as an opportunity to flex our creative and technical muscles.
Using design processes similar to those used to create the printed version of Unison, we redesigned the look and feel of the newsletter to take advantage of the flexibility that an online environment has to offer. Previously constrained to two black and white pages in order to minimize production costs, the new Unison is brimming with color and can be as long as it needs to be without the worry of additional costs.
We decided to build interactive multimedia elements into each issue in an effort to create more engaging content for our employees. The first online-only edition of Unison included audio clips from our Employee of the Month, a short video showcasing the launch of the construction project at our Rivers Chase facility, and several active hyperlinks. While Unison will likely continue to evolve over the next few issues, we are excited about the potential of this new format.
December 21, 2010
When colleagues from the local BrainSTEPS consulting team asked us to develop a brochure for them, our brains went into overdrive. Our designer was eager to try an intriguing new design concept.
This brochure was cut at an acute angle along the top, folded once by a machine, then once by hand, creating a colorful, zig-zagging, accordion-style piece. The result is a totally cool brochure that has been drawing kudos from everyone who has seen it, including program folks at the state level.
Although the brochure is more impressive to hold in the hand than it is to view online, these links will enable you to at least have a glimpse of it:
Cover
Inside Spread
Outside Spread
December 9, 2010
Requests for Save the Date cards come up so fast that we should save dates for designing them. The Local Right to Education Task Force is growing and getting more organized; this card and expanded Web presence should help encourage attendance at upcoming meetings.
November 30, 2010
Just in time for Thanksgiving we had the opportunity to publish an article about the use of assistive technology in the Early Intervention program. We got a glimpse of teachers and therapists working with young children with special needs whose progress is facilitated by a wide variety of devices. We were charmed by the children, intrigued by the technology, and impressed by the staff. All in all, it was an uplifting experience very well timed for the holiday.
November 5, 2010
Even with a flurry of October vacations, the PR staff continued to produce some engaging promotional materials for our colleagues and clients. Among many other projects, we created program announcements and materials for the 2010-2011 Leadership Series, including a colorful brochure, a registration form, and a two-minute promotional video.
We also created a full-color fall newsletter called "Tech Talk" for our friends at the Reading Muhlenberg Career & Technology Center. Our writers and photographer went on location around the county to get the stories and photos that made up this semi-annual publication, and our designer got to flex her creative muscles on a colorful layout.
Our web designer continued to evolve websites for several of our clients, including the Governor Mifflin School District and BCIU's Asian Studies Collaborative. New elements are being deployed on these dynamic websites all the time, so be sure to check out some of our handiwork!
september 9, 2010
Maybe we’re just trying to hold onto that feeling of being tourists on summer holiday a little longer, but we’re still doing the postcard thing—not mailing them from fun shore points or exotic destinations—creating utilitarian ones for various internal clients. One, featuring views of opposite sides of the globe, announces free streaming video resources about Asia that are available to school districts. Another one, featuring black and white photos of students and staff, serves as an invitation to an open house for BCIU’s Alsace alternative education program. A third one encourages school personnel to register for an upcoming professional development workshop. You won't see them in gift shops, but they're out there doing what they were designed to do.
August 20, 2010
As the new school year approaches, the PR office has ramped up its efforts to prepare the multimedia extravaganza that is the BCIU Opening Day Inservice. In addition to creating a traditional annual report that will be printed in limited quantities, we built an animated flipbook version that can be accessed via the web. We also invested a significant amount of time in creating an engaging, comprehensive Keynote presentation (150+ slides!) for our executive director.
For this year’s presentation, we ventured into new territory by creating three short videos that will be embedded in the main Keynote presentation. These videos feature a combination of live-action video, photographs, music, and narration to showcase the diverse nature of BCIU’s services.
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