Pierce County Public Works Communications Backfill contract

Creative Services

Background

In 2020, the Pierce County Communications Department reached out to Trio, needing to fill a temporary graphic design contract position. The Pierce County Communications department needed us to complete several complex print layout and design projects for Pierce County’s Surface Water & Transportation Management programs.

Strategy

We worked with Erin Babbo and Kyle Schmidtke of the Pierce County Communications Department to update several creative informational documents, including posters, booklets, and maps. We collaborated to update the design, text, and data charts in each document.

We all worked entirely remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, we communicated virtually and conducted face to face meetings through Zoom. We also hired a project manager to keep us organized, on task, and to efficiently handle communications between us and the Pierce County Communications department.

Detail of Transportation Improvement Program map

Design

Pierce County Communications needed us to update several of their existing documents for 2020. While working on each project, we chose color palettes within their branding guidelines.

We also improved each document to make it more readable. For example, the Transportation Improvement Program and Surface Water Improvement Program booklets both contained complex GIS maps of each district in Pierce County, including roads and watersheds that needed to be labeled accurately. In the original document, it was difficult to tell the difference between water and land, so we added color to the bodies of water, and labeled the major cities and towns. We also increased the contrast between the background and the roads when we updated the maps.