The overall concept and goal of the bilingual typography project were to successfully redesign the “Welcome to the United States Guidebook” in both English and another language to show knowledge in both typography and page grids and layouts while incorporating a design and concept that will be appealing to an alternate cultural audience. The usability of this project is also a key aspect. Incorporating two languages effectively is critical to be user-friendly and will show mastery of displaying large amounts of copy. The client for this project is the Cultural Orientation Resource Center and the Center for Applied Linguistics. Both are leading organizations for the resettlement of refugees coming to America and are focused on providing refugees with sufficient information, guidance, and resources to make the cultural change easy. One of the many services they offer is the Welcome to the United States Guidebook which is meant to lead refugees through a step-by-step guide to the United States, its norms, and expectations. COR and CAL have had a long history of helping refugees in the United States and globally. Their history dates back to the U.S. war with Indochina which led to the present practices of these organizations.
With the project goal in mind, the overarching goal for the business side of the project is to generate a clear booklet that lays out all of the important information refugees need to know for resettlement in the United States. While COR and CAL’s services are for free their overall brand and organization’s reputation are crucial to staying positive for refugees because this directly affects their funding from the government and if the guidebook is unsuccessful they will have to support more their other programs that may require more resources. These business objectives are important to be solved by effectively solving them with design solutions and goals. The overall design should appeal to the target audience with cultural ties companies with effective layouts that make the details and information easy to understand and read.
The target audience for this project is refugees from Korea that have been approved for resettlement in the United States. The focus is on older audiences and family leaders between the ages of 18-45, both males and females equally are considered for this project. This project is targeted at people who want to learn more about American culture and expectations while also keeping their own culture to remind themselves of their past.
Both COR and CAL are described as ethical, worldly, caring, community orientated, and devoted. COR and CAL are dedicated to making the resettlement of refugees effective, resourceful, and successful. Their mission “is to increase awareness regarding the likely characteristics and needs of incoming refugee groups, as well as to facilitate culturally and linguistically appropriate orientation training for these newcomers to the United States”.
In conclusion, this project should reflect this mission statement and the audience’s view of the brand. The audience should look at this campaign as a step towards helping refugees throughout their resettlement and as a helping hand in this time of transition. To test the success of the guidebook they should look to survey refugees who have been living in the United States for some time to see if the guidebook helped them understand resettlement in the United States and what improvements could be made.
