Normative is a software design firm based in Toronto, Canada. Every new employee at the company receives a handbook to serve as a sort of "guide". During my summer internship at Normative, I was assigned the task of redesigning the book, in order to better capture the internal feeling and philosophy of the team.
The layout is designed based on a mix of Normative's philosophy Design for the Network, visual references and inspiring quotes gathered from the team and a big pinch of playfulness to set the right tone.
Photographs of the studio environment compose some of the book content - that includes not only the studio and the team itself, but also working tools, post-its, etc. Most of the overlaying elements in the layout are grabbed from pictures of the white boards and sticky notes from around the studio.
To reinforce even more the "internal" feeling, a series of pictures were pulled from Slack, the main tool used by the team for communication inside the studio.
Every employee of the studio was asked to write the company name on a paper sheet, by hand. The signatures were gathered to compose the cover of the handbook.
