CURDS

Design & infographics for Decentralisation Roundtable Report

We were asked by Newcastle University’s Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS) to help them with the design of a report they’ve produced titled Decentralisation: Issues, Principles and Practice. Our job was to make their frighteningly jargon-filled document more accessible through design, including the production of infographics to illustrate some of the report’s key points. The report is a clarion call for transparency and a clear sense of direction concerning any attempts to reroute power from central to local governments; a process which (to paraphrase the report) has been ad hoc, rapid and piecemeal…with decisions made behind closed doors by a narrow cadre of parties whose rationales remain largely unclear. Two hundred copies of Decentralisation: Issues, Principles and Practice were printed for the report’s London launch, although the document will largely be distributed and disseminated in digital form. The report raises a number of very important questions about decentralization, and since this decidedly shadowy process affects every single UK citizen, we hope it goes on to create a decent splash amongst policy-makers and politicians.

Update: Following the design of the report the CURDS team asked us to transform the infographics we’d produced into simple animated GIFs for use across various social media platforms. You can see the results below: