Shannon Trust 'Write Now' series

A set of five books to help people in prison improve their reading and writing

Project type: Textbook design

Working with: Shannon Trust

Completed: November 2023

Sector: Education

Shannon Trust is a charity which helps people in prison to improve their reading, writing and numeracy. For reading and writing they run learner-led programmes called Turning Pages and Write Now, the latter being the books we helped to design for this project. From a graphic design perspective the classification of this project could be seen as ‘textbook design’; however given that Shannon Trust assigns mentors to work through the books with learners they are more of a learning guide/resource.

The Write Now series comprises five books totalling 692 pages, encompassing embedded reading books, questions and activities. Prior to us getting involved, talented printmaker and designer Amy Mellis had added about 40% of the content to InDesign documents; we worked on the remaining books as well as making final amendments across the whole series ready for print. We also helped out with small amendments to the Shannon Trust Count Me In numeracy books [but this page is not about them].

Big thanks to the following folks at Shannon Trust: Milly Connelly for commissioning and project management; Sarah Stokes for the inventive activity design ideas and professional collaboration; James Argent for allowing us to work on the Count Me In manual design; Megan Jackson for watchful eyes on the proofing; Jonathan Dye for expert knowledge on everything printing.