TOOLKIT: College Survival Guide

Description:

My toolkit is all about helping the college student adjust to their new life in New York City. When thinking about this project, I was trying to think of a community that I could really connect to, to create the most accurate and helpful toolkit. Then I started thinking about my struggles adjusting to college, and I’m from New York, so I could only imagine how overwhelming it may be to be coming from somewhere else. My goal for the toolkit is to give an easy guide to making the adjustment to college a little easier, to give some tips that I’ve learned throughout my first year, and to show fellow students ways to save some money and help out the environment. In the midst of all the college craziness, its hard to take a moment to figure out budgeting and finding ways to save. It’s also not the easiest to research how to change your habits so you’re not contributing to the environmental crisis as much. To help out with this, my toolkit is divided into three parts. The first tool is my Guide book. The cover of my guide book features my company logo, as do all my other tools and my website. The inside of the book begins with an introduction, and almost every page has an illustration I did on illustrator. To view and read my guide book in the clearest way possible, I’ve included digital photos of each spread down below. The guide book includes the tips and tricks: “Time Management and Making an Efficient To-Do List,” “Always Aim to be Early and Show Up,” “Using Public Transportation and Refilling Your MetroCard,” “Reusable Water Bottle and Coffee Mug,” “Make Your Coffee or Tea at Home,” “The Reusable Shopping Bag,” “Other Alternatives to Plastics,” and “Make Time for Yourself and The Amazing City Around You.” Along with giving tips and reasons, many sections include examples of things to invest in, like reusable water bottles, and comparisons of prices for buying inshore or making at home. I hope this book will show how easy it is to make small changes that will improve the college experience, help save money, and help the environment a bit. One of the sections of my book is “The Reusable Shopping Bag.” That leads into my second tool, directions and a pattern for making your own reusable shopping bag. Yes, it’s easy to find one in store and that is much better for the environment than single use plastic bags, but why not take it one step further? If you have old fabric like old denim or an old bed sheet that you were going to throw out, you can transform it into a custom reusable bag in just a few easy steps. That way you save money by using materials you already have instead of buying a bag, you cut out single use plastic bags, and you keep those old pieces of fabric out of a landfill. My last tool is a map of New York that includes little symbols on it. The map has the landmarks of the city on it, along with some illustrated foods. The foods have numbers on them that coincide to the list on the right that gives the name and address of economical places to eat throughout the city. Food can be so expensive, especially in New York, so I hope this map helps kids find cheaper options that are still yummy. When I first started thinking about my toolbox, I was going to have a box, packet, or folder, that all these pieces of paper would fit into conveniently. Then I started thinking. In the beginning of the year, you are bombarded with so many papers and packets that you don’t even know what to do with. Half of them get lost, the other half end up thrown out. The one thing that we always have on us and can keep track of are our phones and computers. So for my toolbox, I turned all my tools into a website. The website is clear, easily accessible, and you can access it whenever you need it. If you’re looking for one of the restaurants I included on my map, you can just pull out your phone and find it instead of carrying around that huge piece of paper. My website is designed very crisply and cleanly. The home page includes my logo, a vibrant photo, some slogans, and then the buttons that lead to the pages housing my tools. I picked some bright, clean, photos to go along with these buttons and small descriptions. All my fonts are consistent and I colored my text to match the colors I used in my logo and throughout the project: blue, pink/coral, and green. I would have liked to have customized the home page more, however I had a lot of restrictions on the website platform I was using. To get the further customization options, I would have to pay for them, which is not something I could do at the moment. Even without the further customization, I am very happy with the website I designed, I feel like it looks very neat and professional and it is easy to navigate. The first button leads you to my guide book page. Here, the book is formatted a little differently, as you read section by section as you scroll down. Each section is divided by a small spacer line and each title is in bold and in one of my color scheme colors. I decided not to include the little drawings I put in my physical guide book because felt like they clashed with the professionalism of my site. The second button leads you to the directions for creating your own bag. While all the wording and diagrams are the same, the formatting is once again different. I actually prefer it on the website. I feel like it is much clearer and easy to follow than printed out on a single piece of paper. The las button brings you to the food map which basically stayed the same, as I used the exact same map as I printed out. The bottom of each page includes a clear photo of my logo. I am beyond happy with how my toolkit came out. In the beginning, this project seemed like a lot to tackle, but I feel like every tool and the website I made is clear, informative, helpful and does exactly what it is intended to do.

Website:

https://collegesurvivalguidenyc.weebly.com

Photo of Presentation: