In addition to briefing Nick for a new product catalogue, I also pitched the idea for an updated poster archive. Looking through our old archive, it was easy to see how the Paperight brand identity had changed substantially over time and how much better our poster messaging had become.

I pitched for 6 new poster designs to highlight categories of books that would most likely hook customers in store, namely:

• matric study materials
• manga Shakespeare series
• teaching aids
• children’s books
• Bettercare nursing titles
• O’Reilly tech manuals

The blank band at the bottom of the poster designs allowed Nick to easily insert outlet details as required, yet remained unobtrusive enough that the posters could be displayed as is.

Some of these designs would also be used for display in specific departments at universities during the #textbookrevolution campaign. Versatility became one of our greatest concerns at this point in order to cut down on the previously haphazard design system that often left Nick with unnecessary volumes of work to get through.

Around the same time as the updated poster archive’s launch on the Paperight help site, we also launched a blog post detailing the facts around the change of the school South African national school curriculum to CAPS. This aimed to preempt outlet queries about what on the Paperight site would still be relevant to customers.

Effectively, as 2014 is the first matric class to write all CAPS exams, there are no past papers to add to paperight.com for sale. In the meantime, we have uploaded CAPS aligned study guides to suit the needs of the new curriculum. Despite this fact, students will also need to refer to past papers as practice and NSC papers will still be useful when it comes to revising specific theorems in the core subjects, such as maths and science.

We have received a smattering of concerned queries from outlets who have not read the blog post and we have reassured them as best we can. It appears they have been influenced by the concern felt by parents in this year of complete overhaul. Despite their trepidation, sales of NSC matric past papers remain steady and sales of CAPS study materials are on the rise.