ABOUT

An award-winning, six-level, multiple-component, adult English course that provides a sophisticated, cultured experience for its users – both in content and feel.

THE CHALLENGE
Using the template supplied by Macmillan, we initially created six exceptional students books. The course has a strong emphasis on its literary sources and features a range of well-known classic and contemporary authors. Our challenge was to bring the same level of sophistication into the pages, enriching the content while maintaining the cultured feel Macmillan were striving for.

APPROACH
Macmillan wanted Global to be completely different to everything else on the market. Naturally, every course we work on is required to be individual in some way, but when we received the Global template it was clear that we would need to push the boundaries of what is expected from a 'typical' English coursebook.

Traditionally ELT publications feature a range of sources presented so that they appear to be 'real life' examples. These can take the shape of anything from magazine articles and newspapers to websites – and more recently – apps. To make Global different we had to take a completely integrated approach to the styling. Instead of presenting the literary sources as excerpts from novels, each piece had to be beautifully designed to add visual interest and blend seamlessly with the surrounding course materials, exercises and features.

The normal rules of readability and clarity required for language teaching still applied, so we had to use a variety of methods to make each page both stunning and functional.

The involvement of our own specialist department to commission all of the artwork, meant that we had complete control over the final appearance of every spread. We were able to draw colour and style from the photos supplied by Macmillan for our designs, and feed these back to the artists to complete the circle of continuity. Working closely as a team, and with the design manager Barbara Mercer at Macmillan, resulted in a truly unique and elegant course.

SCOPE
Global is a six-level adult English course with multiple components. We have been involved in the production and design of the student books, teachers books (including the pilot design), workbooks, eWorkbooks & eComponents for all levels.

ESU SUCCESS
In 2010 Global was the winner in two categories of the English Speaking Union awards and off the back of this success our involvement in extending the reach of the Global course has continued.

FURTHER INVOLVEMENT
Global has become much more than a traditional English language course and every year the team at Macmillan extend the resources and learning opportunities for users of Global. We have more recently been asked to design the Global Business Online Teachers Resource Interface which will form a huge part of the way teachers use the Global Learning Management System.