The Streetsmart Handbook is a practical life guide designed to help prepare today’s youth for life after school. Since 2002, the handbooks have supported secondary schools, youth organisations and teenagers across Australia and New Zealand.
The handbook began as a 200+ page, A5, black and white handbook packed full of information relevant to 16-17 year olds at the time. Issues such as tertiary education, driving and road laws, sexual health, drugs, alcohol and personal safety, to name a few, were discussed at length in the first iterations of the handbook.
Throughout the years the handbook has adapted to the needs of youth of the time with topics being added and removed regularly to keep up with an ever evolving society.
The introduction of social media and short form content was another new hurdle that the Streetsmart Handbook needed to address. The thick, text heavy handbook was no longer the optimal format to distribute information amongst teens and a new approach was required.
The handbook needed to become an attractive and accessible option for teens to learn about life as they enter adulthood.
Through consultation with the publishers it was decided that colour images, shorter, accessible content and more frequent distribution in a glossy magazine format would be the way to go.
A complete overhaul of the handbook was undertaken from the ground up and a new era of the handbook was begun.
The handbook was broken down into three editions per year with topics revolving around the ideas of Healthy Mind & Body, Life Play & Other Stuff and Healthy Respect & Safety.
The text was updated and condensed which allowed for the inclusion of vibrant and colourful images to help grab the attention of the readers.
A flexible grid layout was employed to combine the text and images together in a loose but well-flowing layout that was easy to read and also easy on the eye.
Shifting to an A4 colour format gave the handbook more of a magazine aesthetic, making the information easier to read and take in compared to the text-heavy A5 black and white format.
