Sometimes the projects that have the greatest impacts happen on the fly. That was the case with the Home Ignition Zone Guide I created for the Colorado State Forest Service. This pub had been on hold for a year, the information sitting in a dusty Word doc. After the wildfires of 2020, we went into the spring of 2021 looking for ways to best serve the public for Wildfire Awareness Month in May. An impromptu conversation happened in March.
“Wouldn’t it be perfect timing if….”
And so the wildfire specialist and I took it upon ourselves to resurrect the Word doc and see what we could accomplish with a window of just a few weeks. This is what came out of that side conversation. It’s currently in its third printing, with over 50,000 distributed around the state, and is one of the most-requested publications in the CSFS arsenal. I love working on projects like this that offer hands-on utility.
Timing can be everything in some projects and this was one of those where the extra push has led to great success for the agency. In less than a month, I copy edited and rearranged text for a simple, clean presentation, worked with an illustrator to create the graphics and designed and laid out the publication for a review committee, the wildfire specialist worked with me and used his networks to help gather compelling photos and provide feedback during the process, which made the final peer review go smooth.
USE: public outreach educational publication for forested land residents and landowners in Colorado
Click to enlarge select pages
Amy Bulger 