How we helped shape the editorial and narrative structure to celebrate 10 years of SMU-X
To mark SMU-X's tenth anniversary, BJC designed a 114-page publication co-created with students, faculty, and industry partners. Rather than a standard commemorative book, we built in interactive activities to reflect SMU-X's experiential ethos — and partnered with a vendor to create a custom "X"-shaped casing that brought the identity to life.
The mission
To celebrate 10 years of SMU-X experiential learning, SMU wanted to capture its impact in a published book that documents stories, reflections, and outcomes from students, faculty, alumni, and industry partners.
They looked to engage us, Brain Juice Collective (BJC), to help shape the editorial and narrative structure, ensuring the content was not just archival but meaningfully curated into a publication that reflects the spirit of experiential learning and co-creation.
The Brain Juice Approach
Our Starting Point
The main challenge was figuring out how to consolidate a decade of diverse experiences into a coherent narrative that still felt authentic and representative of the breadth of the programme. We knew it needed to balance structure with storytelling, so the essence of SMU-X wasn’t lost in the process of documentation.
We were asked to design and develop a 114-page publication capturing SMU-X’s milestones, stories, and impact, co-created with students, faculty, and industry partners. The book also included interactive elements to encourage reflection and engagement, making it more experiential in line with the SMU-X approach to learning.
The scope covered translating provided content into a cohesive narrative and visual system, designing the full layout in SMU-X’s identity, and developing consistent design templates across the publication. We also worked closely with multiple stakeholders to ensure alignment, accuracy, and smooth approvals.
A key part of the process was involving students through interview-based contributions, which encouraged critical thinking and helped shape more authentic storytelling throughout the book.
Our Role
The BJC Shift
BJC’s approach was to treat the book more like a co-created learning experience rather than a standard anniversary publication.
What We Did
The workshop sessions were designed to turn interviews from students, faculty, and industry partners into clear, meaningful stories. This helped shape the content early on and made sure the narratives were consistent but still authentic.
A key decision was to build in interactive activities throughout the book, so it wasn’t just something to read, but something people could actively engage with and reflect on. This tied back to the experiential learning spirit of SMU-X. All this while making sure the book didn’t just document the 10-year journey, but actually reflected how SMU-X teaches through doing and participation.
With that in mind we designed pages from messages from leadership to milestone pages and project stories, to interactive pages featuring SMU X education, to features on faculty and students, and more.
We then partnered with another vendor to create a custom book casing that forms an “X”, which made the whole piece feel more tangible and connected to the SMU-X identity.
Our impact
Ripples & Results
From this project, we were able to bring together students, faculty, staff, industry partners, and alumni to reflect on a shared 10-year SMU-X journey, strengthening a sense of community and continuity. We also reinforced SMU-X as a model for experiential, real-world learning by showcasing how classroom learning translates into action and impact, while also highlighting cross-disciplinary and cross-sector stories, making the impact of SMU-X more visible and relatable across different groups.
We also created a more engaging experience through interactive elements and experiential activities within the launch, allowing audiences to participate rather than just observe.
What we did:
- Launched and distributed the published book available via SMU Libraries and the National Library for wider access beyond the event audience.
- Featured 13 project stories showcasing real SMU-X outcomes.
- Included 9 student features, highlighting learner experiences and reflections.
- Included 11 faculty features, capturing academic perspectives across the decade.
- Included 6 staff features, recognising the people behind the programme’s delivery and growth.
Keeping it on our RADAr
BJC runs our projects and programmes through our Responsible Innovation Framework: RADAr. The framework allows us to ensure that we’re creating solutions for partners that are sustainable and effective. The framework goes like this: Reflect - how we review our activities, commitments and processes to understand who is currently affected by our actions, both negatively and positively, Anticipate - how we anticipate the potential impacts of our product and develop strategies to cope with uncertainties, Diversify - how we actively involve a diverse, broad range of voices and values through participation, deliberation, and accountability, And Adapt & Respond: How we adjust to challenges and perspectives so we can account for the unique contributions of different communities.
Reflect
We looked at how the content and design needed to work together, not separately. This meant understanding the different types of content (student workshops vs SMU write-ups) and how design could help bring them into one cohesive story.
Anticipate
We anticipated that with multiple content sources, the challenge would be coherence. So we planned a clear design and editorial system early on, while also exploring how the physical book could reflect the SMU-X identity in a more meaningful way.
Diversify
We designed each section to respect the nature of its content, student stories were more reflective and interactive, while faculty, staff, and partner write-ups were more structured. At the same time, we ensured a consistent visual system so everything still felt part of one publication.
Adapt & Respond
We brought content and design together through a unified system of layouts, storytelling flow, and interactive elements. On top of that, we worked with a vendor to develop a custom book casing that forms an “X” with the book itself, turning the publication into a physical representation of SMU-X that stands on its own while reinforcing the narrative inside.
Reflections
On a project level, the main takeaway was how much structure matters when you’re dealing with multiple stakeholders and different types of content. We had workshop outcomes, student stories and SMU’s own write-ups, so the challenge was making sure everything still felt like one book. That only worked because we were quite intentional about the content flow, design system, and how each section was treated differently but still tied together.
On a personal level, it reminded me that good ideas only land if they’re actually executable. The 3D “X” casing was a strong concept, but it only came to life because we worked closely with the vendor and were willing to adjust based on production realities. It was a good reminder that execution details matter just as much as the idea.
-Marguerit Malazo, Creative Executive
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