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Modus responded to a tender for the provision of design and print services to Worcester Community Housing (WCH) in June 2008. (WCH) is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, registered with Companies House and the Tenant Services Authority (TSA). WCH also enjoys charitable status and is registered with the Charity Commission. WCH was set up in 2004 to take over the ownership and management of Worcester City Council’s rented homes and now manages a portfolio of approximately 5,000 properties in and around Worcester.
Modus were appointed in 2008 as the approved design agency, providing creative, design, print and online solutions across a wide range of activities and media.
We have a contractual responsibility for designing and producing a quarterly newsletter called ‘Housing Matters’. This is a 16 page A4 publication designed to engage with residents across all age groups. There are specific sections for kids, competitions, diary events, news and views, tenant satisfaction surveys, good neighbour stories, spotting problems in around properties, competition winners, estate walkabouts, training, legal assistance, estate managers’ surgeries etc. We print 5000 copies and manage the mail merge fulfilment and distribution to 4700 tenants across the estate.
We also produce a large print version WCH have available CD, audio and braille versions.
We employ our expertise and knowledge from working in the visually impaired sector in the design and delivery of this new product to ensure its accessibility for those requiring large print.
We are strong practitioners of DDA and good practice and have as part of our consulting and support team a former Hilton Hotels disAbility champion and DDA Consultant, Michael McGrath, and Dawn Jackson, a Clinical Specialist in Occupational Therapy. In addition we work with the inclusive design toolkit commissioned by BT and developed in partnership with the http://www.inclusivedesign toolkit.com/I design research team, in particular with other clients such as, Sight Concern Worcestershire, and Aston University’s Disability and Additional Needs Unit.
We were responsible for the annual production of the community diary 114 page A6 wirobound diary which is the main message carrier for the associations customer charter and customer promise, ensuring that the customer involvement statement is available 12 months of the year.
We also sell advertising pages in the diary to contribute to the budget.
We are responsible for the production of ad hoc literature and leaflets and we are often the proposer of a communications solution and ideas to a given problem or brief. An example of which is a recent 210mm square brochure we suggested to help communicate six years of committing and delivering to promises. The brief was a bit ambiguous in the requirement for something high quality to tell the WCH success story of the past six years to the stakeholders but on a tight budget. We coined the campaign celebrate six and established a strong engaging design to convey delivering of promises, the building of new homes, and the creating of decent homes.
We are engaged in an annual large project designed to communicate all elements of tenancy including agreements, tenants handbook, repairs handbook, deeds of variation (which is large mail merge project) and associated products. For this project we have responsibility for product specification, design, print, data management, mail merge and fulfilment including postage.
Other projects include ad hoc design briefs such as making 2m foamex keys for a PR exercise, to creating and making eight-foot penguins for a winter wonderland event.
We recently completed a project to launch a rewards website and rewards brand. The rewards program is similar to a Tesco’s Clubcard where residents will collect points for any involvement activities they take part in. The branding is associated with the existing brand but is distinctive.
We have produced a pictoral tenancy agreement brochure to simplify the tenancy agreement to those with communications difficulties and were commissioned in October 2012 to take responsibility for the WCH internal newsletter. This takes the form of a fortnightly e communication based on a designed pdf with hypertext links to extended copy and relevant websites, hosted articles and audio visual links. This fortnightly pdf will be summarized on a quarterly basis with a page turnable e book.
“Modus provide me with an excellent service delivered by an excellent team. They work hard to build relationships and to assimilate themselves to our company values. They are passionate about excellent customer service and regularly go above and beyond their role to ensure it is delivered. I am happy to recommend their services to any organisation – both for design and print.”
Rachael Shaw, Worcester Community Housing
