Kane School Training Manuals
PROJECT SCOPE
Kinected and the Kane School of Core Integration have been a pillar of the New York City pilates community for over 20 years. The pilates teacher training program is an intensive 500 hour course covering the details of the original pilates choreography repertoire and detailed elements of functional anatomy and biomechanics. The series of four manuals displayed here encompass the entire breadth of a teacher training students course materials—over 700 pages of content.
My responsibilities for the project included: creating the initial concepts and layouts; creating all of the photography elements for each of the over 200 exercises as well as video assets for each exercise; contributing to the written content and copy editing. In addition to the creative work I also served as the overall project manager, keeping up with deadlines and managing communication with the print company.
This project had several challenges, mostly the large amount of content and the very spread out production timeframe. At the time of making, my duties included many other tasks besides this design project (namely administrative duties for the studio) so organization was paramount to keep both myself, and the other stakeholders accountable to the various deadlines. Additionally, the source material for much of this content was either locked up in either a scanned PDF, a very basic word processing program, or didn't exist at all. For the design, the challenge was how to display large amounts of information but make it easily accessible and reference-able. Creating a consistent design language helped unify all of the content and, most importantly, make it more accessible to students. This was achieved by stripping down the content to its most concise version and creating consistency (as much was allowed) across various exercises in the same manual and for different manuals.
For me, the joy in this project was many fold: to be able to take information that I was incredibly passionate about and design a new "world" for it to live in; to make, see, and hold a physical printed object; to see students engaging with the manual by taking notes in the margins or tabbing pages.
Basic Training Manual: Phase I
In this course students are introduced to all five of the major apparatuses as well as the full choreography for each apparatus. The pilates repertoire has a defined order and series of levels that are important for students to understand and are crucial to the modality as a whole. The goal was to provide ample information in a concise way that could be easily ascertained. Besides the orders and skill levels there is wealth of information that is important to have access to, both for the student in the program and as a reference tool for active instructors.
This was the initial design that started the project. It was incredibly important to create a design system that could be used in all of the other manuals to give them a consistent look and feel.
Basic Training Manual: Phase II
For this part of the program the information shifts from the classical pilates knowledge to a the contemporary approach, based heavily in knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics. Taking inspiration from the layouts set previously, the content for Phase II shifts more into written text, rather than purely visual content. Subdivided by anatomical region, each section provided exercises, biomechnical information on the region, details on specific diagnoses and pathologies.
This part of the program often overwhelms the student because of the vast amount of knowledge provided. Even greater than Phase I, the need to create the information in an easily retrievable style was key for the practical knowledge of the student. Something for now; something for later.
Comprehensive Mat
For this part of the program the information shifts from the classical pilates knowledge to a the contemporary approach, based heavily in knowledge of anatomy and biomechanics. Taking inspiration from the layouts set previously, the content for Phase II shifts more into written text, rather than purely visual content. Subdivided by anatomical region, each section provided exercises, biomechnical information on the region, details on specific diagnoses and pathologies.
This part of the program often overwhelms the student because of the vast amount of knowledge provided. Even greater than Phase I, the need to create the information in an easily retrievable style was key for the practical knowledge of the student. Something for now; something for later.
Core Muscle Anatomy
As the initial approach to anatomy for many of the teacher training students, Core Muscle Anatomy provides and information dense overview of the musculoskeletal system.
