Nunavik Voices wins ClearMark Award

Kativik Regional Government’s new quarterly magazine, Nunavik Voices, has won a ClearMark Award for plain-language writing. It’s the first time an entry with Inuktitut — or any Indigenous language — has won.

The Center for Plain Language, based in Richmond, Va., gives annual awards for work by North American companies, governments, universities and non-profits. Plain language ensures a document’s wording, structure and design are so clear that readers can easily find, understand and use the information they need.

KRG, along with writing and editing company Plainly Speaking and design company Pivot Point Solutions, won the ClearMark Award for mailed materials because Nunavik Voices does just that.

In fact, potential readers identified their need for the magazine.

“Members of regional council, as well as the mayors and residents, told us directly and through social media that there was a lack of awareness of the role of the KRG and its impact on the lives of residents,” said KRG communications director Denis Abbott.

“With 14 northern villages spread across a vast region, Nunavik Voices aims to bridge the distance and connect people across communities and with their regional government.”

Plainly Speaking founder Nicole d’Entremont said her team used storytelling to connect with people and personalize their experiences with their regional government.

“The news magazine includes the stories, images and voices of people making a difference and contributing to their communities. Nunavik Voices aims to highlight those stories while also relaying important information about council decisions and KRG programs that impact the daily lives of Nunavimmiut.”

Instead of publishing three unilingual magazines, KRG created one trilingual publication so Nunavik’s 14,000 residents could read the same publication in their preferred language.

“Designing a printed publication in three languages is a challenge, particularly when it is important to give almost equal consideration to each language,” said Karin Torrey, partner of Pivot Point Solutions.

“Inuktitut … has to hold prime positioning in the [magazine], as it is vitally important to the region to keep their culture alive and thriving.”

The design needed to make it easy for readers to find the articles they wanted in the language of their choice and where the story continued on a second page.

“We addressed these issues through several layers of navigational guidance: table of contents, consistent colours for each language, page references for alternate languages, and bottom of each page navigation to key stories,” Torrey said.

To qualify for a ClearMark Award, entries must show they identified readers’ needs and tested that readers could easily understand and use the information.

Using content from Plainly Speaking, Pivot Point Solutions created a draft layout using plain language features like headings, bullet points, photographs and infographics.

“Initial, pre-circulation versions were presented to residents for feedback, and we made many helpful changes to improve the layout, approach and reader experience,” Abbott said.

Feedback from 20 test readers led to wording and design changes, including colour-coding for each language: Green for Inuktitut, beige for English, and blue for French.

The team hopes to get even more feedback from comment cards in each issue.

More than 40 volunteer judges evaluated 70 ClearMark Award submissions across 10 categories.

Nunavik Voices “is highly readable, and the storytelling and photos are warm and engaging,” one judge wrote.

“This entry elegantly achieves a challenging objective that is important for this community,” another judge wrote. “It effectively addresses users in three languages in one publication. This not only allows all community members … to read it. It also signals that the community is united and that each language is important and valued.”

While this is KRG’s first ClearMark Award, it is the second for Pivot Point Solutions and the fifth for Plainly Speaking.