Making sense of FY2025
City budgets are complicated, and most residents don't have the time to dig through hundreds of pages to understand where their tax dollars are going. For the District 8 FY2025 Budget Breakdown, I wanted to make that information easier to understand and more relevant to the people we served.
Published and mailed to District 8 residents in 2024, I designed this four-page newsletter-style piece to highlight some of the most important investments in San Antonio's newly adopted FY2025 budget, with a focus on City services our office frequently heard about from constituents. I took dense budget information and translated it into quick, approachable highlights covering areas like public safety, streets and sidewalks, human services, code enforcement, and Animal Care Services.
A city budget is thousands of numbers. My job was to find the ones that meant something to the people we served.
I created a bold visual system using bright category colors, oversized typography, photography, simplified charts, and prominent dollar amounts to make the information easy to scan. The design was intentionally more energetic than a traditional government budget document while still giving residents the context they needed to understand what those numbers meant.
The project served two purposes: helping residents better understand the City budget and reporting back on the investments and priorities supported by their District 8 representative. I also extended the design into a social media campaign, adapting the same information and visual identity into a carousel that made the budget highlights easier to share and explore online.
