Smartraveller’s Travel Smart booklet (DFAT)
Updating this iconic international travel resource for a changed world
The client
Smartraveller is the Australian Government’s travel advice and consular information service. Run by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), it offers consular services for Australians travelling or living overseas by publishing specific travel advice for 178 destinations globally. Smartraveller issues ‘do not travel’ warnings, providing general travel advice and offering consular emergency support and crisis response for Aussies needing help overseas. The team also prepares useful brochures on different travel matters, including the Travel Smart booklet.
The problem
The DFAT Smartraveller Travel Smart booklet is well known to the almost 60 per cent of Australians who hold a passport. A compilation of essential tips and contacts for travellers, it’s given to all Australian citizens when they either renew their Australian passport or receive one for the first time. Though the booklet has been an integral part of passport packs for decades, it hadn’t been updated to reflect the massive changes to international travel brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. And with Aussies set to embrace international travel again after years of closed borders, the booklet needed an overhaul.
The solution
Catch the Sun worked closely with the Smartraveller team across the entire editorial process to update the booklet. We wrote a new section of advice relating to COVID-19, copy edited all content, and provided two rounds of proofreading to ensure every letter and digit in this iconic booklet was just as it should be. One of those proofreading rounds was signing-off on the Printer’s Proof before the printing company sent the booklet to print on the printing press.
The results
The updated 56-page booklet is now issued in all new passport packs, with the Smartraveller team very happy with the result. In the 2019–20 year, Australia issued 1,745,340 passports – both new ones and renewals, and we can only imagine how this number will increase following more than two years of pandemic-related disruption. That’s an extraordinarily high number of printed copies and a lot of eyes on our work! We are really thrilled with how it turned out.
We hit print on half a million copies of the Travel Smart booklet today. Thanks for all your amazing editing and proofing. It was fabulous working with you!”
Amy Plowman, Smartraveller Communications Officer, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Our work
Proofreading
Red Brick Road + Suzuki
Copywriting
University of Canberra’s Digital Student Journey
EDITORIAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Imperial College London’s D/srupt magazine
COPYWRITING, EDITING & PROOFREADING
Institute of Contemporary Music Performance (ICMP)
PLAIN ENGLISH TRAINING
NTT + Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment
Editing
Simpson Travel’s villa books project
