Canadian Designers

Though not as well known as Swiss design or American design, Canada does have its own accomplishments and history when it comes to modernist graphic design. An iconic example would be Burton Kramer’s 1974 CBC logo. Allan Fleming’s famous Canadian National Railway logo is also still used today. Today, Canadian design however is very much overlooked and often not know except to people within the country. Greg Durrell was working as part of the design team for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics when he first saw the lack of Canadian design history. He said, “Canada is a large but very small country, a tenth of the US population.”

Interestingly, it also goes to show the attitudes and values of Canadians. The population of the country is often known stereotypically as being modest with their accomplishments but that leads to a lack of promotion in their work and as a whole, a lack in our history. At the same time however, this history aligns with the period in the 1950’s and 60’s when Canada was struggling to forge its own national identity as a whole. Before the WW2, it was still very much seen as a colony of Britain. In 1964, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson started the history by searching for the first true Canadian flag and settled on a vertical red and white design with the red maple leaf.