Reconciliation of Canada 150 Case study

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  • Sketchbook inital and page 1
  • Sketchbook page 2

Throughout the process of creating the reconciliation project, I found that working in a group of creative people was challenging but worth the experience. When we first began, all three of us had a vague idea of what we wanted to do, however we all agreed quite quickly out of three options, to choose call to action 68. Finding the research for our call was quite interesting due to how specific our topic was, going through all the articles was a chore because most of the time there were reused batches of information. However one of the things that helped us break through into very interesting and deeper ideas was when Bracken mentioned to us that there were anti-Canada Day protests and communities, this really got us thinking about the concept of Canada Day as an element that we didn’t even think of including in our brainstorms. Brainstorming ideas around this call to action was deceptively challenging causing us to think all over the box. Our ideas ranged from food and whole gallery walkabouts to traditionally seen mediums like print and social media. In the end ideating took us a lot longer than we all expected and experimenting with the list of possible ideas and of their feasibility. One constant that kept coming up over and over again was the use of vague ideas and exploring how vague and then how specific we could get, as well as getting mixed up and turned around by the project brief. In the end the mood board had probably helped us the most in solidifying our ideas. Designing the ad posters was very experimental, all three of us did designs with our own design language and in the end we would ask friends and vote on which ones we would go with. This proved interesting as we couldn’t utilize our time completely efficiently but on the other hand we would have consistency. The mock ups were easy enough to do and figure out, however we did have slight trouble trying to get the files to each other efficiently as well as within a certain Gb limit.

Evaluating myself, I think that I did fairly well speaking for my group during presentations, attempting to convey our ideas as well as I could. As well as contributing ideas, giving critical feedback that I could catch, and taking notes that we could refer to later. I think that if I were to put a mark on it, I would deserve an 86.

Reconciliation of Canada Day 150

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One call to action that caught me, Marco, and Sisy’s reaction was the call to action pertaining to the celebration of Canada’s 150th anniversary, call to action number 68. The action was developed without the consultation of the indigenous people, and before the actual formation of the federal government of the time. The call also doesn’t exclusively fund projects on the theme of reconciliation. All this means that the entire base of this declaration was flawed and can be severely improved upon and learned from.

What we want to do is help with bringing awareness to this flaw to the general public, as well as building up a much stronger bond between the indigenous community and the current government of Canada. Something that we want to keep in mind throughout this project is the history of how indigenous people have suffered and how we can convey that message in different tones and methods. We would also like to build towards giving indegous people a larger historical identity with Canada day, and making the anniversary something to be prouder of by embracing the mistakes.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-single/beyond-94?&cta=68

https://www.timescolonist.com/life/canada-150-for-first-nations-no-reason-to-celebrate-1.20599060

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canada-150/canada-day-indigenous-perspectives-on-canada-150/article35498737/

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-march-16-2017-1.4026463/what-does-canada-150-mean-for-indigenous-communities-1.4027484

Canadian Designer: Theo Dimson

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GDC, graphic design, history of canadidan graphic design
Theo Dimson (1980)

One of the canadian designers that has a unique style is Theo Dimson. Theo was born in London, Ontario, on April 8th, 1930 and died on January 18, of 2012. He was a part of the early days of the GDC, and was internationally recognized and awarded for his work.

Names

At an early age, Theo was already interested in design and ended up with a scholarship to the Ontario College of Art and Design. Afterwards, Theo went from a firm, to freelancing, then rejoining the first firm. Then in 1965, Theo became president and director of Reeson, Dimson & Smith Ltd. which was later renamed to Dimson & Smith Ltd. Finally in 1985, Theo decided to create The Dimson Design Inc. where he is the president and creative director.

Spring

 Theo’s style was influenced by the art deco movement but with a twist. He used very thin lines in his work, fused with an intriguing and wonderful use of colour, and included a lot of serifs and deco looking sans serif. His work consists mainly of Posters, and also commissioned stamps. With these, he has been able to win awards and become members of such clubs like Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and the GDC.

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Post-modernism: Jonathan Barnbrook

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Jonathan Barnbrook (2016)

Jonathan Barnbrook is a one of a kind contemporary graphic designer, typographer, and filmmaker. Born in 1966 in Luton, UK, Jonathan’s formal art training comes from Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art. He is very outspoken on certain topics and uses type as his prefered way of fighting problems.

Ecocet (1991)

Jonathan always had a little knack for art and after graduating from the Royal College of Art, he became a multifaceted practitioner of graphic design, typeface design, motion graphics, activism, and industrial design. He began his typeface work through Emigre, the Californian type foundry innovator before releasing his type through his own site, Barnbrook Design and Virusfonts. The work he does began with record cover art that attracted him to graphic design.

Mason (1992)

Jonathan’s style and subject of work derives from how he feels about certain topics. Most of his fonts have a connection to their emotive and controversial titles. His more notable work comes from working on David Bowie’s 2002 album cover “Heathens”, and his types Mason and Exocet. One really interesting quote from him is that he ”set it as his goal in life to use his talent of graphic designing as a weapon for social change and justice”.

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SUPERgraphic Designer: Paula Scher

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Paula Scher (2019)

Super Graphic designer Paula Scher is known as one of the most influential designers in the world. Born on October 6th, 1948, she had her childhood growing up in Virginia and Philadelphia. She is a contemporary graphic designer with over four decades worth of work, as well as being a graphic designer, she is also a painter and an art educator.

Super graphics PAVE Academy Charter School

Growing up Paula got encouraged into making hand-printed maps from her father’s device which ensured distortion free aerial photography. Paula went to Tyler School of Art in Pennsylvania for her Bachelor of Fine Arts. She began working professionally as a layout artist for Random house’s children’s book division and later ended up landing in the advertisement and promotion department at CBS Records. She briefly went over to CBS’s competitor Atlantic Records to gain experience before returning to CBS for eight years. Afterwards, she resigned and pursued graphic design, and eventually partnered up with Tyler Koppel to establish a firm named Koppel & Scher. However it did not last as the recession hit the firm and Paula went over to work for Pentagram in 1991 and worked her way up to post of principal.

Work for the Public Theatre (1994)

Paula’s style walks the line between pop culture and fine art. Her work is described as smart, iconic, and accessible. Paula’s work has caused her to gain a huge amount of awards and industry honours. Some of her most notable work includes developing brand identities for clients like The Public Theatre, Cocacola, Museum of Modern Art, and Microsoft.

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Psychedelic Designer: Wes Wilson

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Wes Wilson

Robert Wesley Wilson or better known as Wes Wilson is a psychedelic artist born on July 15, 1937 in Sacramento, California, and passed away recently on January 24, 2020. He was called the father of 1960s rock concert posters. This was because of his knack for translating the sights and sounds from the culture into iconography.

Grateful Dead, Otis Rush Chicago Blues Band, The Canned Heat Blues Band at Fillmore Auditorium, SF  (1967)

In his childhood, he had a love for the natural world along with an interest in different artistic media. In post-secondary, Wes was taken in by these earlier childhood interests. For a short time he studied forestry and horticulture before moving on to philosophy. Then in the later parts of the 1960s, Wes had come to take inspiration from the avant-garde San Francisco neighbourhoods, and eventually came to creating art for people. 

Buffalo Springfield, Steve Miller Fillmore (1967)

Wes’s style is drawn from the art nouveau masters, an understanding of promotional art that let him flip it inside out, lines converging into each other, his usage of colours inspired by concerts, and letters filling every nook and cranny.  

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CCA Designer: Egbert Jacobson

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“Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils.”–Plato, The Republic, 4th century B.C.
Great Ideas of Western Man. (1955)

Egbert Jacobson, the mysterious man of the CCA. Nothing much is really known about him other than the fact that he published a book called “Basic Colour” as well as being one of the art directors of the CCA.

Egbert Jacobson is a man born in New York in 1980, he died in Clearwater, Florida of 1966. He began working with the CCA in 1936 as a director of design, Walter Paepcke sought him out due to his status as a leader in colour theory and typography. With Egbert as a director, he commissioned many well known artists to design the company’s national ads.

“Basic Color” (1948)

 It was said that as a director of design Egbert dealt with logos, stationary, invoices, annual reports, advertising, company office interiors, factories, and trucks. Along with this, in 1947 according to a family, Egbert designed a house at 850 Roaring Fork Drive, in Aspen.

During 1951, Egbert and Herbert Bayer got Walter Paepcke to create what would become the International Design Conference in Aspen. This became an event where designers could discuss the current situations in the world of graphic design. In the end, Egbert retired from the CCA after 30 long years of working for them in 1956.

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History Book- Front and Back Cover Rationale

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 In the final hand in for Judy’s class of the year, I picked up the assignment of front and back cover of the spread book. With this, the theme I thought would encompass our growth and development the best was the “evolution of humans”, it was also the concept that everyone seemed to be drawn towards. For the cover, I had hoped that it would give off the feeling of the evolution, the passage of time as well as how we as designers have grown in our first semester of the program.

With the front and back cover, one of the things that was difficult to troubleshoot and find a way around was deciding which six objects/ movements would relate best to our class. Through researching and referring back to our survey handouts I ended up picking the ones that had the most connection to the roots and beginning of design, as well as ones that had the largest impact and held the most memorability.

The things that could have been executed better would have to be the photography horizon part as this could have been incorporated better rather than trying to emulate a flash photography moment, the art nouveau colours could have been more pastel most likely if I had tried with a different medium, the japonism horizon part could have been less “pasty” as I most likely could have went over them again, and the pencil crayons could have been used more precisely as there is a lot of mismarks and smudges from ink.

Thing that I believe worked well for this would be the concept of the cover, the people were incorporated with an object of importance to the best of my abilities and finally the framing of the people and their respective horizon parts as you can tell which part connects to which person.

With all that said  and done, I give myself a 7/10, and I guess I am “done talking ;)”.

Survey 9- The Theory of The Big Bang Rationale

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 This is the final spread I am going to do for this class. For survey 9 I was tasked with completing an infographic for science and technology. Because of this I decided to research the big bang theory, however doing research for this topic was slightly annoying as whenever I searched up anything with “Big Bang Theory” the popular television series would show up instead. Although it was annoying, I did think that this was somewhat helpful as I had to think of inventive ways of rewording the key words to get to what I was looking for. As for this spread, I wanted to keep a simple space theme. I felt that if I included objects with too much detail, then the infographic would become too busy looking, so instead I decided a good way to bypass this would be with silhouettes. The concept of this infographic came from trying to emphasize the expanding of the universe with rings or circles.

For this infographic poster, I believe that the concepts that were executed very well, were the galaxy themed background, the simplified silhouettes, and using type hierarchy to distinguish the title and the rest of the text. 

However, there are ideas and concepts that aren’t working as well as they could be. These ideas would be the empty space in the title, causing the title to not be very well noticed, the fact that the poster doesn’t give off the same energy as an infographic poster, lack of numerical and statistical information, and the formula for Planck time that could have been incorporated better as a whole.

With all of that being said, I came to the conclusion that I should receive a 6/10 for this poster due to the cons that outweigh the pros in my personal opinion.