TORONTO—The first shortlist for the 2012 Marketing Awards, a celebration of the best advertising and communications from across Canada in the last year, has been released.

The first shortlist covers nominees in the radio, magazine and TV/Film categories.

Here's a sampling of the shortlisters:

TORONTO—The historic St. Lawrence Market, owned and operated by the City of Toronto, is two floors. But the problem is that many people are apparently unaware there even is a lower level, where more vendors, not to mention the washrooms, are located.

Making shoppers aware of a whole other level was part of the challenge faced by Shikatani Lacroix, a design studio in Toronto commissioned by the city to develop a new navigation system for the 200-year old marketplace.

TORONTO—The merger of 16-year-old graphic design firm Hahn Smith Design with 20-year-old industrial design firm Kerr + Co. into KerrSmith Design is now official — but it was years in the making.

TORONTO—RGD Ontario elected its board of directors during its annual meeting recently; its president Lionel Gadoury was re-elected.

TORONTO—Two innovators at the top of the their game in the fields of editorial and typographic design, Richard Turley and Christian Schwartz, will be speaking in Toronto in early June.

TORONTO/VANCOUVER—Blast Radius, a global digital agency in Toronto with offices in New York, Vancouver and London, has responded to growing business in its Canadian offices by adding three new senior staffers including Keith Liu, vice president strategy, mobile, Toronto. Erin Cooper, director, project services, and Andrea Moretti, technical experience director, both join the Vancouver office.

Erin Cooper

TORONTO—What's it like to be a designer when your client is essentially yourself?

That's the challenge faced by in-house designers; in other words, designers who work within a company as opposed to a separate agency.

Five panelists with in-house experience (along with moderator Tina Mackenzie, manager of creative services at City Of Mississauga) took to the stage at The Gladstone Hotel in Toronto on Thursday morning for the In-House Design Forum presented by RGD Ontario and sponsored by Cascades and Creative Niche.

[The fourth among the occasional review of new and classic design-related titles]

Roadsworth
by Roadsworth and Bethany Gibson (foreword by Scott Burnham), Goose Lane, September 2011
$29.95 Cdn

Reviewed by Jeff Hayward, Design Edge web editor

Who is Roadsworth? That's what I wanted to know, and what many people wanted to know from 2001 to 2004, when some 300 examples of painted street art mysteriously popped up around Montreal. Following his eventual arrest in 2004, Roadsworth continues to make art in public spaces — but now he's asked to do it. This book is a good look inside the mind of a once-elusive street artist to the person he has become.

Large agencies, mid-size studios, freelancers and in-house designers are among the finalists of the 2012 Regional Design Awards. This year's awards had over 700 entries from across the country, with a great uptake in entries from the west coast and a strong contingent of in-house designers taking part.

Category and Best of Region winners will be announced in Toronto on June 26; work from the finalists will be exhibited at the evening event and will also be featured in Design Edge's 2 2012 Regional Design Awards Annual, copies of which will be handed out to those attending the party. Purchase your tickets here.

TORONTO—How do you design happiness?

That was a challenge faced by Oxygen Design in Toronto, when it took on creative for a campaign by SickKids Foundation to build awareness about children's health issues and the need for support to further research and patient care.

The solution: Draw a happy face, then make it relatable to all walks of life in an effort to drive people to "Do the Happy" and donate to the Toronto hospital in the process.