September 28, 2006

Top Western Canada creatives switch shops

Taxi Calgary's newest creative directors Keli Pollock and Trent Burton

CALGARY—Taxi Calgary has poached co-creative directors Trent Burton and Keli Pollock from Calgary-based Wax Partnership. The pair won a prestigious One Show Design Gold Pencil this year as the art director and photographer, Pollock, and co-writer, Burton, on a corporate identity campaign for Wax. Prior to Wax, Burton and Pollock worked for Ogilvy & Mather and Highwood Communications. They join Taxi Calgary on Oct. 10. Contact: www.taxi.ca

New resource for Illustrator users

OLDSMAR, FL—New from KW Media Group, the publisher of Layers and Photoshop User magazines, is a newsletter for Adobe Illustrator fans called Adobe Illustrator Techniques. Similar to its sister publications, Techniques is a how-to guide that offers insider tips and step-by-step tutorials, a Beginner’s Workshop and Q&As. The newsletter will be published eight times a year. Contact: www.illustratortechniques.com

September 21, 2006
Canada’s oldest women’s magazine hires new art director
TORONTO—More than eight months after Caren Watkins quit as art director of Chatelaine, the position has at last been filled.  

Editor-in-chief Sara Angel has installed Cameron Williamson, former creative director at Toro. The two first met at the weekly Saturday Night magazine, where Angel was visual features editor and Williamson was an intern. “He impressed everybody so much that he had gone from being the design intern to essentially running the style section in a matter of months,” she says.

Before Toro, Williamson was a fashion director at the National Post and, as mentioned, fashion editor at the old weekly Saturday Night magazine. He starts mid-October.

September 19, 2006
Vancouver Paralympic Games logo unveiled
VANCOUVER—The Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Games emblem was launched last Saturday at an open-air concert in Whistler, B.C., by the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games (VANOC).

New logo created by Karacters Design Group

According to VANOC, these emblems and associated designs will be featured in thousands of applications such as licensed products, street banners and rink boards, which will make the logos some of the most recognized in the world.

Karacters is a division of DDB Canada with offices in Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto. Contact: www.karacters.com 

September 14, 2006
Twenty-four hour charity provides creative services for non-profits
CAMBRIDGE, Ont.—Starting at 8 o’clock this morning and finishing 24-hours later, Punch Integrated Communications is offering 11 Waterloo, Ont.-region, not-for-profit agencies free advertising and marketing services.

Punch is among over 40 agencies across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico that have participated in CreateAthon, a 24-hour creative blitz that offers pro-bono advertising work to local charitable organizations that generally have little or no marketing budget.

Among Punch’s 11 CreateAthon 2006 clients are Cambridge Autism Society, Women’s Crises Services, Feed His People, Community Living Cambridge, Huntington Society, Block Parents, and the Guelph Alzheimer’s Society.

Cathy Monetti and Teresa Coles, of marketing and communications firm Riggs in Columbia, S.C., started the CreateAthon program in 1998. Since then, the program has benefited 685 organizations with 1,473 projects valued at US$5.7 million. Contact: www.createathon.org

September 13, 2006

Senior designer awarded new title at outdoor retailer

VANCOUVER—Outdoor recreation outfitter Mountain Equipment Co-op has promoted senior graphic designer Judy Snaydon to creative director. She oversees MEC’s in-house design studio, which develops creative for MEC catalogues, advertising and signage.

MEC creative director Judy Snaydon

Snaydon ran her own design consulting firm, Vancouver-based Punch Communications, for six years prior to joining MEC in 2004. She also worked for several design studios in Paris and London before moving to Canada in 1995. In addition to her new job title, Snaydon is also the national vice president of membership for the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada.

MEC recently received a brand overhaul from DDB Canada and its subsidiaries Karacters Design Group and Tribal DDB this past spring, which included a redesign of its catalogue, website and a new print ad campaign for outdoor enthusiast magazines. A design feature on the signage and wayfinding program for MEC’s newest retail store, in Victoria, appeared in the July/August issue of Design Edge Canada. Contact: www.mec.ca

September 12, 2006
Designers gather for advice on print design
TORONTO-Last Thursday, a lecture room full of designers gathered in the Distillery District's Young Centre for the Performing Arts for the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario's Print by Design mini-conference.

Scott Richardson of Random House of Canada shares his thoughts on book design

First up was Scott Richardson, vice president and creative director, Canadian publishing, for Random House of Canada. He dispelled several myths about book design and shared the sad truth that the average art and photography budget for books designed in Canada is $1,000, depending on its print run. So there's no money for focus groups or research. “It's all educated guess work.”

However, you don't need to guess if the reader will “get it,” he said. “The reader is at least twice as smart as you. You can have fun with the reader, they will get things.”

Magazine design, however, is different, explained Ina Saltz, principal of Saltz Design and professor at The City College of New York. “You have to be very literal on your covers.” You can have a great cover image but if your headline doesn't match, the impact fizzles.

“I don't believe making things look good is hard to do,” said Dave Mason, cofounder of design firm SamataMason in Chicago and Vancouver. However, if designers present themselves as makers of things, he says, they diminish their worth because “stuff” can be made cheap nowadays. “We should be marketing ourselves as thinkers of things. We're in the business of thinking up messages contained in those things.”

Toronto-based communications strategist James Morris spoke on the importance of strategy. He said designers should inform clients who request spec work that they're putting themselves at a great disadvantage. “You can't get strategically informed work on spec because that involves collaboration with the client.” Designers need the specifics, he says. “Otherwise they're working off broad assumptions.”

The last speaker of the day was Ontario College of Art + Design's new dean of design Dr. Anthony Cahalan who recently completed his PhD in typography. “I don't want to see only four typefaces in our world,” he said. “If you ask a typographer if we have enough typefaces, they will respond: 'Do we have enough books, are there enough songs?'” Used effectively and appropriately, he feels the abundance of fonts is an incredible resource. “I want to see interest and variety in the things we see around us.” Contact: www.rgdontario.com

September 6, 2006
West Coast art director looking to pursue new design opportunities
VANCOUVER—After almost two years as creative director of OP Publishing, Anna Belluz has struck out on her own.

Belluz will be splitting her time between Vancouver and New York

“I will be pursuing consulting work in publication management and design-related areas,” writes Belluz in an email to Design Edge Canada. “My primary interest will be working with publishers and editors who want to revamp their existing look, working closely with copy and structure, and developing new brands and launches.”

While at OP Publishing, Belluz oversaw the redesign of several of its consumer publications including Cottage, Canadian Aviator and BC Outdoors, as well as the launch of the new bimonthly inflight title Harmony for Richmond, B.C.-based Harmony Airlines. 

She also led the entire art and production department through a transition to Adobe Indesign CS2 from QuarkXPress. “[It was] a leap forward for publishing in Canada as we were one of the first to convert, and the very first publishing house on the West Coast to do so,” says Belluz.

Before joining the West Coast publishing company, Belluz was working as creative director of special issues at New York magazine. Previous to that Belluz art directed for Brill’s Content, US Weekly, The Daily, and launched a new magazine for Forbes special-interest publications, a Clear Channel Entertainment title called ShowPeople.

She will now be splitting her time between Vancouver and New York as a design consultant currently involved in publicity and promotions for two high-end New York restaurants: Bottega del Vino and Via Quadronno. Contact: www.annabelluz.com