Teh One Who Knocks
12-23-2013, 01:10 PM
By: Susan Delacourt - The Toronto Star
http://i.imgur.com/UAwrO5B.jpg
OTTAWA — Call it a graphic display of patriotism.
Design experts from across the country have stepped up to their drawing boards to find a better logo for Canada’s 150th birthday, filling up a new website with updated brand symbols for the nation.
Dismayed by a set of five proposed logos that the government sent out to be tested by focus groups earlier this year, members of the graphic-design industry are serving up suggestions to prove that Canada can do better, icon-wise.
About 30 logos in multiple colours and shapes, by some of Canada’s leading graphic designers, are being displayed on a site called The150Logo.ca.
“My first reaction, when I saw the (government) logos, was: how are these even being viewed as acceptable?” said Ibraheem Youssef, creator of the website, and a Canadian graphic designer based in Boston.
Youssef and the other designers were startled by what they saw as the lack of imagination or professionalism in the government’s proposed logos, which some critics compared to hockey pucks, paper doilies or, in one case, a police shield.
“They’re very close to what we call in the industry ‘clip art,’ which is the lowest form of creative you can use,” said Youssef.
The website also comes after an outcry from other professionals such as Lionel Gadoury, head of the Registered Graphic Designers association, who has been urging people to get in touch with the federal Heritage department or their local MPs to demand a more professional logo — and a more serious method to select one.
“Rather than engaging Canada’s highly talented graphic design professionals, a firm that runs focus groups is being paid to manage a popularity contest,” says the letter that RGD has prepared for citizens to send to their MPs.
Youssef says the designers aren’t proposing to give away their work on the website to the federal government, but instead are intent on simply showing that Canadian designers are up to the challenge of designing something more memorable and creative for the big national birthday coming in 2017.
The alternative logos already posted on The150Logo.ca feature a wide variety of takes on Canadian iconography.
Many of them, like the government’s designs, use the maple leaf as a central motif, but with a more artistic flourish. Andrew Passas, a designer at the Taxi ad firm, envisions the number 150 created out of piles of maple leaves, while Winnipeg designer Jonathan Mutch put a maple leaf in the middle of a stylized burst of fireworks.
Jason Niles, an urban designer from Victoria, B.C., came up with an array of multicoloured dots, arranged as Canada’s capital cities appear on the map.
A couple of the designs borrow from Canada’s Centennial logo — a maple leaf created out of triangles.
Gadoury said that this 1967 logo, which fuelled his own imagination when he was 6 years old, should be setting the standard for the 150th-birthday design.
“I remember drawing and redrawing that mark and colouring it in,” said Gadoury, noting that it was probably one of his earliest memories of feeling patriotic — as well as a very early indication of his future career path.
If the federal government is sincerely interested in finding a logo this indelible, said Gadoury, it needs to find something that blends popular appeal with design professionalism.
He’s urging the government to set up a steering committee and a proper search process for a professional logo.
Mike Storeshaw, a spokesman for Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, says the logos circulated to focus groups were “preliminary concepts” — developed within government — and not intended to be seen as possible, final logos.
Storeshaw also said that the government is aware of the new website: “All feedback we've received, including that which was gathered in the focus groups, is being taken into consideration. But no decisions have been taken with respect to next steps on a logo,” he said.
http://i.imgur.com/UAwrO5B.jpg
OTTAWA — Call it a graphic display of patriotism.
Design experts from across the country have stepped up to their drawing boards to find a better logo for Canada’s 150th birthday, filling up a new website with updated brand symbols for the nation.
Dismayed by a set of five proposed logos that the government sent out to be tested by focus groups earlier this year, members of the graphic-design industry are serving up suggestions to prove that Canada can do better, icon-wise.
About 30 logos in multiple colours and shapes, by some of Canada’s leading graphic designers, are being displayed on a site called The150Logo.ca.
“My first reaction, when I saw the (government) logos, was: how are these even being viewed as acceptable?” said Ibraheem Youssef, creator of the website, and a Canadian graphic designer based in Boston.
Youssef and the other designers were startled by what they saw as the lack of imagination or professionalism in the government’s proposed logos, which some critics compared to hockey pucks, paper doilies or, in one case, a police shield.
“They’re very close to what we call in the industry ‘clip art,’ which is the lowest form of creative you can use,” said Youssef.
The website also comes after an outcry from other professionals such as Lionel Gadoury, head of the Registered Graphic Designers association, who has been urging people to get in touch with the federal Heritage department or their local MPs to demand a more professional logo — and a more serious method to select one.
“Rather than engaging Canada’s highly talented graphic design professionals, a firm that runs focus groups is being paid to manage a popularity contest,” says the letter that RGD has prepared for citizens to send to their MPs.
Youssef says the designers aren’t proposing to give away their work on the website to the federal government, but instead are intent on simply showing that Canadian designers are up to the challenge of designing something more memorable and creative for the big national birthday coming in 2017.
The alternative logos already posted on The150Logo.ca feature a wide variety of takes on Canadian iconography.
Many of them, like the government’s designs, use the maple leaf as a central motif, but with a more artistic flourish. Andrew Passas, a designer at the Taxi ad firm, envisions the number 150 created out of piles of maple leaves, while Winnipeg designer Jonathan Mutch put a maple leaf in the middle of a stylized burst of fireworks.
Jason Niles, an urban designer from Victoria, B.C., came up with an array of multicoloured dots, arranged as Canada’s capital cities appear on the map.
A couple of the designs borrow from Canada’s Centennial logo — a maple leaf created out of triangles.
Gadoury said that this 1967 logo, which fuelled his own imagination when he was 6 years old, should be setting the standard for the 150th-birthday design.
“I remember drawing and redrawing that mark and colouring it in,” said Gadoury, noting that it was probably one of his earliest memories of feeling patriotic — as well as a very early indication of his future career path.
If the federal government is sincerely interested in finding a logo this indelible, said Gadoury, it needs to find something that blends popular appeal with design professionalism.
He’s urging the government to set up a steering committee and a proper search process for a professional logo.
Mike Storeshaw, a spokesman for Heritage Minister Shelly Glover, says the logos circulated to focus groups were “preliminary concepts” — developed within government — and not intended to be seen as possible, final logos.
Storeshaw also said that the government is aware of the new website: “All feedback we've received, including that which was gathered in the focus groups, is being taken into consideration. But no decisions have been taken with respect to next steps on a logo,” he said.