June 28, 2006
Printers and designers open up on production issues
TORONTO—Last Thursday was the first and only Canadian stop for Mission: Possible, A Mutual Strategy for Creatives and Printers during its eight-date seminar tour, which wraps up tomorrow. The day-long event, hosted by the Printing Industries Association and the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation, brought creatives and prepress professionals together to discuss everything from stochastic screening, soft proofing and creating PDF files, to image compression and font and colour management.

PIA/GATF’s Julie Shaffer and David Watterson (right) with Design Edge Canada publisher Doug Bennet

“Colour conversion doesn’t need to be done by a designer,” said Julie Shaffer, director of the PIA/GATF’s Center for Imaging Excellence. She suggested that by saving your image files as RGB and letting your print shop convert them to CMYK, you’ll get a more optimal conversion because the shop will convert them to its own specific colour management press specs.

To help prevent corrupt fonts, she suggested using free font management software Font Finagler or Font Cash Cleaner.  Wrong or missing fonts is one of the most popular digital file problems that printers experience.

“Tell your designers the mistakes they make” so they’ll stop repeating them. That was the advice David Watterson, art director of the Center for Imaging Excellence, shared to prepress pros during the segment of preparing files. Contact: www.gain.net

David B. Smith is NSCAD's new president

June 22, 2006
NSCAD alumnus returns to lead university
HALIFAX—Visual artist and educator David B. Smith returns to the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design as its 16th president. Currently chair of the department of art and special assistant to the Provost at the University of San Diego, Calif., Smith will begin his new role at NSCAD at the end of August. 

At the University of San Diego, Smith was engaged in building relationships with members of the wider arts and business communities. He has been responsible for a number of special projects including building endowments for the arts; chairing a standing committee on international programs and developing curricular partnerships between the university and the San Diego Museum of Art, the Timken Museum, and Stellenbosch University Department of Fine Art, South Africa where he has also lectured. 

“I am both delighted and honoured to be returning to the institution that was instrumental in my professional development,” said Smith in a released statement. 

As an artist, Smith has worked in various visual arts disciplines, including public space. Over the past decade, Smith has studied the “complex intertwining of private experience and civic decorum,” and the “intricate interconnectedness of the built and natural environments.” 

Smith holds a Master of Science in Visual Studies, with an emphasis in public art, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Fine Art from NSCAD University. Contact: www.nscad.ns.ca 

Unique Toronto street furniture wins design award
TORONTO—The Washington, D.C.-based Society of Environmental Graphic Designers has honoured Kramer Design Associates and Astral Media Outdoor, both based here, with an award for their INFOTOGO Pillar.

Toronto’s first interactive mapping system includes a coin-operated component that dispenses pocket-sized, fold-out city maps; an area-specific, you-are-here location marker; and some feature programmable LED event notification systems. This is the fourth award for the street furniture, which won three Sign Association Canada CONSAC awards in 2005.

“The INFOTOGO Pillar offers residents and tourists alike immediate access to important information and wayfinding similar to those already on streets in other international cities,” said Jeremy Kramer, principal and creative director of Kramer Design Associates, in a released statement. KDA has also designed Toronto transit shelters. The design of the pillars was inspired by the architecture of Toronto’s City Hall. There are 25 of these pillars across the city. Contact: www.kramer-design.com

Glaser designed this poster in 1975

June 20, 2006
Just enough is more for Milton Glaser
PROVO, Utah-—Less is not necessarily more. That’s the theme of an upcoming exhibition featuring the work of famed graphic designer and illustrator Milton Glaser.

"Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realized that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless," Glaser said at a 2002 American Institute of Graphic Arts National Design Conference. Alternatively, he’s proposing, “just enough is more.”

Glaser’s illustrious career includes co-establishing N.Y.-based Pushpin Studios in 1954. Then in 1968 he co-founded New York magazine. Six years later, he launched design agency Milton Glaser Inc. and in 1983 joined Walter Bernard to create publication design firm WBMG in New York. It has since designed more than 50 magazines and newspapers worldwide.

Just Enough is More: The Graphic Design of Milton Glaser opens on June 30 at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art. The approximately 100 works include original drawings, sketchbooks, paintings, lithographs, silk screens and mass-produced posters. The free exhibit closes on Oct. 7. Contact: http://moa.byu.edu/

June 13, 2006
NMAF honours top magazines for editorial and design excellence
TORONTO—The Walrus came out as top winner of the 29th annual National Magazine Awards gala last Friday. With 50 nominations, the magazine won three silvers and 12 golds; five of them for design.

Art director Antonio De Luca and his design team at The Walrus took home gold awards for Words and Pictures and Art Direction of a Single Article. Illustrators Marco Cibola and Jillian Tamaki each won gold for their work in The Walrus, including photographer Davida Nemeroff. Other gold design award winners include Flare for Fashion and Beauty, Prefix Photo for Still-life Photography, Report on Business for Magazine Cover. Best Photojournalism and Photo Essay went to Border Crossings and art director Alicia Kowalewski and her team at Toro won gold for Art Direction for an Entire Issue. 

The President’s Medal, given to a magazine that has displayed continual overall excellence over the last year, “encompassing the highest standards of visual and written content,” was awarded to Maclean’s magazine. However, Maclean’s changed substantially under new editor and publisher Ken Whyte and current art director Christine Dewairy when they redesigned the newsweekly last November.

Robert Sugar

June 8, 2006
Publication design consultant offers art directing tips at Mags U
TORONTO—Robert Sugar of Auras Design in Silver Spring, M.D., was in town this week at Magazines University to share his thoughts on magazine art direction. Sugar is one of dozens of speakers at the week-long magazine publishing conference, held annually in early June. 

In his Tuesday afternoon session on Design for Editors and Art Directors, Sugar listed several tasks for art directors and tips on how editors can facilitate these duties. Art directors should accentuate editorial, says Sugar. “Not reflect, not repeat, not verify, accentuate. How successful are you at making editorial better?” Editors, he says, must also give their art directors license to be more creative and take more risks. “Let them try outrageous concepts. Creating a better end-product doesn’t happen in an environment where an individual is constantly being shut down.”

In addition to a strong type and prepress skill set, art directors should be able to conceptualize and synthesize information into ideas. “What the art director comes up with ought to be better than the editor. If the art director just gets pictures, you are wasting visual opportunities.”

Another job for art directors is stealing, says Sugar. “There is nothing wrong with stealing. The question is how well you steal.” An art director should constantly be looking for new ideas from other sources of editorial design, he says. Talented designers will be able to determine what is worth stealing and then make it their own. Contact: www.auras.com.

June 6, 2006
Magazine art director is branching out on her own
TORONTO—Looking for a new challenge, Cottage Life art director Faith Cochran is hanging out her shingle. She’s leaving the magazine at the end of the month to launch her own design firm specializing in publication design. Her first client is the Federation of Ontario Naturalist’s ON Nature magazine. 

“[Freelancing] is something that I thought I’d do at some point…I’d like to grow it beyond just myself. I’d like to have a small design studio that has editorial design at its core and I think that there’s a market for that,” says Cochran. She plans to extend the business into other forms of communication design including web design. 

Previous to Cottage Life, Cochran launched Gardening Life magazine as its founding art director in 1996 and was art director for the relaunch of explore magazine in 2000. She has also worked in the art departments of Canadian House & Home, Maclean’s and Chatelaine. 

Cochran is completing her nine-year tenure at Cottage Life with a redesign of the magazine’s logo, which will debut with its September issue, replacing the logo Cochran designed when she first started at the magazine. Contact: www.cottagelife.ca

Sara Diamond greets guests during her reception at Roy Thomson Hall

June 1, 2006
OCAD installs 21st president Sara Diamond
TORONTO—At the Ontario College of Art and Design’s first presidential
installation ceremony, Sara Diamond was installed this morning as the
university’s 21st president.

OCAD board chair Anthony Caldwell described Diamond as having boundless energy. “Working with her almost takes your breath away,” he says, referring to what has been a busy year at OCAD, Diamond’s first year on the job. Enthusiastic, creative and committed were other adjectives also
frequently repeated when describing Diamond. Her long list of achievements in the arts include new media and installation artist, researcher, curator, instructor and consultant. Dressed from head to toe in silver, draped in her ceremonial gown and designer hat, Diamond engaged her audience with an address as ambitious as she is.

“We need to move boldly and quickly to find, harness and challenge the imaginations of a new generation and to channel them into our most important endeavours — economic, scientific, social and cultural. We must drive ourselves to become a world capital of curiosity, creativity and innovation. Our future depends on it,” says Diamond.

She referred to this new generation as “shock troupes of the imagination,” youth who champion diversity, culture and the environment and are optimistic that science and technology will help solve societal ills. But are they properly equipped to invent such technology? “Not really,” says Diamond. “We need to fuse art and design capability right into the science and technology matrix.”

As successful products, services and processes make use of sophisticated art and design skills, she adds, artists and designers are at the forefront of the “emerging imagination economy."

“Artists and designers sniff the Zeitgeist, and having sensed the future, they have the disciplined imaginations that can blend emotion and form.
Artists and designers are enablers, facilitating collaboration across a
wide array of fields, shaping excellence and ‘experience’ products in
every field of human endeavour."

“In the 21st century, imagination is power,” says Diamond. “OCAD will be
prized as an instigator of imagination.” Contact: www.ocad.ca