April 29, 2006
Big names draw large crowd to design and technology festival
TORONTO—Last week’s three-day FITC conference held here at the Westin Harbour Castle hotel saw more than 900 attendees, 50% of which were from outside Canada from several different regions including Europe, Asia, Mexico, the U.S. and the U.K. It was the fifth annual gathering of this festival, formerly known as Flash in the Can. Among the distinguished list of guest speakers, which totaled 77, were crowd favourites such as Ben Fry, Brandon Hall, Joshua Davis, Geoff McFetridge and Stefan Sagmeister. After each day of seminars, delegates partied into the wee hours at various events held around town. Closing the festival on Sunday evening was the FITC Design & Technology awards show. Canadian design studio winners included Infivia (2), 4stroke, Fuel Industries, Blast Radius (2) and Henderson Bas. Best Canadian developer was Reuven Cohen, best Canadian designer went to Mike Hansen and Eric Chan won most promising student portfolio. Contact: www.fitc.ca

April 25, 2006

Vancouver firm chosen to design GDC commemorative stamp

VANCOUVER—Based on creative proposals commissioned from three Canadian design studios, Canada Post has chosen Ion Design to create a stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada. The stamp will be released to the public in early August and until then the design will remain behind closed doors. “We’ve been bound to secrecy,” jokes David Coates, Ion Design, partner, creative. However, he would share his thoughts on the final decision. “Ultimately our [design concept] was chosen, I guess, because it was more about creativity of the industry and less about the tools and the process.” Coates is a GDC fellow, past president of the GDC BC chapter and past national president of the GDC. Contact: www.iondesign.ca

April 20, 2006
ihaveanidea.org’s portfolio night takes North America
TORONTO—Advertising website ihaveanidea.org has announced that its fourth annual Portfolio Night is expanding across North America. Joining Canadian cities Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax on May 4 is San Francisco, Chicago, New York and Boston.

Portfolio Night is an opportunity for students, graduates and junior creatives to spend one-on-one time with top creative directors from Canadian ad agencies such as DDB Canada, Taxi, Diesel, Extreme Group, Rare Method and Rethink. Participating U.S. firms include StrawberryFrog, Butler Shine & Stern and Ogilvy & Mather.

The initiative started in Canada in 2003 and according to ihaveanidea.org founder and director Ignacio Oreamuno, it is now the largest simultaneous advertising portfolio review in the world. He has plans to take Portfolio Night global as early as next year. Oreamuno developed the event to help foster young talent within the advertising industry. His advertising archive, ihaveanidea.org, has a similar objective as well as to encourage communication and creative knowledge sharing amongst industry members. Contact: www.ihaveanidea.org

April 18, 2006

Colour forecasting for the future

CARLSTADT, N.J.—Earlier this month, Pantone announced the release of its winter 2007/08 edition of PantoneView Color Planner called Metamorphosis. The cross-discipline, colour forecasting tool looks 18 to 24 months ahead to predict colour trends for use in fashion and cosmetics, and industrial, interior and graphic design, produced by a worldwide team of experts in those design fields. The guide is divided into eight colour palettes, which include: Dark Shadows, hybrid shades of sparrow and shale mixed with green, blue and burgundy. Normalism: neutrals mixed with gold, brown, purple and violet. Natural Poetry: colours extracted from nature such as brown, gold, olive and sesame. Integrated: winter colours of white, black and silver inspired by modern architecture. Innocence: warm and cool childlike shades that are both colourful and flat. Chameleon: jewel tones. Unexpected: multi-colour, bright, saturated tones and neutral-based shades. And lastly, Caprice: a combination of fun and extravagant bright colours for winter. For more colour trends, see Design Edge Canada’s new colour issue (May/June edition) out now. Contact: www.pantone.com

April 13, 2006

Apple’s new Boot Camp software, what’s in it for designers?

CUPERTINO, Calif.—Last week’s public beta release of Apple’s new Boot Camp software, which allows you to run Windows XP on Intel-based Macs, has designers wondering what’s in it for them. Not much, says Design Edge Canada Tool Tips columnist and prepress consultant Bob Atkinson. Since there are no significant programs in graphic arts that are Windows-only—CorelDraw only covers a tiny fraction of the design market—Atkinson thinks adding Windows to an Intel Mac is a huge waste of time and money. 

The real issue for designers, says Atkinson, is that no Intel-native versions of Adobe's CS or Quark are available yet for Intel Macs, so these programs must run under emulation (using Rosetta, a PowerPC emulation mode in the OS 10.4.6 that ships with all Intel Macs), which makes them about 40% slower than on a G4 or G5. Luckily, things will start speeding up over the next year with Quark set to release QuarkXPress 7 in late May and rumours continue to circulate that the Mac version of it will be Universal, running at full speed on either G4/G5 or Intel-based Macs.

Adobe is set to release Acrobat 8 Pro in September and then CS3 in late 2006, early 2007. The Mac versions of both will be Universals.

“So there's no reason for a graphic designer to put Windows on his/her Intel Mac, unless they're really desperate to get back that 40% speed difference until the Universal versions of CS and Quark are released,” says Atkinson. He suggests hanging onto G4/G5 Macs until the next Mac versions of the key graphic design applications become available.

In June, look for the July/August issue of Design Edge Canada for more on QuarkXPress 7. Contact: www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp

Students hear from industry vets

TORONTO—A large crowd gathered at the Steam Whistle Brewery last Tuesday to witness the works of York/Sheridan’s graphic design graduating class in the Conscious Collective graduate design show. Among the guests was Canadian illustrator Anita Kunz. “You are entering the industry at a curious time,” said Kunz, addressing over 100 design students responsible for putting on the show. “The proliferation of stock images, copyright issues for photographers and illustrators, especially if you go into freelance work, and the commercialization of the media has made it tougher for us to create.” Who knew, she said, that a few Danish cartoons would spark World War III. The good news, however, is that this generation of designers is entering a global village where the Internet age is offering an increasing amount of options, making it an exciting time to be designing. Contact: www.theconscious.ca 

April 11, 2006

Design show four years in the making

TORONTO—This year’s graduating class from the York University/Sheridan Institute Joint Program in Design is currently showcasing its diverse collection of works in The Conscious Collective. On display in Toronto’s Steam Whistle Brewery is student design work from various disciplines including print, typography, information design and new media. Guest speakers at the show include illustrator Anita Kunz, Industry Brand Agency principal Peter Heywood and RGD Ontario president John Furneaux. Tonight is industry night, the show runs until Wednesday. Contact: www.theconscious.ca

Summer school for design professionals

VANCOUVER—Registration is now open for the annual Summer Publishing Workshops at Simon Fraser University. New this year for designers is the Book Design Intensive, a four-part, 16-hour workshop that covers a variety of topics including book cover design, typography, multi-page design and combining images and text. Douglas & McIntyre Publishing Group art director Peter Cocking is the instructor for this program.

Also new is a workshop on print production that takes participants through the design-to-press process with information on printing terminology, production planning and colour proofing, instructed by Bonne Zabolotney, an associate professor of communication design at the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design. Contact: www.sfu.ca/pubworks

April 6, 2006

Charitable organization launches arts magazine

TORONTO—A new arts magazine fell out of The Globe and Mail on Saturday, for 50,000 select Toronto-area subscribers. Magenta is standard-sized quarterly published by The Magenta Foundation, a new Canadian arts-publishing house based in here.

“We want to be the new vehicle for visual communication in Canada for art enthusiasts of all types,” says publisher MaryAnn Camilleri. She launched The Magenta Foundation after returning to Canada two years ago from New York City where she worked for 10 years in art publishing. A mission statement on its website declares, “By publishing books and staging exhibitions, Magenta will promote both established and emerging Canadian artists at the widest possible level. ‘Canada boasts some of the greatest photographers in the world,’ says Martha Hanna, director of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in Ottawa, ‘but their works are yet to be recognized by the public at large.’”

The 36-page premier issue is filled with full-page photographs from Canadian, U.S. and British photographers. “Portfolio magazines have always been a favourite of mine,” writes Camilleri in a note to readers. “The sad truth is that there are so few venues around to showcase some of the amazing talent that’s out there.” She says the next issue, due out in June, will have a national circulation of 100,000 through The Globe and Mail.

The editor of Magenta is longtime friend Doug Wallace, who is also deputy editor at Wish and executive editor of Gardening Life, both produced by St. Joseph Media. The art director is Vanessa Wyse and photo director is Clare Vander Meersch—associate art director and director of photography, respectively, at the Globe’s Report on Business magazine.

Also out this month from The Magenta Foundation is Canadian photography book Carte Blanche, Photography.1, with a foreword by Douglas Coupland. Contact: www.magentafoundation.org; www.magentamagazine.com

DDB Canada wins big at Marketing Awards

TORONTO—At Marketing Magazine’s 2006 Marketing Awards ceremony last Thursday, DDB Canada came out on top, receiving a total of 38 awards. The Toronto office won a handful of golds for its Royal Ontario Museum, Feathered Dinosaurs and The Origin of Flight Exhibit ads, including best transit campaign, magazine single, newspaper campaign and newspaper single. It also won a gold in the business press single category for its Epson print ad “Timeline.” In the public service print/outdoor/out of home categories, DDB Canada Vancouver walked away with two golds for its single and campaign ads for the United Way.

Also within the print award groups, Leo Burnett nabbed gold for best magazine campaign, Rethink Vancouver won gold in the transit single category and Ontario College of Art and Design students Mike Donaghey and Addie Gillespie took home gold for their magazine media campaign. For a list of all the awards and award winners see www.marketingmag.ca

April 4, 2006

Activists pressure Weyerhaeuser to seek FSC certification

SAN FRANCISCO—In advance of Weyerhaeuser’s upcoming annual general meeting on April 20, the Washington-based lumber and paper company is under pressure from several shareholders to improve its social and environmental performance. According to a recent release from -based Rainforest Action Network, some shareholder activists are asking fellow investors to encourage Weyerhaeuser to seek Forest Stewardship Council certification to ensure strong protection of forest ecosystems, workers’ rights and the rights of indigenous peoples. RAN sent letters to Weyerhaeuser’s 100 top investors, encouraging them to vote yes on several shareholder resolutions, including FSC certification filed by socially responsible mutual fund company Calvert Group.

Weyerhaeuser, however, is already certified, says spokesperson Frank Mendizabal. According to Mendizabal, all of Weyerhaeuser’s North American forests meet SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) or CSA (Canadian Standards Association) standards. “We have a good track record on sustainability, on corporate responsibility, on protecting endangered species, on recognizing our responsibility to meet the expectations of the public and our communities.” He adds that Weyerhaeuser is also listed on the FTSE4Good, the Financial Times Stock Index that measures corporate social responsibility, and the Dow Jones Sustainability North American Index. Contact: www.ran.org/weyerhaeuser; www.weyerhaeuser.com