October 30, 2007
Rethink gives Canadian Press new quotes
TORONTO—The Canadian Press has received a fresh new look. The news agency recently unveiled an updated logo and new corporate colours that reflect the organization’s homegrown identity.

Canadian Press scrapped the blue in favour of a more patriotic colour

Vancouver agency Rethink Communications was tapped to rebrand the historic national news agency and the result is decidedly more Canadian. Its new logo features the familiar red and white Canadian flag turned into a pair of quote marks.

“We just wanted something that would identify The Canadian Press,” explains Ian Grais, partner and co-creative director of Rethink. “The colours and the quote marks, we felt it was simple and would look good in small print.

“The old logo, a stylized CP, just didn’t get the idea of who they were across,” adds Grais of the organization’s former light-blue emblem. “The Canadian Press has been the definitive news source in Canada for the last 90 years. We just wanted to make that clear.”

The Canadian Press decided to stop referring to itself by its initials as research showed people associated CP with the railway company, not the news agency.

The rebranding efforts have been in the works since February of this year and Canadian Press marketing manager Thuy Anh Nguyen is excited about the final results.

“If you asked the general public what The Canadian Press was, they wouldn’t be able to tell you,” says Nguyen. “We just thought it was time to change that.”

“We’re sort of like the Associated Press in the United States,” the marketing manager explains, “which surprisingly has better awareness in Canada than we do among the general public.” 

New Canadian Press stationery, business cards and marketing material are currently being created to reflect the updated look, while online and print advertisements for the makeover were launched last week. Contact: www.thecanadianpress.com

— Simon Yau

October 24, 2007
Insight and advice from DesignThinkers
TORONTO—There was a record number of attendees at the last week’s DesignThinkers conference, hosted by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario. One thousand, one hundred and fifty people participated in the five-day event that began with a screening of type documentary Helvetica and wound down with several studio tours and workshops.

Karim Rashid was a keynote speaker at last week's DesignThinkers conference

Here are five pearls of wisdom gleaned from various seminars at the two-day speakers symposium, held at the Toronto Convention Centre:

Design thought #1:
According to New York-based designer James Victore, graphic design is so damn boring because it all looks the same. “We all want to look alike,” says Victore. “Fuck that. It makes the world smaller and smaller and soon the whole world will fit up my ass.”

Design thought #2:
For Abbott Miller, a partner at the New York office of Pentagram, the role of design is articulating content on behalf of others. In his view, graphic designers are editors or authors of information. “Recognize that graphic design can modulate a story with images and text like no other real profession can.”

Design thought #3:
Design, said Egyptian-born, Toronto-raised and New York-based designer Karim Rashid, is the human experience. “It shouldn’t exist if it doesn’t bring meaning to our lives,” he said.

However, he added, most companies are not interested in innovation. “We don’t want to give up our archetypes and everything gets more banal…. [So we must] liberate ourselves from the world we live in now and change… Design is about shaping the future.”

Design thought #4:
Designer and filmmaker Hillman Curtis encouraged designers to take some time to do personal work. “It works wonders,” he said, adding that it will also create opportunities for more commercial work.

Design thought #5:
And in Colin Drummond’s talk, “Can culture trump consumer?”, the group director of cognitive and cultural studies at Crispin Porter + Bogusky declared that culture wants to change. “We are in the behaviour changing business,” said Drummond. “What stops change is collective blindness… people can’t change unless the culture around them changes. We can be change makers and invent tools to break the existing culture ”

To do this, Drummond suggested creating surprise. He said designers should develop ideas that are counter to what everyone thinks. One of his examples was an ad campaign CP+B designed for Mini Cooper that encouraged consumers to rethink the way they drive, at a time when everyone was buying SUVs. Contact: www.designthinkers.com; www.rgdontatrio.com

October 23, 2007
Creative for criminals
VANCOUVER —For potential auto thieves pondering the consequences of their crime, the writing is on the wall – literally.

Graffiti art targets potential car thieves

Local agency Wasserman + Partners Advertising has created a series of guerilla art-style installments on the walls of 15 Vancouver parking lots, reminding potential car thieves of the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia’s bait car program.

Bait cars are vehicles intentionally planted by police. Intended to reduce auto-theft, the cars have global positioning systems installed that authorities use to track and capture thieves.

“We wanted to be at the places robbers are hanging out,” explains Sean Weller, an account manager at Wasserman + Partners. “We were targeting the way they think and what they do. But with a message.”

That message is: “Steal a Bait Car. Go to Jail.” The slogan accompanies spray-painted images of a policeman and dog capturing a criminal, a sullen car thief looking out from behind prison bars and an oversized arrow that cheekily directs robbers towards a bait car.

Jason Lee, the art director at Wasserman responsible for the campaign, says presentation wasn’t the only important factor in the project.

“We wanted it to look very authentic,” says Lee, “but we also needed insight.

“We worked with the police department to come up with scenarios that would resonate with car thieves,” explains Lee. “All the situations we presented were based on actual stats. For example, car thieves are actually afraid of dogs.”

Initial response to the campaign has been positive and Lee is excited about expanding the project to include more new scenarios.

“Our graffiti artist is rarin’ to go,” laughs the designer. “We’re just waiting for the go ahead to tag some more buildings.” contact: www.wasserman-partners.com

— Simon Yau

Toronto design group grows
TORONTO—Design agency Teehan+Lax has expanded over the last year, nearly doubling in size.

Teehan+Lax's new group of seven

Studio manager Marni Bennet, designers Steve Taubaman and Jason Kan, copy writer Kate Bowen, information architect Derek Vaz and developers Chris Erwin and Peter Nitsch have all joined Teehan+Lax over the last eight months.

Co-founder Jon Lax explains that expanding the company was an organic evolution that he and partner Geoff Teehan approached carefully.

“It’s a real soft touch thing, there are no rules for it,” explains Lax. “We just sort of max out on the people we have and we don’t want to burn them out.”

Despite pushing capacity, Lax remains wary of taking on too many new projects at once. “Our sustainability as a company is dependent on creativity and I don’t want staff that’s just completely cooked… You get to a point where you don’t have another idea to give and throwing more money at it isn’t going to change that.”

Lax also cited skill set as a reason for expansion: “We start to find that there is work we want to be doing and we don’t necessarily have the person to realize that out.

“We might start outsourcing it … but we figure lets instead just add that skill to our toolkit. That’s what we did when we brought in Jason Kan,” says Lax, referring to the firm’s first animation designer.

Despite jumping from 10 to 20 employees over the course of several months, the firm has worked diligently to not let its increasing size alter its less-is-more corporate philosophy. A relatively small agency, Teehan+Lax is approaching inevitable growth on its own terms.

“I think that if a lot of people in the agency world knew how much business we turned down, they’d be appalled,” laughs Lax. “We’re not interested in being huge. Right now we limit ourselves consciously.”

However, the partners often still worry whenever a growth spurt occurs. “The thing that keeps Geoff and I up at night,” concedes the former Modem Media creative director, “is we don’t want to grow and have product for our client suffer. Inevitably when you grow, quality control is one of the hardest things to manage.” contact: www.teehanlax.com

— Simon Yau

October 17, 2007
Out with the old
ACTON, Ont.—The Olde Hide House has updated its nameplate. In addition to dropping the Olde moniker, the Canadian leather retailer shed its vintage look in favour of a sleeker, more modern approach, says designer Jeff Cabral, creative director and marketing director of Hide House.

The Olde Hide House has a new look

“Our new logo, consisting of a crisper font, gives us a more sophisticated, contemporary look versus the previous logo, which reflects an older time,” says Cabral.

Cabral swapped the previous Copperplate typeface with Myriad for its clean and simple look. He feels it’s a better fit in the urban environments of its Toronto and new Vaughan locations. The flagship Acton store will retain the “Olde” logo.

Cabral also found the red box difficult to work with and feels the new colour palette of black, white and grey will reproduce better in newsprint advertising.

“I believe that less is more when it comes to design.” Contact: www.leathertown.com

Design in the news
TORONTO—The latest issue of monthly marketing magazine Strategy features a cover story on the importance of design.

Called “Design Thinking: Not just a pretty product,” the article includes commentary from marketers Krista Schwartz, P&G global design manager, retail hair care and Joseph Mimran, lead designer of Joe Fresh clothing line. It also includes projects by designers Matthew Clark, principal of Vancouver-based Subplot Design and Alex Wigington, creative director and partner of Oxygen Design + Communications in Toronto.

The article reads: “The power of design today has gone beyond making things look pretty to play a structural role in smart business strategy…

“What’s making design so sexy? A mix of social factors including globalization, the rapid pace of new technology and an increasingly sophisticated consumer who demands more than a low price point from products.” Contact: www.strategymag.com

October 12, 2007
Helvetica the movie returns to Toronto
TORONTO—On the opening night of its annual DesignThinkers conference, held next week on Oct. 17 and 18, the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario has organized a screening of the much talked about documentary Helvetica.

In celebration of the font’s 50th anniversary this year, the film discusses typography, graphic design and global visual culture with commentary from leading international designers including Paula Scher, Hermann Zapf, Massimo Vignelli and David Carson.

The film’s director Gary Hustwit will participate in a Q&A discussion after the screening.

If you missed the film at Hot Docs last year, now’s your chance to see it on its return to Toronto. Tickets are still available. The film will be shown on the evening of Tuesday Oct. 16. at the Regent Theatre. Contact: www.rgdontario.com

OCAD’s Anthony Cahalan resigns
TORONTO—After just over a year in his new role, Anthony Cahalan has resigned as dean of design at the Ontario College of Art & Design. He cited personal reasons for his decision to return to his native Australia.

“Our international experience here has been phenomenal but the pull from home is something an ex-pat has to deal with,” says Cahalan. He returns to Australia next month where he has accepted a higher position as dean of the faculty of arts at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales. “I’ve been offered a wonderful professional opportunity and returning is important to my kids,” he adds. Cahalan has three sons, age 15, 12 and 10.

OCAD president Sara Diamond is sorry to see him go. “I know he is very regretful of having started his tenure at OCAD and leaving this early on in the process, as am I to see he’s leaving because he’s a very bright guy and has a good combination of design practice knowledge, which OCAD is so strong at, and also brought some of the academic strengths in the design field which we’re becoming increasingly strong at including.”

Cahalan says he and his family have had a tremendous cultural experience living abroad. His 16 months on the job, however, weren’t always so rosy.

Certain changes at OCAD that Cahalan implemented, such as OCAD’s plan to hire more permanent faculty, were met with apprehension from students and resignations from staff, including advertising veteran Allan Kazmer and chair of the advertising department Peter Oliver.

Cahalan feels there were a lot of misunderstandings. Staff and students fear this move will decrease the number of instructors who are professionals with experience in the industry. Cahalan disagrees.

“Just because someone is permanent doesn’t mean they can’t be a professional. I have a background as a designer and typographer,” he says. Dubbed “Dr. Type,” Cahalan is one of the few designers in the world to hold a PhD in typography.

OCAD is looking to grow its faculty with instructors who have Masters or PhDs as the school initiates its new graduate degree programs next year, however, current faculty are encouraged but not required to upgrade their education.  

“OCAD achieved university status five years ago and it was a goal it had been working towards for over a decade. It is understandable when you’re going through change that you have to work through some of those bumps,” says Cahalan.

Diamond concurs that these issues are “along the course of what one encounters” when you are an academic leader. “I don’t think that those were issues that unsettled him unduly,” says Diamond. “You can look at the advertising issue but you can also look at all of the things that were great positive steps forward while he was in place and that he was a part of and that the faculty and the design program are very excited about. One tends not to hear about those things but they really outbalance one set of fracas with a retiring faculty member [Kazmer].”

Cahalan achieved a great deal in his short time at OCAD, says Diamond. Under his stewardship, the design program won more awards than ever before, its graduating show was one of the best ever, and he had begun to build some research opportunities in design as well as help bring OCAD’s graduate program to the next stage. He will be missed, she says.

OCAD has hired a search company to help with its national and international hunt for a new dean. Contact: www.ocad.ca