March 28, 2008
Jessica Rose is the new art director at Toronto Life
TORONTO—It took almost 10 months but Toronto Life has hired a new full-time art director. Jessica Rose, 29, fills the spot vacated by Carol Moskot, who left the St. Joseph Media city mag last June to launch Jewish Living in New York.

Toronto Life hires Pod 10 designer as new AD Photo credit: Jessica Eaton

Rose’s experience includes a term as a designer with Toronto’s Pod 10 Art & Design, led by creative director Carmen Dunjko. She's also worked as the art director/curator for the Drake Hotel and was an organizer for the inaugural Nuit Blanche festival in Toronto. She has a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and her art has been exhibited internationally.

Magazine experience is noticeably absent from this resumé but Toronto Life editor-in-chief Sarah Fulford says great ideas, creative vision and contemporary sensibility—things she believes Rose has an abundance of—are “much more important than understanding the machinations of a magazine.”

Nevertheless, Rose will have to learn quickly, which is why Louis Fischauf, who has been serving as interim art director, will stay on for a few months as design director. Contact: www.torontolife.com

—Marco Ursi

March 25, 2008
New scholarship helps island designers
VICTORIA–Established in January, the Cady-Marshall scholarship is one way the GDC is encouraging design students from Vancouver Island to further their education.

“It’s important for the future of the profession,” says Peggy Cady, of Cady Graphics and a former national president of the GDC.

The scholarship, three $500 student bursaries awarded annually, is named after Cady and Michael Marshall, founding president of GDC’s Vancouver Island chapter.

“I think it’s important to support young designers,” Cady says. “It’s a hard profession to break into and you need all the education you can get to do well in the field.”

Both designers are GDC fellows, an accolade that 58 designers have received since 1960. Marshall became a fellow in 2002, Cady just last year.

“It was quite exciting and humbling,” Cady says of having a scholarship presented in her name.

Formal training in design is increasingly important in the field, Cady notes. It’s essential to know more than just software, she says. In addition to training in design, typography, business and marketing, Cady says a student needs time in a good program to develop his or her skills.

To that end, the scholarship is a boon. “Any support for a design student is going to be valuable for moving their career along.”  Contact: www.gdc.net

­–Jeff Lewis

March 19, 2008
X-Rite and Pantone release colour management tool
CARLSTADT, N.J.—Pantone has launched a new colour management solution. ColorMunki is a new product that enables designers to create, control and communicate colour, all in one device. It’s the result of its new partnership with colour measurement giant X-Rite, which purchased Pantone in a $180 million acquisition last October.  

ColorMunki comes in three offerings: ColorMunki Photo, ColorMunki Create and ColorMunki Design. ColorMunki Design allows users to capture colours from any surface and to select, specify and store colour palettes in a calibrated environment. The colour can then be transferred into your design software, including Photoshop, InDesign and QuarkXpress.

ColorMunki Design will also calibrate monitors, projectors and printers for accurate soft proofing and will verify spot colours for reproduction in any medium. Contact: www.pantone.com

Report says demand for graphic designers is increasing
MENLO PARK, Calif.—Staffing service agency The Creative Group recently released its annual creative industry salary survey. Of the 99 marketing and advertising executives interviewed for this report, 83% plan to hire a graphic designer in the next 12 months, a seven percentage point increase over last year.

Across the board, wages have increased slightly. At the top end of the scale, the average starting salary for a creative director with over eight years of experience in Toronto ranges from $95,000 to $210,000.

At the bottom, a graphic designer with one to three years of experience can expect $39,000 to $48,250.  For more information from this report, go to www.creativegroup.com/salaryguide

March 12, 2008
Montreal firm paints Blue Metropolis book fest green
MONTREAL–Local creative agency Black Eye Design has been commissioned to design the festival materials – posters, bookmarks, programs – for the tenth annual Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival.

The partnership includes a mandate to reduce the environmental impact of the festival’s promotional materials. Last year, Blue Metropolis printed 155,000 programs on 100% non-recyclable paper stock. The festival relied on newspaper distribution and found it had a very “scatter-shot” effect, says Jennifer Blais, studio coordinator at Black Eye.

“It was a huge waste of paper if they’re not getting to the right people,” she says.

This year, Black Eye is printing just 80,000 programs in a reduced, digest format. Of those, half will be complete programs. The remaining 40,000 will be condensed to a 10-panel foldout, which will be distributed separately.

“It’s important for them,” Blais says of the eco-shift. “And it’s becoming more important both for the authors and for the public in general. It’s something we work really hard for as a studio.”

It won’t hurt the festival’s publicity either, she adds.

The project itself marries the boutique’s two specializations – publication design and festivals. Black Eye has been working with the Fantasia Film Festival – Montreal’s nod to genre film – for a decade and recently completed a design for Andrew Nikiforuk’s Pandomonium, the company’s second project for Penguin Books.

As far as clients go, Blue Metropolis has been quite flexible, says Blais.

“It’s really nice to have a client both with an artistic sensibility and the openness to say ‘run with it.’”

This year’s theme is “On the Road.” The festival runs from April 30 to May 4. Contact: www.blackeye.com

– Jeff Lewis

March 10, 2008
Toronto designer riffs on the Red Rocket
TORONTO–Griping about the state of public transit has long been a Torontonian pastime. So when Matt Blackett, editor of Spacing magazine and principal at Matt B Media, posted a reworked design for the city’s subway and streetcar maps on Spacing’s blog this past January, the responses came in varying timbres.

Designer proposes new streetcar map

“Some of [the responses] are good, some of them are ridiculous,” he says. “I take what’s important and move forward from there.”

One comment helpfully suggested he add loops indicating streetcar short turns. Another called it yet another example of a “downtown centric, anti-everywhere else transit focus.”

Re-envisioning the TTC maps is nothing new. A quick Google search will turn up a number of incarnations. But Blackett hopes to take his rendering one step further. About a year ago, he approached TTC chair Adam Giambrone with the idea to design a streetcar specific map.

“They said this is something that can move very quickly once it gets approval,” he says. He’ll be submitting his design at the end of March so as to have it on the agenda for April’s commission meeting, where he hopes TTC commissioners will endorse the idea and move to implement it.

Currently, no specific maps for streetcar routes exist. “It seems kind of silly,” Blackett says, “that we don’t have any kind of iconic map to help people while on the streetcar to show them where the other streetcar routes are.”

The new map incorporates the iconography of the existing subway map, which Blackett says helps orient the rider and bring consistency to the design.

Blackett says the TTC has until now done a poor job at branding itself, particularly in taking advantage of its status as the Red Rocket.

“I’m just riffing on what they have,” he says of the map. “I think it will be a step forward for user friendliness.” Contact: www.spacing.ca

– Jeff Lewis

March 5, 2008
Getty sells for $2.4 billion
SEATTLE – Getty Images, the world’s foremost supplier of digital images and video, announced last week that it has entered into a tentative merger agreement to be acquired by the private equity firm Hellman & Friedman for $2.4 billion, including debt.

“We’re expecting the deal to close sometime in the second quarter,” says Bridget Russel, director of communications at the Seattle-based media company. “We don’t really have a firm date yet.”

The acquisition by Hellman & Friedman represents the best outcome for shareholders: a 55% premium over the share price on Jan. 18, the final day of trading before the company announced it was “exploring strategic alternatives,” Russel says.

“It offers our stockholders a significant premium to our current stock price and gives them a certain value in an uncertain equity and debt market right now.”

Company co-founder and CEO Jonathan Klein said in an email that cheaper imagery websites have had little impact on Getty’s traditional stills business, and did not contribute to the merger.

Getty’s customers are using and licensing images in new ways, Klein said, “and are increasingly turning to the web to communicate regularly and frequently.”

“This has had an impact on our business.”

To that end, Klein said the merger will allow Getty to focus on the newer areas of its business, including music, footage, multi-media, editorial imagery and user generated content, where he said he expects to see growth through istockphoto.com. 

“The transaction will ensure we can continue our long-term strategy,” he said, “to be a broad-based business-to-business digital media company with a consumer arm.”

For its customers, Getty expects no changes in its day-to-day operations, Klein added. 

As well as being a partial investor in the Neilson Company, Hellman & Friedman’s other media holdings include ad agencies Young & Rubicam and Digitas Inc.

The acquisition is good news for graphic designers as it assuages fears of a further consolidated stock image market had Getty been purchased by a competitor – last year talks with rival Jupitermedia ended without a deal. Contact: www.gettyimages.com 

– Jeff Lewis

March 3, 2008
Identica to redesign signage at the quays of Montreal’s old port
MONTREAL – In an effort to help visitors navigate its tangle of quays, the Old Port of Montreal Corporation has commissioned Identica Branding and Design to retool the tourist site’s outdoor signage, with particular emphasis given over to way finding and event scheduling.

“We’re going to really try and complete those missing links,” says Nathalie Houde, vice president of strategic planning at Identica in Montreal. “It’s a very challenging site. [Whereas] Toronto’s harbour front is really linear, ours is really a maze of quays.”

The main objective, Houde says, is to entice visitors to take advantage of those specific locations, views and activities that might initially seem inaccessible.

“People might not be tempted to go to the end of the quay because it’s really far,” she says. “But when you get there the views you get of the St. Lawrence River are phenomenal.”

Managed by the government of Canada, the 2.5 km stretch of port land receives more than six million visitors yearly, Houde says. The new signage, she says, will enable the Old Port of Montreal Corp. to more readily communicate and promote its temporary events, such as concerts, its igloo fest and a winter ice bar.

“They need to be able to communicate that those activities are occurring throughout the year,” she says. “But the infrastructure of the existing signage program doesn’t allow for that.”

Specifically, the current signage contains static elements that limit its ability to communicate information down to the minute, which Houde says is the focal point of the new mandate.

“It’s not about improving [the old signage],” she explains. “It’s about completing the type of messaging.”

Although early in development, Houde says Identica is looking at e-signage as a possible avenue worth pursuing. Another, she says, involves utilizing mobile devices to communicate information.

“It’s a whole program to say how can you get information to people that are on the site but also stimulate their intention of coming back from time to time to check out what else is going on.”

Citing residents’ sensitivity to the old port becoming a “land of electronic devices,” Houde says Identica will have to tread lightly when it comes to implementing changes.

“There are a few constraints we’re going to be dealing with that make the project even more interesting.”

Houde says the mandate will be completed by the end of March. Identica has partnered with Montreal-based Signature Design Communication to handle the structural challenges inherent in an outdoor project.

“We teamed up with them because this mandate was very challenging and because it’s an outdoor location, very public, with six million visitors a year,” Houde says. “So you need to be efficient.”

– Jeff Lewis