Explore Design

Explore Design (ED) The Design Education Fair for Youth is a trade show held every year at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. All colleges in Ontario that offer design related courses are invited to come and showcase their schools design programs. In addition to setting up a booth and offering promotional materials Durham College wanted to present prospective students with something they could take with them that would help them to think about design in context and consider what design actually is. We thought a good way to do this was to give them something to think about that would make them want to know more, or give them something that they don't know about and hope that they would seek to find out what it means.

We wanted to offer the prospective students something they would use or keep. We liked the idea of buttons, because buttons (ones that are not for musicians, or rock groups) usually are vehicles for messages, or some sort of obscure phrase or reference. Conceptually they worked as a medium, and they are also very graphic, in and out of use.

We came up with 20 phrases that made references to all the programs offered by the School of Media, Art & Design at Durham College. The phrases were applied to buttons and made into posters. The posters were pasted all about the booth at the trade show and the buttons were stuck (using their pins) into the posters all over the booth. People could them walk around the booth and read the posters and take a button or two.

We did not get a chance to attend the show but heard the buttons were very well received, we even were asked by some who saw the buttons what the meaning was of a few phrases.

Summer Shorts

Summer Shorts is a program that Durham College offers for anyone over the age of 13. People can go to learn or acquire new skills in a number of areas, anywhere from pottery to computer animation.

This poster and brochure was designed for this program. In previous years the program had a number of printed assets, for this year we came up with the idea to design one printed piece 2 sided and use it to cover a few different assets. One side could function solely as a poster, and the other side could be used as a brochure.

We also designed the poster and brochure to fold into itself for mailing. It folds in such a way that Summer Shorts 2007 is still legible, and more and more of the poster gets revealed while you unfold it. We did this not only for efficiency but also to give the recipient some interaction with the visual and the poster and brochure itself.

To add some variety to the poster and brochure we designed them to be 2 colours, where 1 colour is black and the other is a bright accenting colour, that could be changed on press. We did 4 colour variations, we chose a colour palette inspired by a summer day, a orange for the sunrise, a red for sunset, a green for the grass and plant life, and a blue for either a clear sky or water at the beach.

The colours also have other psychological meanings or associations, red for excitement or passion, orange for friendly or approachable, green for growth or learning, and blue for calmness or space. When the different colour posters are coupled together they not only look good, and command some attention, they also relate a good representation of the program with colour theory.

Multiple copies in various colours were sent out to recipients, so that display areas could be designed from a random modular system using both the poster side and brochure side of the piece.

10x10

This is installed in the area of Durham College where most of the art and design students have classes. It was installed to give the students some points of reference or inspiration, it has 10 quotes by 10 people that range in profession from designers to artists to scientists.

We worked with Richard Brown, Coordinator of Graphic Design at Durham College in choosing the quotes, and organizing the layout. For the layout the quotes were placed into invisible golden rectangles, and spaced out by golden rectangles in a way that the negative space balances out the text and almost becomes positive. Each panel was also designed to balance out each other, and be impactful enough to be seen, but not add any visual clutter to the hallway.

Since this project we often refer back to these quotes as a source of inspiration.

DIY

This t-shirt was given to students of the Schools of Design and Communication Arts during their orientation. The t-shirts were designed to distinguish these 2 schools from the others at Durham College, and to give the students an interesting experience during their first few minutes as college students.

From our other work we realized that a silk screened area whether on cloth or paper is a great surface for drawing on with permanent markers, and it is actually permanent.

We thought it would be appropriate for the students, since they are entering a creative field, to have the opportunity to get creative on the first day and create their own graphic. The activity at orientation also serves as an ice breaker, or conversation starter. We added some guidelines or suggested starting points incase the person was stuck and needed a starting point.

Durham Goes Downtown

This exhibition was a joint project between Durham College and the Downtown Oshawa Committee. Students in the Foundations in Art program had the opportunity to have their work on display at retail locations in the downtown area.

In recent years the downtown area has been rebranded, part of the rebranding campaign was the installation of unique street and lamp posts, planters, bus shelters, and signage. For this project we leveraged the recent rebranding to create a visual for the event. We used a combination of illustration and photography to turn a street post from the historic 4 corners of the downtown area into an icon. Since the event was in fall, and part of the opening reception was a late afternoon / early evening walking tour we worked with a palette of colours that would reflect both the season and the atmosphere of the walking tour. In addition to the poster, t-shirts were produced and sold as a fundraiser for the program. The t-shirts were done to match the palette of the poster the graphic was screened on natural unbleached cotton.

Mania

This was the first ever print project either of us worked on. It was a great learning experience, and a very successful project. We worked on it with 3 other students at the time and 3 teachers. It was for the annual design exhibit at the Design Exchange in Toronto. We couldn't have been more happy with both the design team we were a part of and the outcome of the project.

The name Mania is a take on the design process, and the excitement that is part of the end of the process, when you are looking at the finished product. The visual was created very late one night or very early one morning, depending on how you look at it, when we were working with the other students on the project. The images ambiguity is part of it's allure, you aren't sure what is, but it embodies the concept, and adds an artistic element, which is something we wanted to convey.