Once known as the Vancouver Typography Meetup Group, Type Brigade is Vancouver’s type speaker series, with regular typography, lettering, and type design talks from local and extended creative communities sharing their mutual love of typography. Along with hosting workshops and events, the growing popularity of the group led them to further promote themselves online with an engaging visual identity.
“On a boozy afternoon at St Augustine’s Pub, Lindsay, Anya (Ellis, Hair & Makeup stylist), and Steve thought it would be fun to do a creative project that involved buses, interesting people, and storytelling. (Luckily somebody made a couple of notes on a cocktail napkin.) Shot using the same cast, these images are now part of an ongoing series depicting life on public transit during different time periods, reflecting the social norms of the time.”
Following the 2019 brand refresh by creative agency Pendo, I was approached by BB&Co to design a special print piece for the Royal Botanical Gardens in Ontario. Celebrating their brand story, an enduring legacy in Canada, and highlights of their massive 25 year master plan, the time was right to create an elegant keepsake in tribute to their retiring CEO. Pragmatic design decisions led to a 9" x 12" format that would maximize impact within digital press limitations, while keeping paper waste to a minimum.
I was contacted to create a dual-language logotype expanding upon the custom lettering I designed for the original 2003 Finning wordmark. With more experience and knowledge of constructing letterforms, I was able to work within a very fast timeframe—4 days between first presentation of tight hand lettering drawings to vectorization of final digital files—delivering on schedule for Finning’s intranet site launch, named Traction.
Combining a passion for typography and print design made for the perfect team project. Building upon Mitchell Digital’s creative collaborations program, their platform asks “how can Design Teams leverage the mindfulness of design for the greater good?” In our case, we created a useful, prestige keepsake that wouldn’t feel disposable, nor date quickly. This perpetual desk calendar is as flexible and diverse as the typographic styles, paper surfaces and colour combinations used throughout, while demonstrating Mitchell’s digital capabilities and support partners.
This limited edition card (580 prints) was designed to give each side equal importance, showcasing letterpress printing and creative contributors, as a multi-purpose Spicers Paper promotional piece. The 2-step idea of THINK (process) & MAKE (execution), reads in either direction and communicates no matter how it's viewed. The concept is that when people THINK (outward, lots of ideation), it leads to the desire to do or MAKE something (inward, thus the blind deboss), to get inspired or start a dialogue, and continue the creative cycle.
Sacred Canopy Society is a storytelling guild sharing sacred stories to connect and unite cultural communities. The guild acts as a hub for developing and distributing story guild resources, connecting deeply with the human experience via theater arts and performance. The logo design hints at storytelling and building blocks using a combination of shapes to suggest sound, digital feeds & window frames (with both artistic and holistic symbolism). This combination of graphic elements serves the idea of linking different stories, faiths, cultures, performers, and audiences.
Emergent Properties creatively leads the design, development, ownership and management of large, mixed-use buildings. Building upon the philosophical approach of emergence, the theme of “Gestalt” (a form or shape, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts) describes their unique process as it relates to Emergent, leading to innovative solutions. The letterforms are incomplete yet easily understood by mentally filling in the gaps, regardless of typographic orientation within the changing, modular logo.
Based in Denmark, Numena (meaning “a thing in itself inaccessible to experience”) is a secure online space for exchanging information as “your safe window to the world.” The notion of safeguarding data in a connected world (the internet) focuses on shared user connectivity within layers of encryption and a solid wall of protection. Whatever type of work being executed or shared from end to end via zero-knowledge services, Numena offers secure community services for online productivity and collaboration.
Infographic series created for the Vancouver Sun’s Weekend Review. Content would be supplied by newspaper librarian, Kate Bird, who compiles all the statistics and information. Concept, design, typographic layout and illustration—or on the rare occasion, photography + Photoshop—would be developed and completed within 1-1.5 weeks time, always working within the same rectangular space.
