Sunday January 13th 2013, 3:24 pm
Filed under: news,portfolio
With the passing of the new year, and all the attendant reflection this entails, I’ve finally taken the time to revisit my portfolio pdf. The main goal of this redesign was to represent the growing diversity of my practice while highlighting the common threads (typography, poetics, collaboration, etc.) that tie my work together.
The process of thinking through my work was surprisingly difficult. Though it’s a new portfolio, it doesn’t actually feature very much new work. This is partly due to the honest fact that my newest work isn’t necessarily my best (something I clearly need to work on), and also due to the desire for the portfolio to act more as a signpost, rather than a comprehensive collection. Nonetheless, there are several exciting new projects included, alongside new documentation of older work. I’ve cherry-picked through my output over the last few years to select pieces that point towards the type of work I want to be doing.
For Expozine this year, John and I pulled together this small zine consisting of two hard-wrought poems. The poems were composed/written by us over the course of 4 days and nights, addressing our tried and true themes of love and loss, gentrification and war, isolation and community, solidarity and suicide.
Despite the short timeline (we were stapling and folding into the wee hours of Saturday morning), I’m really proud of these little poems and the elegantly restrained format and typography. The zine was published in a limited edition of 50 copies.
Please join us on Friday Oct. 5th for the next concert in the Howl series. We’re very excited to showcase Léopard et Moi and Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche, two local avant-garde rock ensembles working on the creative frontlines of this city.
Members of both groups were deeply involved in the student strike, and we will also take this opportunity to celebrate the victories of the movement with groups that contributed to the material culture of the strike tabling at the event.
With news of the cancellation of the Liberal tuition hike here in Québec today; a stunning victory after many months of mobilising and protest by students, and a rare (if nuanced…) victory for our social movements more generally, I thought I would post this image of the poster Sarah Boris designed (with my “art direction”), and I printed during our residency in Dundee.
I had the phrase bouncing around my head for many months, but never found an image/design to resolve it. The #GGI posters I designed were largely inspired by the desire to find a way to use it, ending up as a series of eight posters, yet none of which used the phrase “Coeur Rage”… It took the synchronicity of travelling to Dundee, and meeting with Sarah, for this design to emerge.
When I got back to Montréal, I used the poster at several street protests, and was often stopped by people wanting to take pictures of it. It certainly struck a chord with many people, and I’m very happy that Sarah and I managed to create this work, as a small contribution to the movement, to a summer of love and rage.
Continuing my collaboration with Cinema Politica, “Selections” presents an extensive catalogue of CP’s Canadian films, artist and project profiles, photos of locals, etc. recapping the last year of the organisation’s activity. It celebrates and details the important work being done by CP, and acts as an engaging tool for outreach and promotion.
Despite the limited production budget, the booklet provided a good opportunity to push Cinema Politica’s visual identity (developed by us last year), through the use of powerful imagery and a cinematic format, a refined typographic palette and layout, and crisp one-colour (interior) printing on a nice, matte stock.
Additional design assistance by Kim Tsui, printing by Kata Soho.
I’ve just returned from a wonderful 2 week trip to Dundee, Scotland — where I participated in Sarah Boris’s 48 Hour Splash project, and Porto, Portugal — where I kicked back and relaxed. Many thanks to Sarah (and Creative Scotland) for bringing me over there, to Dundee Contemporary Arts for hosting our project, and to Tamara for putting me up in Porto.
I’ll be posting more soon about the poster workshop, but for now, here are some photos documenting my too-short time abroad, edited with dbox’s “intsagrammy” photohsop actions, which I’ve been having a little too much fun playing around with of late.
As the inspiring 2012 student strike expands into a broader social movement, the Howl! Arts Collective will be holding an outdoor concert and artistic intervention, Rêve Général Illimité. The event aims to celebrate the creative spirit in the streets during the Québec student uprsing and to draw attention to, and support for, the ongoing strike.
Rêve Général Illimité will include musical and theatrical performances, visual art installations, a screen-printing station, all inspired by the Québec student strike.
I recently decided to gather a selection of the logos and wordmarks I’ve designed for a wide variety of clients over the years. I’ve always really enjoyed the challenge and reward of (re)defining the visual identity of a company or organisation, and the design of the logo is at the root of this process. For me, there is a clear emphasis on using strong, simple typography, complemented by a touch of graphic wit from which the rest of the identity can emerge.
Some of these date back almost ten years, but still look pretty fresh (imho)!
In solidarity with the student strike in Québec, and inspired by the work of l’École de la montagne rouge, Kim and I have designed a small portfolio of street posters for the movement. We’re hoping that once we get them up in the city they’ll help to encourage the students to continue their just struggle. The posters also aim to extend the critique of the tuition hikes to challenge the austerity politics that they are an intrinsic component of, and to firmly denounce the draconian measures the Charest government is using to enact them.
