This is Canada! Kind of...

With the news that Canada's immigration minister, Jason Kenney is taking "full responsibility" for a citizenship study guide that had all references to gay rights removed, it reminded me of a handy dandy guide book I picked up last summer at Monkey's Paw.

This immigrant's guide from 1948 certainly didn't remove references to same sex marriage. Homosexuality hadn't even been invented yet!

Labels: books, politik

Detail of the star-dot pattern

Recently, I've been reading more design blogs than writing anything. One inspiring piece I happened upon via Coudal, via Ministry of Type, were these star patterned posters created by Mark Brooks. I've played with hand-tooling half-toned patterns before and always planned a series of portraits using a labourious dot technique I developed working on a 3D project. Yet this technique seemed so straight-forward and provided a nice level of visual abstraction that's hard to resist. As a quickie I did these tests of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker (I plan to do the other three members of the famous "Quintet"). These turned out well enough I may even get them printed somewhere as more finished pieces than my Epson can do at home.


The posters printed at 13" x 19"

Labels: design, graphics, posters

Two-headed Squirrel by Chevaux de Bois, won at Come Up To Room

It's a busy weekend for a designer in Toronto this weekend. There's the Interior Design Show, the Toronto International Design Festival, and smaller exhibitions like the Gladstone's Come Up to My Room and Made's Radiant Dark. There's simply too much to do. We managed to see a lecture by Tobias Wong and Cynthia Hathaway at Harbourfront and I managed to get to the Gladstone but that's it.

Otherwise, it's a typical Toronto weekend. Cold. Wet. Grey. Construction on Queen St. W. Confused (utterly confused) TTC bus drivers. Re-routed street cars. Such an ugly time of year to have company visiting.

Labels: design, exhibits, Toronto