Snow Day 006

Funk over. What a wonderful little setting for Snow Day. Avalon Road in the James Bay Neighbourhood is just down the street from South Park Elementary and around the corner from Emily Carr's family home. 613 Avalon I mentioned earlier is in the photo above. Victoria's smallest public park is just at the end of the road. In the summer, it's where I sit and eat oysters for lunch while reading. It's all as cute as a button.

Snow Day 005

I won a ticket to the 2009 Victoria Comic Convention and - unless I missed something - it was weird. Without a word of a lie, prettinear every patron wandering the hall of the Harbour Towers Hotel was a body double for the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy. I was disappointed. With the number of great authors and artists who have chosen illustrated storytelling as their medium, exemplified by the Vancouver Art Gallery's recent Krazy! exhibition, I didn't understand how tables of DC back issues, porn star wannbes, old Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek actors combined with a few folks dressed up as Darth Vader were anywhere near relevant. The whole thing put me in a bit of a funk about "Snow Day". Maybe my funny bone was amputated when I broke my arm!

At the Light table

This past month of October I've been helping out a regular client, Christine at Open School BC, while she revises an English as a Second Language (ESL) manual and guide meant to assist volunteer tutors. The existing manual she's revising had some pretty harsh illustrations. Thankfully, Christine thought of me. At left are a few roughs of "Pictures of Free Time Activities" and "Ailments" from one of the modules in the manual. They're black and white line drawings, so inking, scanning and tracing with Adobe Illustrator's "Live Trace" is a dream!

Snow Day 004

The Greater Victoria Public Library has a wonderful "Local History Room" on their main floor where I just found these 2 gems. The tiny handbook, ABC Guide to Victoria and Vancouver Island was published by Harold Diggon's Government Street print shop in 1928 and is great example of the typography of that era.  Odd to see the iconic typeface of the 1960's - Cooper Black - used throughout.

Cecil Clark's The Best of Victoria, Yesterday and Today: A Nostalgic 15-Year Pictorial History of Victoria published in 1973 is also part of the GVPL's Local History collection. The images of "present day" 1970's Victoria are almost as dated now as the images of yesterday! This image of Government Street and Broughton illustrates the heavy use of overhead electrical power lines. Funny to see so much traffic on Government in the bottom image as it's now only two lanes of north-bound traffic.

Infrastructure 20091004

Snow Day 003

Starting to consider models for the main characters, Samantha and Miss Prewt. Right now, Samantha looks like she just stepped out of a Miyazaki film about Anne of Green Gables. I like Miyazaki, but I'm not sure if this is working for me just yet.

Egon Schiele's harsh line work is almost a no-brainer reference for Miss Prewt as Margo has described her. This is starting to work. I'll expand on this approach.

Infrastructure 20091003

As discussed in previous sketches, I'm using "blanket" as a metaphor for infrastructure's intent to comfort and protect us against isolation and the elements. Taking this metaphor further, I hope to highlight the inability of many folks to purchase and maintain the growing number of infrastructure "blankets" required for contemporary living which unfortunately then leaves them disadvantaged. That said, living in Canada, I can't believe I haven't considered the iconic Hudson's Bay Company Point Blanket as a possible medium.

This image, an advertisment from a 1960 publication of The Beaver magazine, is from the Hbc website describing the history of their point blanket. While the HBC point blankets are made in England by John Atkinson and Sons, they are a Canadian icon and very possibly a wonderful medium and reference for this project given their historical significance. Even the simple wool blankets that Atkinson markets are distinctive in their appearance with their silk or nylon border. Funny how one can see something so often that it become nearly invisible!

Hbc blanket colour range: Multi-stripe, Camel, Green, Scarlet, detail from a 1950 advertisement in The Beaver. I believe there's a scarlet blanket folded in one of my Mom's storage trunks.

Snow Day 002

A test first panel of Margo's "Snow Day," set in Sir James Douglas Elementary School, present day Fairfield. Line work is not as resolved as I would hope, this is something that will need to be refined. Colours muted and leaning towards ochre or umber.

Snow Day

Yet another project, yikes. Daughter Margo has written a cute story in Creative Writing entitled "Snow Day". It's ideal for a graphic short story. The setting in her story is ambiguous. However, after musing about present-day Fairfield as the possible location, and Sir James Douglas as the school the main character attends, I'm wondering about it being set in James Bay in the 1920's. The main characters could then actually meet Emily Carr, Lawren Harris and other Victoria luminaries and eccentrics who would naturally populate the area. Perhaps 613 Avalon could be the main character's home, similar to Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird". Hmmm...

Graphic Design as an Occupation

Sent: Thursday, July 23, 2009 2:58 PM
To: Jones, Calvin
Subject: Cheryl needs your help

Dear sir,

My name is Cheryl. I used to be a senor graphic designer, and I had worked as graphic designer for more than 10 years. Since I had baby, I've been staying at home as a full-time mother for almost 5 years. Luckily, I'm eligible for applying government training fund so that I could have chance to get retraining to upgrade my expertise before restarting my career.

However, many people and even my case manager are not bullish on graphic design field. They keep telling me that this field is shrinking instead of growing, and government won't invest money in such a depressed industry.

As a graphic designer with long-term work experience, I really don't want to give up my specialty, and it is what the passion I have for. For getting the approval from government, I need to find some articles to prove that graphic deign field is not dying. I'm writing for asking for your help. Please support me by describing the status and the future of graphic design industry; and I will use them as reference to help me convince the Service Canada.

Thank you very much. Best wishes,

Cheryl

Jul.23.2009

---------------------------

Hi Cheryl:

Sorry for the delay in responding to your e-mail message, our team at the province's Public Affairs Bureau has been quite busy.

Your message caught me off-guard and has prompted me to really consider my role as a graphic designer in society and whether or not this role is fading as you mentioned your employment case manager suggests. Quite the contrary, I would suggest this applied art has always been overlooked and misunderstood because of its ubiquity. In an increasingly knowledge-based environment, I submit the role of the graphic designer will only increase in importance.

Lately, an increase in desktop computer technology has replaced many of the older "hands-on" technologies like waxing, paste-up, camera output, and such. These technologies, it should be noted, are not the heart of graphic design. These tasks could be now described as "desktop publishing" which is simply the technology-based task of typesetting documents and making them "pretty." This should not be confused with graphic design. Graphic design goes well beyond lining text-boxes up on a page and adding a bit of colour and photos to a document.

Rather, as the Graphic Designers of Canada's website explains, "Designers have put a face to our government, institutions, products and services. Cereal boxes, postage stamps, transit shelter advertising, textbook, magazine and newspaper design, video graphics, websites, logos even shopping bags, are all produced by trained professional designers."

Graphic designers do put a "face" on ideas and institutions and give them identities. Not just the institution's corporate "logo", but the entire way an idea or an institution presents itself visually. Think of our own country, Canada. The flag itself is a stellar piece of graphic design which gives an otherwise very difficult political concept to grasp an instantly recognizable visual identity or "face". Further, the federal government's website has been designed by a graphic designer, as are all of its visual communications (like the attachment about the importance of intellectual property, of which graphic design is a part). Just because graphic design is easy to digest (to the point of it almost being "invisible") shouldn't diminish its important role in any communications strategy.

It's interesting to note that the Prime Minister's wife, Laureen Harper, studied graphic design at SAIT in Alberta.

I've attached a couple of documents that may be relevant to your cause. I hope that all of this helps. While graphic design practitioners certainly won't be the top income earners in society, because of its impact on the members of society, graphic design is quite a worthwhile pursuit, and it certainly isn't going to fade away.

Cheers,
Calvin Jones

Federal Government's "Job Futures" website:
http://www.jobfutures.ca/noc/5241.shtml
"Outlook To 2009"
Your work prospects will continue to be FAIR because:
The employment growth rate will likely be average because of the emergence of information technologies, and an increasing number of websites.
Although the retirement rate will likely be average, the number of retiring workers should contribute to job openings.
The number of job seekers will likely exceed the number of job openings.
"Preparing for the Competition"
You're more likely to succeed if you have strong computer skills for presentations, design, and project management.

http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/designer-of-2015-competencies

http://www.gdc.net/education/index.htm

http://ucda.com/careers.lasso

Infrastructure 20090808

In 2005, the City of Ottawa embarked on a social infrastructure project to examine the social elements of public infrastructure.

"Infrastructure is generally conceived as 'hard' infrastructure such as primary roads and water treatment plants. More recently there has been a great deal of interest and discussion about 'soft' infrastructure like hospitals, community and recreational facilities, public spaces, social housing, volunteer networks and community based agencies. The term 'infrastructure' is increasingly coming to include this 'soft' or 'social' infrastructure. This is because such infrastructure increases social cohesion in urban cores, resulting in stronger municipal and national economies."

The goal of the study was to determine how investment in social infrastructure, particularly housing (which is identified in the project's research backgrounder as a key infrastructure in shaping the perception of the quality of places), contributes to the competitiveness of cities.

The research backgrounder also ponders the question, "Why do governments feel compelled to invest in certain forms of infrastructure but leave or re-designate others for private provision?"

Perhaps one possible solution is where the municipality's governing body sits on the political spectrum and the range of use a particular infrastructure asset has. Consider both "soft" and "hard" infrastructure assets like a toilet and sewer, for example. Consider, also, the municipality as a collective of taxpayers concerned (less or more so depending on where the municipality's governing body sits on the political spectrum) about the collective's well-being. An entire city block or neighbourhood of single households ties into a common sewer thereby justifying the collective's expense to create and maintain the "hard" sewer infrastructure to dispose of the collective's waste safely. However, if the collective is more conservative-leaning, it is perhaps more difficult for it to justify the expense of collected taxpayer dollars on the "soft" private-use, single household toilet initiating the sewage, despite the fact that clean, properly operating sewage disposal means overall healthier, and thereby perhaps happier and more productive, members of the collective.

Infrastructure 20090807

Beautiful summer holidays this year in Ontario, Quebec and the homeland, Saskatchewan. Happening upon The National Gallery of Canada's Canadian collection in Ottawa on Canada Day was a sublime, unexpected joy. The oil studies by Tom Thomson are sumptuous. At McNally Robinson in Saskatoon, I was reminded of the blanket statements of the great Bob Boyer when I stumbled across a gorgeous book by the artist entitled Powwow. Boyer's painted blankets, holding paint as deep as the blanket will allow, speak of spiritual calm, heritage and betrayal. They are a real inspiration for these infrastructure blankets.

Is perhaps the infrastructure we develop a direct extension of our physical needs, as illustrated here? Perhaps the body drives and builds infrastructure.

Infrastructure 20090614

Branches 20090325

Out for a walk along Rockland with my wife Saturday morning, I threw out the idea that natural things differ from man-made things in one key aspect - natural things seem to inherently branch off where as man-made things are static and self-contained. The bushes, trees, clouds, and even human offspring and interactions all branch off to other, newer things that are pretty much structurally the same as the parent. Juan Armando Sánchez in the Department of Biological Sciences at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, Columbia has even dedicated a website to his study of branching in aquatic animals. Fractals are like the ultimate abstraction of branching off. 'The object need not exhibit exactly the same structure at all scales, but the same "type" of structures must appear on all scales.' A suite of works of branching off, hmmmm...

Infrastructure 20090311

Gustav Klimt must have loved textiles. The blankets in several of his works are beautiful, and would be fantastic inspiration for the infrastructure blankets. Still wondering about the best approach to produce the blankets.

I can't be sure, but it looks like Douglas Coupland's been to Walmart to produce his "Corporate Safety Blankets," an interesting concept...

Infrastructure 20090308

Sorry for being away from the sketchpad, my Dad died Valentine's Day in Regina, so the past while has been up and down.

At the Downtown Victoria 2020 conference a few years ago, Bill O'Grady, Ph.D spoke on the topic of "Downtown: The Last Public Place" and laid out a Progressive Vision for Homelessness. The vision included several points that are frequent stumbling blocks for youth at risk:

• Affordable Housing - which could be addressed by using city-owned property to create co-op housing;
  
• Educational Alternatives - particularly Grades 9 and 10;
  
• Health Services supports;
  
• Criminal Justice System - is homelessness really a criminal matter;
  
• Social Supports - through mentoring;
  
• Labour Market needs;
  
• Education of Residents - how to interact with homeless;
  
• Tolerance - of different lifestyles.
  

The current economic climate is pressing more individuals into difficult situations like couch surfing, marital disintegration, food banks and other related difficulties which in time could lead to desperation and homelessness. Carl A. Anderson is quoted as saying, "If greed - one of the worst aspects of human nature - helped push us into crisis, then one of the best aspects of our nature - generosity - will be necessary to help pull us out of it." We should all be looking to charity and generosity to assist those at risk.

Learn more about Bill O'Grady from the University of Guelph's website.

Infrastructure 20090114

Pretty near everything has a simple or a complex key to keep it locked up. However, what if one has so many keys that they become difficult to manage?