Gung Hay Fat Choy!
Spring Festival begins and so does the Province of British Columbia's tour of the Chinese media outlets in Vancouver!
Mary Lo, my Government Communications and Public Engagement contact over the years for this assignment, actually scheduled this event in her Outlook calendar last January so we could avoid rushing the project this year. This is such a fun project to be involved with, and this year being the auspicious Year of the Dragon, we both wanted to create something that the Honourable Harry Bloy, Minister of State for Multiculturalism, would be especially proud to present.
This year, I retained the 11x14 layout developed last year for the Year of the Rabbit because it was so well received and cost-effective.
As inspiration, I drew upon a beautiful Vancouver cultural landmark, the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden at 578 Carrall Street.
There are so many patterns throughout the gardens, and I have such fond memories of visiting them when we lived in the Lower Mainland, that it was an easy fit to include many of these into the background design. The patterns became vertical strips that used the province's corporate colours (Pantone 130 and 288). This became a visual anchor for what was planned to be a very colourful dragon.
The dragon was too fun. I used photos of the
Vancouver Chinese Lion Dance Association as a jumping off point for the mythical beast. The dragon came quite easily.
Once the linework was cleaned up using a
Sharpie, it was scanned and auto-traced with Adobe Illustrator.
Quite often the black and white "Simple Trace" preset delivers the truest tracing. This process is much like designing cloisonne because the colour wells cannot leak.
I usually use a garish magenta to identify cloisons and ensure there are no leaks. However, because I wanted the dragon to be colourful, the magenta suited it. You'll notice a few areas where this colour stuck!
Defining the colours was a hoot, but what was a bit of a challenge was deciding on a treatment for the linework.
All the elements were composited with Adobe InDesign.
Once again, our Graphic Design Unit's paper of choice, Legion's Moab Entrada ran through the unit's own Epson 3800 workhorse. The output speed was about 10 minutes a sheet. The length of time wasn't a concern because the results were wonderful and there was plenty of lead time this year.
The finished, framed prints were very well received again this year. Everyone in the office now wants their own copy!
