It's been much too long since I've last posted. Summer is in full swing and with the new season has come a wealth of welcome changes – the first of which was moving CMANGO Design HQ back to Kensington Market, into the Kapisanan Philippine Centre for Arts & Culture. Aside from the obvious benefits of working in the Market every day, the creative energy emanating not only from the good people at Kapisanan but also from neighbouring artists (and clients!) Pretty Freedom, Carlos Bulosan Theatre and It's Your Life Handmade is so necessary.
Other welcome additions include my team of design interns! Hailing from York University, Ontario College of Art and Design University and Sheridan College, Erika, Joanna, Maureen and Anton are all participants of CMANGO Design and KAPISANAN's joint summer design internship program.
The Design Internship provides a learning experience during which interns participate in all aspects of designing creative elements in a professional design studio and producing material for the marketing, promotions, and outreach for all KAPISANAN programming, events, and projects. During this program participants have an opportunity to gain experience in the field and enhance their skills while working under the direction of professional mentors. -- www.kapisanancentre.com
This is the third year of the program and speaking for myself, its been an enormous and fruitful learning experience :)
We've been busy with a myriad of projects from both existing clients as well as a number of new ones. Projects have ranged from a brand new online store for Melissa Clemente Designs to a book cover design for new publisher Novel Voices Press. Projects for new clients include a web interface design for a landscape architect specializing in golf courses, press kit designs for Shaw Media TV shows Combat Hospital and Rookie Blue, and a report design for Active Healthy Kids Canada, in collaboration with Toronto design studio Hightop. On the Exclaim! front, we launched a new-and-improved front-of-book design at the beginning of the year and continue to make little tweaks here and there in celebration of the magazine's new full-colour-on-every-page format -- hooray! Check out the portfolio sections for samples of these projects and more.
Two projects I was/am particulary excited about are the promotional material for this past June's Livin' La Vida Imelda show from visiting artist Carlos Celdran; and the branding and print/web collateral design for soon-to-open artist hub, workshop/event space, retail shop and gallery Miracle Thieves.
Inspired by the visual style of the disco era and 1970's appropriation of Art Nouveau illustration, Maureen, Joanna and I set out to capture the super glamourous, amusingly controversial and more than a little eccentric icon herself, Imelda Marcos for Carlos Celdran's much-awaited performance. Joanna worked tirelessly on the fantastic illustration while Maureen meticulously stacked row upon row of hairline strokes to create the title typeface. Combining the illustration with all the necessary text without taking away from the image's visual impact took some tedious nit-picking with the typesetting but I love tedious typesetting and I think we were all equally happy with the result, so no complaints here :)
The founders of Miracle Thieves provided gypsy costume and religious iconography as visual references for their branding, which I was more than happy to delve into. Press kits, invitations, and a splash page design, among other print and web materials have been rolling out in quick succession in preparation for the space's July 28th grand opening. As I type this I believe the signage is being prepared for window installation, which I can't wait to see :)
More updates to the site are in the works. Come back soon!
