It brings tears to your eyes, but "design" is also the making of the design drawing itself.
Argon Security Technologies 2005-2009
Design and production of corporate communications materials. Photography by Derek Norris.
Aboriginal Times 2003-2004
Design and production of 32 to 64 page magazine including redesign of magazine logo and application to web portal; magazine format and typography; advertising layouts; cover illustrations or photographs (except editorial and advertising photography above). The budget and deadlines were always extremely limited and hamstrung by picayune, self-imposed, often bizarre obstacles. This branding project also included the installation and development of the web portal, aboriginaltimes.com.
The most pressing design problem is not to make any messaging to Aboriginal People look like it is expensive. It is consideered a waste of money to pay for "fancy design and printing" when there is no drinking water on many Indian Reserves. So much so that there is an entrepreneur that markets water filters with the benefit that they entirely eliminate Giardia and Cryptosporidium as the most important sales benefit.
Explicitly mentioning the two water-borne parasites that typically infect the water system on the Reserves is done for a purpose: to make sales to the people who live there. So, full-colour printing is regarded as a scandalous waste by many people that live on Reserves where there is no potable water.
I met this young entrepreneur at the GoldCare Indutiae Business Mastermind Seminar for Aboriginal business people that took place over a number of months in 2000.
So to tread a line where humility and efficient modern design meet in an industry that counts in the tens or hundreds of thousands of copies is disingenuous, but often the kernel of the design brief: don't make it look expensive. I wonder how?
Other cultural considerations enter into design and communciations targeted at this market include sensitivity to cultural misappropriation in any form and being knowledgeable enough to ask.
Say for example a client admires Salish graphic design, the Raven crest for example. Unless the artist is of the Raven clan he is not etitled to draw the Raven crest. This is only commonsensical, it is a family crest.
The hpothetical client needs an artist of the Raven clan in order to not misappropriate an important cultural and familial icon for monetary gain.
The portraits were supplied by the Stringers. All the other graphics are mine save the photo of the mocassins by Roland Bellerose, the publisher. The layout, typography, portrait illustrations of political leaders, illustration of the weightlifter on the top of the world, photo of the mask and illustration of the blackboard are my work as was the assemblly of the magazine into 16 page signatures to pdf from QuarkXpress, an application I have been using since 1988 and version 1.
The prior magazine was frankly, an unmitigated disaster. Sad to say the publisher moved away from this layout and grid system. This design is honest and direct.