I was still counting how many days I had been in Vancouver, Canada—a city, a country that I had never stepped in. On the 10th day in this unfamiliar city, I had my first assignment in my grad study at Emilly Carr. It is a project (we call it prompt) about making a gift for your classmate.
After a simple draw, I got a name to who I would be giving a gift—Natasha Kowo, one of my classmates and friends, who is an amazing graphic designer running her own design studio. Our conversation is around design since we both have a similar background in studying graphic design. After I appreciate her approach to using type in her work, an idea emerged and stuck in my head, which is, to give the font that I designed to her.
Howsem Sans is a font I created during my third year of undergraduate study. This is a great opportunity to utilize the font in design, as well as, a meaningful way to connect with Nat, a new designer friend! I decided to make a calendar which later during the presentation, Cameron Neat, our professor said that a calendar is a perfect gift for a graphic designer. It was a challenge for me to make a calendar in an unfamiliar creative environment where I needed a couple of hours to figure the printing system out. Luckily I got to use the COMD lab to make the prototype and the final work of the calendar.
The design of the calendar is simple. It has only one page of dates, but seven pages for different orders of the days of the week. Bound with wire-O, the calendar became a never-out-dated product since you can configure different matches between the dates and the day of the week. Yet its functionality still needs to be tested (I’m using a copy of this calendar in my room right now) and discussed since it’s pretty counter-intuitive and would change our manner to read and use a calendar. Nonetheless, the calendar also serves as a marker of the start of our graduate study, and more importantly, a symbol of the connection between me and Nat as designers. These qualities make this calendar a poetic piece—a work that constantly interacts with you.
Perhaps my sensitivity to time since I arrived and have lived in this new environment leads me to this project, but I stopped counting days now. Because I know there is a lot of time for me to live and study here. Gradually moving my gaze from time to space, I already got some ideas for prompt 2.