Case Studies
Toronto Oktoberfest
For this project I was tasked with re-branding Toronto’s very own Oktoberfest: a traditional three day Bavarian Oktoberfest which, at the time, had been running for eight consecutive years out of Ontario Place.
Despite the festival’s multi-year presence in the city as well as its prime location, attendance has been trending downwards. To resolve this issue, I proposed that the festival capitalize on their location due to its accessibility via public transit, as well as its proximity to Toronto’s downtown—a great advantage this festival holds over its competitors which are hours away. This proposal would begin by implementing a new identity which lends more of its appeal to the city’s younger audience in hopes of separating this Oktoberfest from its larger, more distant competitors.
The Process
’The Process’ is a conceptual editorial publication I created and subsequently designed that intends to shed light on those working behind the scenes in the world of design, photography, music, & video production. Every spread is designed to exist within the visual language of the creator that it is highlighting, in order to honour the publication’s intent of putting those who might otherwise only exist behind the scenes at centre stage.
The prompt for this project was to imagine an idea for a print publication that vaguely resembled a magazine and had reason to exist in print over digital distribution such as a blog or social media page. In focusing on the importance of print publication for this project, my goal was to increase the level of reader engagement through physical interaction.
Listening
‘Listening’ is a publication which is textually driven solely by indigenous peoples in hopes to encourage settler populations to begin listening to the voices of those they are trying to aid. My voice and presence in the publication is only visible in the curation of the material, the note on the first page of the publication, and most notably, in a red acetate sheet between every spread that is intended to both provide further reading for the audience, as well as encourage further interaction between the reader and the physical publication.
Often times when we face an unpleasant feeling, such as guilt, our initial reaction to try and extinguish that feeling marks both the beginning and end of that conversation, neglecting any other parties affected in the first place. In order to begin working towards meaningful reparations between two parties, we must listen to those who we have hurt. From the early days of colonization, countless attempts to ‘reconcile’ the relationship this country has with those whose lands we stole have been made–these attempts range from being intentionally counterproductive, to being well intentioned yet hollow in their effects. These attempts, especially the latter, are often driven solely by settler attempts to extinguish one’s own internal guilt and as a result of this internalized white-saviour style of problem solving, Indigenous voices are often not even considered.
