Recently we had the pleasure of helping UVic celebrate its 50th anniversary with a printed booklet. Working closely with UVic’s Marc Christensen, we laid out an interior that described 50 achievements over the half century.

For the cover, we first explored a montage that compared the original 1961, hand-drawn plan of the campus with a current satellite photo.

We then explored another concept, stitching together a historical photo from the early 1960s with a contemporary photo. Marc scrubbed through digital video frames from a recent helicopter ride, to try to find the best match for our archival image. Then we went to work at Rocketday to assemble this montage that jumps 50 years. I was impressed with how seamless we were able to get this transition, using some complex geometric distortions.

I felt a family connection to this project. My parents both immigrated from the USA to teach at UVic, arriving in the late 1960s. I have memories of navigating the labyrinth of the Clearihue building, as young child in the early 1980s, with the scents of tobacco, pencil shavings, drip coffee and chalk dust. My sister and I received our undergrad education there in the 1990s. And in the 2000s and 2010s, I’ve taught a bit, and now design for the school. The Clearihue building is now smoke free, with laptops, lattes and white boards. My family’s been a part of this community and campus for almost this whole stretch. Thank you Marc, for bringing us in on this project.

One of our clients is the Ubuntu Choirs Network, a network of choirs based on a philanthropic, community-focussed model. I was just digging through our archives, and came across an email I received from Desmond Tutu while building the website in 2006. How often do Canadian website designers get an email from Desmond Tutu? Lovely.

From:  Desmond M. Tutu
To:  Shivon Robinsong
Cc:  Emrys Damon Miller
Date:  Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:29:58 +0200
Subject:  ubuntu choirs

Dear Friend,

Thank you so very much for your kind note of oh so long ago! Please forgive
my dilatoriness. I have tended to be up to my eyes.

What a splendid notion and how you make God smile.

'I am, because you are. I need you to be you so that I can be me. A choir is
a choir only because its different parts work together harmoniously. Yes, a
person truly is a person only through other persons. God bless you in your
noble endeavour'.

God bless you richly in Advent and Christmas,

+Desmond Tutu.

With so many projects and interests in our history, on the go, and in development, the Rocketday studio space itself needs good organization. So we’re attempting some New Years tidying and sorting. Our aim is to funnel everything (from server partitions, to the organization of our web browser bookmarks, to email folders, to our physical project folders) into 5 categories.

1. current missions.
For our current, active projects, both client-driven and our own.

2. past missions.
All our past projects going back the full 13 years, organized by project number.

3. the library.
All our resources and references, such as all our books, magazines, music and movies, as well as studio tools such as fonts and software.

4. command centre.
All our admin, such as bookkeeping, financial analysis, business plans, and time tracking.

5. outreach.
The marketing we do to promote Rocketday and get more client missions, such as business cards, portfolio samples, this blog, newsletters, and our website.

Much of our work at Rocketday is simply about cleaning, shuffling, refining documents, with an aim to make them easier to read. This week we’re working with our long-term client, the Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team, helping take their existing document (in MS Word, at left) and refine its layout (in InDesign, at right). I suppose that this has become the key role of graphic designers in society — helping polish and organize all the information that modern society creates.