Embracing the local colour

In the past, design was flavored by geographical isolation. Aesthetics were informed by the characteristics of the landscapes that people saw on a daily basis, whether sharp mountain peaks, or soft, rolling foothills. Hues from the landscape informed designers' palettes, and all of these factors made it easy to discern design that originated in Germany versus England. With the birth of the International Typographic Style in the 1960s, such clear delineations ended up muddled: influences were taken from around the globe, rather than being cultivated in a bubble.

A question that came to mind recently was this: in these modern, connected times, with endless scroll feeds informing an international aesthetic, what role does local culture play in a design practice?

We live in an isolated forest community in rural Quebec, tethered to the world at large thanks to the miracle of the Internet. As part of our creative process, we study our surroundings, drawing colour swatches and composition ideas from nature. It’s interesting to note that everything we see around us exists because their ancestors were successful when it came to adaptation and reproduction.

Flowers in particular have adapted over countless generations: the colours that we see are the most fit;, the tested and true that have found equilibrium after eons of attracting and dancing with pollinators.

The colour combinations and scintillating contrasts that exist naturally are there for the taking, so we have begun to use them, with reverence. In fact, we have recently undertaken some constraints in our personal design practice: within our process, we are only allowed to drawn upon the palettes that we've "unlocked" locally.

There is something rewarding about having to physically traipse through the forest on a colour safari, hoping to stumble across some new bit of fauna that will expand our palette. Factors such as the time of day and the camera we're using end up playing a role with regard to the hues being documented as well. Our intention is to represent truth in as objective a manner as possible, and reflect nature's sage counsel when it comes to colours.

In this manner, our work becomes informed by the local environment, with inspiration pipelined and swatched direct from Mother Nature herself. In some manners, we're plagiarizing her greatest works ruthlessly, but the act of being an imperfect conduit for her inspiration becomes an act of creativity: the noise on the line.

When shared back to the connected design community, our work can't help but reflect the environment we're living in, with colours and shapes native to the ancient forest that surrounds us.

You don't have to hightail it to the desert like a nomad to get inspiration (though thinking about it, doing so sure sounds pretty). Your neighbourhood's architecture and charm are real expressions of humans bringing order and joy to their environment. That impulse right there is pretty much the definition of design, so if you take what you observe around you and reflect it into your work, you can achieve that objective posture that so many Modernists sought: moving the ego aside, you can submit to the universe and become a perfect conduit to natural Order and Truth.

La Boulangerie Nouvelle France

One of the greatest joys we have as designers is when we have the opportunity to create work for our own community. There’s something very special about receiving a printed newsletter in the mail that we designed, or seeing signs that we created for small businesses when we walk down the street. The latter is what we’re focusing on today, as we had the pleasure of re-branding our village bakery recently, and it’s one of our favourite projects from 2015.

The Boulangerie Nouvelle France (The New France bakery in English) sits at the very edge of our village, and is renowned throughout the area for its fabulous breads and pastries.

The bakery owner, Marie-France, quit her job in the city and moved out here to pursue her dream, so its name is a bit of a play on words: not only was Quebec known as "Nouvelle France" for quite some time, but the shop is a new beginning for the baker herself.

We had to adhere to some pretty tight constraints for the project: the signage needed to be easily readable from the street, as it’s a major roadway that people drive through quite quickly—it needed to be recognizable as a bakery shop in a single glance. As such, we used the silhouette of a loaf of bread and a rolling pin as iconography along with a very legible typeface for "boulangerie". Size-wise, the sign had to adhere to the dimensions allowed by the village council, and aesthetically, it needed to capture the rustic charm of rural Quebec life.

The overall aesthetic direction we chose is a French Country "shabby chic" look, inspired by the fact that the building itself is over a century old. Just like this design style is characterized by mismatched furniture pieces when it comes to interior design, we mixed and matched sans serif typefaces, which is a technique we’d normally frown upon.

With regard to our colour choices, we drew our inspiration from the bakery’s famous pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant). We used the dark brown of its chocolatey interior, the pale cream of the interior pastry, and gold accents to mirror the flaky crust.

The shop’s interior is currently being redecorated with the new colours, so hopefully we’ll be able to share photos of the new bakery in its entirety soon! In the meantime, we get to smile every time we pass by the shop and see our design work in action.

TWIST Festival: Design in Action

In our last post, we showed you the visual identity we created for the TWIST fibre festival: a two-day expo of all things related to fibre arts like spinning, knitting, crocheting, weaving, and more.

Well, the festival was last weekend, and we had the opportunity to check it out in person! Since we work with clients from around the world, it isn't often that we get that kind of chance, so it was lovely to see our wayfinding signs for the festival as we meandered around, checking out different vendors and buying plenty of yarn to play with.

...okay I bought yarn to knit with and Nathaniel indulged my whims because I've promised him handmade socks.

On to the TWIST designs in action!

First and foremost, a series of newspaper adverts we created, which were circulated across Quebec and Ontario.

En route to the festival, merry little sheep branded with the TWIST logo pointed the way.

The sweet-faced lamb graced the entryway!

It was great to see our signs come to life on the venue's walls. They look so different when blown up to several feet in size, as opposed to just displayed on our Mac screens.

Signs and schedules were displayed around the demo area and children's workshop.

Cones and skeins of yarn in every colour and fibre imaginable were on display all around the festival...

...and of course, I had the opportunity to paw through some stunning mini-skeins of yarn made by Studio Loo—one of the vendors there.

More photos can be seen on our Behance page, so feel free to head on over there to check them out.

Happy weekending!

xo

C