In the founding years of the TDC he was elected president in 1958; co-directed the first annual Typography awards shows; was later president of the Art Directors Club of Toronto; directed “Design for Editors” at the University of Toronto; and taught typography and related subjects at the Ontario College of Art.

In 1962 he started his own design company and with Carl Dair, became a director of Cape and Company, jointly designing for several universities, including York, Brock and Trent. His work, along with that of Carl Dair, represented Canada at l’Association typographique international in Paris. Among some 18 major awards won for Cape, Frank’s work took the top Creative Printer of the Year Awards in Los Angeles in 1965.

In 1965, a one-man exhibit of his work for Clairtone was held. In 1968, his award-winning book designs became part of the Leipzig Collection. Other awards include exhibition design for Olivetti, Clairtone and Bowring—the work for Bowring receiving the Chairman’s Award of Excellence for Design management from the National Design Council of Canada—and awards for annual reports, newspaper and magazine design.

His work for international clients took him to many exotic places, hence the name of his communications company Unimundus International Projects, Toronto, in which he was a  partner and creative head for over a decade.

In 19?? Davies became a founding member of the Canadian Resort Development Association (signatory to the multinational Global Alliance for Timeshare Excellence) and currently edits Resort Report. He promotes tourism, Canada’s number one industry, as a contributor to world peace.

Frank Davies’ work is featured at the Design Centre in Toronto.


Horst Deppe (1929-2011)
Born in Hannover, Germany in 1929, Horst arrived in Canada in 1955 at the age of 26. The years of his youth and studies in Germany, as well as travels in Scandinavia, were of significant influence to his work. He credits as his mentor Walter Kubbernuss, an artist and designer in the nearby town of Bodenwerder, who tutored him as a young adult and sparked his interest in the visual and in nature which resulted in hour after hour of sketching. It was not until his college years, attending the Werkkunstschule in Hannover, that he was exposed to graphic design and developed his interest in typography. After graduating from college he worked first as a graphic designer and freelance illustrator (1953–55). On arriving in Canada, his first job was with Royal Print & Litho Ltd. At the time Halifax lacked much in the way of facilities and work for a designer. Horst recalled with great amusement: “The typeface Cable was the only sans-serif available... in two sizes! My major achievement during my first year was the introduction of Futura to the Maritime region.”

In 1962, after several years of jobbing and drumming up freelance projects, he was appointed as an instructor at the former Nova Scotia College of Art. There, he remained the only faculty member to teach design courses until the addition of a design division in 1968, when he was joined by Tony Mann, Frank Fox, and Gerhard Doerrié.

Over the course of his long career, Horst Deppe worked for clients such as the Atlantic Symphony, Saint Mary’s University, Dalhousie Law School, and Atlantic Canada Institute, and he continued to pursue his artistic endeavors. “My painting is for personal expression,” he said, “while design is my way to be productive in society... one balances out the other.” However, despite highly recognized successes in both areas, he chose teaching as his first priority.

An ecologically and socially aware individual, and an active community volunteer, Horst believes designers have responsibilities to their environment, community, society at large, and to their profession. The key to successful design, he insists, is to stay interested in literally everything that surrounds us. He describes his love for nature as a seed of romanticism planted in him as a child, a romanticism which he expresses in his watercolour poems, influenced by the work of Emil Nolde as well as Chinese landscape painting of the 12th and 13th century.

Following his retirement he lived and worked from his secluded Nova Scotia home, surrounded by trees and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean at the end of a dead-end dirt track. “If I hadn’t been a designer, I probably would have been a forester,” he says.
— interview by Hanno H.J. Ehses appeared in GDC Journal No.3, 1995

 

Horst passed away on October 28, 2011.
You can view some of his work at www.ccca.ca/designers

Judith Gregory
Bio to come.


Frank Newfeld
Educated in England, Frank Newfeld immigrated to Canada in 1954. Once here, he founded his own design company in a studio on Spadina Avenue in Toronto, which was often the meeting place for the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada in its formative years. He was elected President of the Society in 1959, the year that it received its Ontario charter.

In 1963 Frank joined the firm of McClellan & Stewart as an art director, and within six years he was to become Vice-President, Publishing and a member of the board of directors.

Over his career Frank Newfeld has designed well over 650 books for publishers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel and the United States. The publishers include such major houses as the National Gallery, Macmillan of Canada, Oxford University Press, Nelson, University of Toronto Press, Houghlin Mifflin, and Little, Brown.

He has won over 167 awards in many countries, including three medals from the prestigious Leipzig Book Shows, two Hans Christian Anderson awards, and two from Typomundus ’20. Other awards include the Canada Centennial Medal, the Elizabeth II Jubilee Medal, and awards from the AIGA, Art Directors and Type Directors clubs of New York, Chicago, Montréal and Toronto. Frank represented Canada at the 1976 Illustration Bienale in Czechoslovakia, and his work was exhibited in Bologna in 1990. He has created two children’s books, both published by Oxford University Press. He is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy.

Frank Newfeld has been associated with Sheridan College since 1980, and is currently an educator, illustrator and publication designer.