Matt Warburton, FGDC - GDC@50 Poster

The pervasiveness of the creativity of Canadian graphic designers is readily apparent when you have 50 years of it to look back upon. For over half a century, we have been creating the look of Canadian culture and commerce—images, marks, posters and graphics that have been seen or touched by every Canadian alive today. From the logos on our skates and schoolbooks, to posters at our fairs and sporting events.

The best designs stand the test of time—from Allan Fleming’s ground-breaking CN logo introduced in 1959 to Burton Kramer’s 1974 CBC logo (only recently has its wings been clipped); or Stuart Ash’s metric logo which graced every child’s schoolbooks in the 1970s to the modern Bauer B which appears on the equipment of every aspiring NHLer.

Perhaps in 50 years I’ll know if any of my own work has had similar impact. But for this anniversary, a simplified shape of a beaver is the link between a slab of wood (one of the building blocks of our nation) with the dots of ink and pixels—technology that brings our creativity to life.