Originally posted at Design Edge Canada.

There’s a lot to like about Canadian currency lately, and not just our strength against the Euro. Our “paper” money has been becoming polymer money, as the Bank of Canada shifts us, bank note by bank note. And this November, when this innovation hits our $20 bills, synthetic bank notes will find themselves in the majority of Canadian wallets.

The new notes are mostly well thought out: environmental sustainability (the new bills last 2.5 times longer than paper, and are still recyclable), higher security, reduced costs all around. They may even spread less disease. From a design innovation perspective, they are the first polymer notes ever to include holographic foil.
 
Unfortunately, the part that doesn’t appear to be well-thought through is the cultural sustainability of our national brand. With arguably the world’s most successfully and consistently rolled out national identity program ever, why on Earth would the Canadian Bank Note Company have chosen to shout the word “Canada” in a horizontally stretched abomination of the Avant Garde typeface?
 

It’s bad enough that the choice of typeface is not consistent with any other branding program we have going for our country. I realize that there are arms-length issues regarding the Canada brand (the same convoluted policy that ensures that all our national Olympic teams are doomed to have dissonant presentations of “Canada” on their uniforms from sport to sport). And if they had to choose an off-brand typeface, could they not have chosen one of the many excellent ones designed by Canadian typographers?
 
Digitally stretching type, especially on a sans serif like Avant Garde, which is carefully crafted to provide the appearance of a consistent stroke width throughout, is a typographic abomination. Herb Lubalin, perhaps America’s greatest typographer, who published Avant Garde commercially in 1970, would turn over in his grave to see his work so dissed.
 
Erik Spiekermann equates letterspacing lower case type as worse than “stealing sheep.” I think those who digitally stretch Avant Garde deserve similar harsh judgment.
 
That our currency falls short of typographic dignity is symptomatic of a larger issue. It goes beyond bank notes. It goes beyond the lack of respect for the design profession indicated by our Royal Canadian Mint going out to public contest for coin designs. It goes to the heart of what happens when a country lacks a design policy... a chief design officer ... the type of respect for how design consistency is design currency, and design currency can be taken straight to the bank of international competitiveness. The kind of design policy that has made South Korea the leading designers AND manufacturers of smartphones and TVs worldwide. And did I mention that they have great money too? And the best alphabet on the planet?
 
Is it too late for the graphic designers of Canada to speak out for the upcoming $20 bills to present our country in a better typographic tone? The new $20 will be released in November and feature the Vimy Ridge Memorial. Perhaps it’s not too late for the accompanying typography to carry similar dignity.
 
Give your two cents to your Bank of Canada, or your prime minister: (he did well to redesign the penny, perhaps graphic designer Laureen Teskey would help him agree to fix the twenty.)
 
...or just express your opinions below.
 
That’s my two cents, anyhow.

 

Extract from an article at The Huffington Post by Althia Raj

Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s staff has directed in meticulous detail the design of his VIP Airbus, going so far as to instruct defence department officials to include a faded maple leaf on its tail similar to one used on the Conservatives' election campaign bus.

Records obtained by The Huffington Post Canada under the Access to Information Act show political staffers were intimately involved in requesting and redesigning a new paint job for Harper's grey Polaris CC-150 military aircraft. Officials in the Prime Minister's Office and the Privy Council Office, typically tasked with managing pressing files of national concern, paid an inordinate amount of attention to design specs, colours and labelling.

After meeting with officials from the PMO and the PCO, Maj. Tim Neal, who worked with a team overseeing the government’s executive fleet, sent a "wish list" by email to Jim Belliveau, the VIP project’s graphic designer based at the Royal Canadian Air Force base in Cold Lake, Alta.

“Also attached is the ‘faded’ maple leaf from the conservative (sic) campaign bus. It is this fade effect that is desired,” Neal wrote in the June 7, 2011 note, enclosing a photo of Harper and his campaign bus.

Neal said the PCO wanted "small Maple leafs with relief and fade effects" around the door. On the plane's tail, Harper's officials wanted the Canadian flag replaced with "just the Maple leaf, stylized with a fade effect ... Gold Maple leaf on the winglet" and "The words 'True North Strong and Free' (in) English and French."

Several months later, Neal reported that finding a French equivalent of “The True North Strong and Free” was “proving problematic." In response, PCO officials sent Harper's principal secretary Ray Novak a note suggesting they use the words “Une épopée des plus brillants exploits.” Novak replied from his iPad, "This is helpful — _____," (the rest of his comments are redacted).

For years, Harper’s staff felt the prime minister’s plane didn’t look quite prime ministerial enough. Harper uses one of five CC-150 Polaris aircrafts which, according to the military, are used interchangeably for strategic airlifts. Up until 2011, Defence Minister Peter MacKay was insisting it was necessary for Harper’s aircraft to be drab-looking in order to fly equipment and personnel safely into war zones. In 2012, documents suggest MacKay lost the argument and the PMO got its way.

On September 28, Herman Cheung, Harper’s manager of new media and marketing, wrote that he and Novak wanted to attend the next Airbus meeting to discuss upgrading the communications system to have “faster, affordable, in-flight internet similar to the ones used by airlines.”

Lt.-Col. Alan Mulawyshyn, a PCO analyst in the foreign and defence policy section, seemed exasperated. In an email to DND colleagues, he wrote: “The fun never stops…”

Although the records are partially blacked out, they clearly show Harper’s office directed the work on the paint job.

Andrew MacDougall, Harper's director of communications, said there was nothing inappropriate about the PMO's involvement in the redesign of the aircraft.

"This is the plane that represents Canada — and the Prime Minister — abroad. It is natural that our office would be consulted," he said.

In the fall of 2011, concepts for Harper's Airbus kept changing.

The PMO wasn’t happy with the design of the faded maple leaf and suggested a “billowing flag” to differentiate itself from Air Canada. Belliveau suggested various takes with coloured stripes near the tip to represent the northern lights and the 13 provinces.

In the end, Harper’s staff chose to go with a simple Canadian flag, similar to the American flag on Air Force One and the one used on the old white Boeing 707 that the Canadian Armed Forces used to carry the prime minister up until 1997.

PMO officials were also preoccupied with the appearance of the aircraft during photo-ops, such as when Harper waves from the plane's open front door upon arrival in foreign countries.

His staff wanted “small, scattered, red/autumnal Maple leaves starting to the left of the door and flowing across it,” the documents reveal. Shauna Wright, Harper’s manager of visual communications, felt the design would help make a nice photo and provided DND with images of close-ups taken of Harper, Prince William and Katherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, waving from the jet during their visit in 2011.

Belliveau wasn’t sold on the idea of the small leaves which he described as looking like “acne,” “rust chips,” “dirt specs,” “blemishes” and even the “measles.”

“When I read about small red leaves around the door/front of the jet, I now get the mental picture of measles. or acne (sic),” he wrote.

“This jet should be very distinct and should be a recognizable Canadian presence from any distance. Small leaves muddies (sic) it a bit, and may even look like paint chips or even flaking as it taxies in onto the tarmac ramp. The LAST thing I want people to think as it rolls in to park is that there is something wrong with the paint or even indistinct about it,” he wrote last October...

... In the end, after more than two years of planning and thousands of pages of correspondence, it appears the prime minister’s plane won't look wildly different from how it did in the 1990s. It will be painted off-white, with either a blue or grey bottom, with an official crest on its side and a red and white Canadian flag on the tail.

Read the article and view the photos and design sketches here.

What are your thoughts? Does the design of Canada's flagship aircraft do our national brand justice?

Greetings.

After reading all the comments to Marie-Aline's post, and a good night's sleep, I decided to write from a very personal point of view. This may be too much information but I will speak frankly, probably because I am too old to hide the fact that I am not a very good business man as I am a designer. But, good news! I am learning to be better at both, and I am willing to bare my stomach; show my belly, with a nice target painted on it. You are my design family, I might as well be open with you.

My comments are personal and are specifically about pro-bono work; volunteering is one thing, pro-bono 'work' is another. Everybody ought to keep community going by volunteering at one thing or the other, no question.