The afternoon starts off at 2 pm with a social mixer, so grab a drink or a bite to eat and catch up with old friends and make some new ones. The AGM will start at 2:30 pm followed by the presentation On Rimmer.

Jim Rimmer FGDC (1934–2010)

Rimmer was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. He attended Vancouver Technical School, "which gave an introduction to metal type and presses through the school's large printing trade shop." After an apprenticeship he began a long period of working with type and design for newspaper publication and printing.

During his freelance years he worked on projects for the major agencies and design studios in Vancouver, for corporations, airlines, mining and forestry companies. A large part of his work entailed letter design and lettering projects.

Along with his long career as a designer, Rimmer taught at several colleges including Capilano College, ECIAD, Langara College, Kwantlen College, Richmond and UCFV, Abbotsford. For a brief time in the 1970s, Rimmer was type director of the Lanston Monotype Corportion in Vancouver.

Rimmer was noted as the proprietor of the Pie Tree Press, located in New Westminster, BC, a printing office for which he designed many typefaces in metal, including Albertan, Kaatskill and Stern.

The P22 Type Foundry currently markets Rimmer's typefaces as the Rimmer Type Foundry. Over 200 digital faces, distributed among 18 families, have been made from Rimmer's designs.

In 2007, Rimmer received the honor of becoming a fellow of the Society of Graphic Designers of Canada.

In 2009 BC Chapter of the GDC, in partnership with Hemlock Printers announced a Jim Rimmer Scholarship Award.

The quintessential renaissance man, Jim hacked away at the garden, drew, made new type, printed new books, held cats on his lap, cut letters in marble, played jazz on his coronet, gathered carving wood on the banks from the Fraser River and had started to build a steel string guitar.

Jim passed away following a fierce battle with throat cancer on January 8, 2010. He is survived by his wife Alberta, after whom the font Albertan was named.

About the Speakers

Rod McDonald CGD has over forty years experience working with lettering and type. Much of his career was spent providing hand lettering and typographic styling to the Toronto advertising and design community. He was one of the first typographers to switch to the ‘Mac’ in the mid ’80s and was soon providing custom fonts to ad agencies and design studios. He has designed logos for many of the leading Canadian magazines including Applied Arts, Maclean’s and Toronto Life. He has also created typefaces for these, and other, magazines and corporations. Rod taught typography at the Ontario College of Art & Design and is currently teaching at NSCAD University in Halifax. In addition to the Graphic Designers of Canada, Rod is a member of the Type Directors Club (TDC). He is a founding member of the Type Club of Toronto and an ex-board member of The Society of Typographic Aficionados (SoTA). In 2007 he was a judge at the Type Directors Club TDC2 show in New York. He has twice received the Monotype Imaging Type Design Fellowship. Rod lives in Lake Echo, Nova Scotia where he spends his time working on new typefaces — it’s a tough job — but somebody has to do it.

Andrew Steeves edits, designs, prints and publishes fine books under the imprint of Gaspereau Press, the award-winning publishing house he co-founded in 1997 with Gary Dunfield. He lives off the grid near Black River, Nova Scotia.

RSVP

Please note that seating is limited and that GDC members have advanced registration so please RSVP by January 26 to atlantic@gdc.net.

Time and Location

Saturday, January 29, 2011
2 pm to 5 pm

Boardroom (D500), NSCAD University,
5163 Duke Street,
Halifax, Nova Scotia

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