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  Trevor 0:53 on 8 April 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Canadian Content Book Design 

  In March 2010, I was asked to design a journal for the Canadian Studies Association of Undergraduate Students (that name is a bit of a tautology, isn’t it?) I worked closely with the editor, Francesca Taddeo, a lovely and passionate person now studying Law at McGill. Although, I’m sure she thought she was being too demanding, it was great fun having to put together the entire journal in about two days. It was also a great lesson figuring out how to turn the digital document into a printed, paper-bound book.

  To better integrate the editorial side with my design work, I knew we could forget about figuring out how to streamline the avalanche of emails swirling past daily. Instead, I suggested that we squat a series of computers in the Faculty of Arts Computer Lab. So with Francesca and a few other editors, we went through all of the submissions, collating edits, standardizing document flow and format. I also had the opportunity to show them some design ideas, to register their interest and work-in their feedback. So, while I was parachuted into the organisation to simply pull together the book design, I feel that I also helped smooth out the editorial process. And I much preferred the face-to-face, studio-style process, compared to the endless rounds of comp-email-wait-recieve criticism that I’ve experienced with other projects.

  This has definitely been one of my favourite projects. Francesca allowed me lots of space to innovate and experiment, and I gave her full editorial control. I think it worked well! And of course, having produced an actual, physical artifact, we had to have a launch party. That was lots of fun too, and a great way to see ones work sent off into the world.

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  Trevor 14:42 on 28 March 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Religion as Revolution Posters 

  While working as a Teaching Assistant in McGill’s Faculty of Religious Studies, I was often in a liminal position: neither full-fledged graduate student, nor truly considered to be staff. But when it came to the graduate students’ annual conference, I managed to work my way into the organising committee without too much trouble. Sponsored by the Centre for Research on Religion, but organised by the grad students, the 2010 theme was too awesome to pass up: Religion as Revolution.

  I initially wanted to submit a paper for the conference. I am interested in looking at how religions can contribute to understanding, and perhaps dealing with the revolutionary change that world societies will undergo due to global climate change. Unfortunately, working two other jobs made the research impossible. I regret that. Especially, since, I think the conference ended up focusing more on epistemological and theoretical ideas, rather than examining social change as revolution.

  In any case, I did contribute to the conference by designing some outreach materials. In Fall 2009 I helped whip the Call For Papers into a nicely formatted, hopefully eye-catching, single page document. It went on to adorn many a grad lounge bulletin board across the North-East and Canada.

  Later on that winter, I designed some posters to promote the conference within Montreal, and at other key schools such as Université d’Ottawa and University of Toronto. The first posters I put together were inspired by one of keynote speakers: Johannes Wolfart. At the selection meeting, I had a vision of a giant, snarling wolf paired up with a bleeding, flaming heart. Wolfart was supposed to be a crowd pleaser, and I thought we could market him to get people to the conference.

  Later, we confirmed a second keynote speaker: Travis Kroeker. His name was, unfortunately, not as acutely evocative. But with the help of the ancient Sumerian alphabet, I managed to turn his name into a bestial, twinned diptych.

  In any case, these posters were deemed a bit too obtuse. So Julian Menezes and I buckeled down for a near interminable round of revisions, aiming to find the perfect image to adorn our posters. The problem was trying to accomodate the wide diversity of ideas that could fit within ‘revolution’, while also avoiding favouritism toward any one of the world’s religious traditions. In other words, we didn’t want to resort to projecting a merely Marxist image of revolution, when we were hoping to attract students interested in the Islamic Revolution, Wittgentstein, the Reformation, and more.

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  Trevor 3:19 on 8 December 2009 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: CBC Radio 3 ( 2 )   

  2010 Olympics on cbcr3 

  Earlier today on Lana Gay’s CBC Radio 3 show, Lanarama, she asked listeners to send in their picks of indie rock songs to play at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler, British Columbia.

  I was disappointed to hear Radio 3 using the Olympics in such an uncritical way. So I wrote Lana a little post along with a song suggestion apropos to my post. Of the fifty or so posts on the blog, not one discussed the Olympics as such, so I didn’t expect much discussion to follow.

  I was delighted, however, to hear Lana read my letter on air! Yes, I did threaten to stop listening, and in the future I think I will change the channel if Radio 3 covers the Olympics in a similar manner. But today, I was a bit curious to see if she would respond. So, thanks Lana! I appreciate you giving me a voice on the air, and I respect your mixed feelings over the Olympics.

  I only realised when Shad’s ‘Compromise’ started to play that I had actually meant to request ‘Exile’. On the album, the two tracks run together so perfectly that it’s hard to separate the two. The former song’s chorus goes a little something like: “In this life, we just can’t compromise; In this fight, we can’t just compromise … there’s too many ways to compromise, so stand strong, we just can’t compromise.”

  But I actually like Exile better: “Though I empathize with ’em, and sympathize with ’em, I don’t enterprise with ’em, or synchronize with ’em, … we don’t want no ties with ’em … we won’t let ’em ostracize, we won’t compromise with ’em, we won’t victimize with ’em, commit genocide with ’em, spit their lies with ’em or objectify women…” and so on.

  Hey Lana,

  I love your show and cbcr3, so this is nothing against you guys. But it really upsets me to hear you guys basically just promoting the 2010 Olympics. I know that people are excited about sports and you know, I play hockey, I think winter is great for outdoors fun. But the Olympics is something completely different.

  It’s really just an excuse to develop new highways, new mega-projects, new condos. It’s an excuse to sweep disadvantaged people out of prime locations, and an excuse to crack down on civil iiberties. I lived in Beijing in 2007, and it happened exactly as I’m describing. From what I hear it’s happening in Vancouver too.

  With so many problems in Canada’s relationship with First Nations unresolved, I think it is fundamentally wrong to go ahead with the expropriation and mega-development of Whistler. It’s First Nations land and they need to be involved in the decision of how that land is used and respected.

  So it makes me sad, but I think I’ll have to stop listening to the show for today. And I won’t be able to listen to any future Olympics shindigs on Radio 3.

  But I will suggest a song, one of my favourites from an inspirational and thoughtful rabble rouser: Shad’s “Compromise”

  A la prochaine,

  Trevor