Designing for the spotlight: Arts and culture projects

For his first solo exhibition of design-infused art, Julian created an inflatable cube installation that triggers four new AR artworks from oversized QR codes. The lowly QR code stops being just a link and becomes the feature presentation, and the exhibit hijacks its visual language as a metaphor for our changing struggles with technology and addiction. Viewers experience the works on their own devices, often surprised and delighted by the immersive 3D animations. After the initial rush of dopamine, they may feel anxious or uneasy about the underlying messages, a feeling familiar to doomscrollers everywhere. The exhibition is on now at Trinity Square Video in Toronto until Nov. 14.

Credits

• Mixed-Reality Artist: Julian Brown RGD
• Gallery: Trinity Square Video, Toronto

Hamilton Phil visual identity by Haft2

The Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, founded in 1884, has been reintroduced as Hamilton Phil. To prepare, Haft2 explored more than 140 years of the organization's history and archives for inspiration and worked closely with staff to understand the orchestra's culture and its connection to Hamilton. That work shaped the brand positioning that led to the creative brief. The design team developed a range of logo concepts, including shortening the name to Hamilton Phil, and explored a distinctive colour palette inspired by Hamilton and the energy and expression of music.

The new logo is a contemporary HP monogram. Connecting linework forms the initials H and P, while the outer edge subtly suggests the shape of a brass horn, a nod to the orchestra's 1964–65 and 1970–71 horn illustrations. The open-ended crossing lines suggest movement, connection and openness, reflecting the orchestra's relationship with the community and its commitment to making orchestral music more accessible, welcoming and relevant. The visual language also includes a new colour palette with brass gold as the primary colour, typography, patterns and photography, which together create a meaningful connection between the orchestra's past and its future. The brand architecture was refreshed too, simplifying and refining the existing sub-brands into a more cohesive and aligned visual identity.

Credits

• Lead Brand Designer: Mike Kwan RGD
• Digital Designer: Harris Eftychiou
• Junior Designer: Sacha Ellis
• Account Manager: Brittany Horton
• President and Chief Colour Officer, Haft2: Paul Haft

Islands in the Stream: promotional materials for Vtape's 19th Curatorial Incubator by Acme Art & Design

Vtape, a video art distributor that represents an international collection of contemporary and historical video art, documentaries and installations, commissioned Acme to design a campaign for its Curatorial Incubator v.19 program. The challenge was to visually express the themes of two screenings of projects that explore collections, how they are accessed online as never-ending digital repositories and how the stream can be interrupted to create new moments for refuge.

The campaign design reflects the program's thematic exploration of traces, accidents, disappearance, change and reconstruction through lettering illustrations created by manipulating text by hand on a flatbed scanner. The work includes posters and publication pages.

Credits

• Designer: Michael Barker RGD

Mammalian Droppings: A global seed exchange for artistic ideas by Acme Art & Design

Mammalian Droppings is a new international ensemble and production model for young creators, created by Mammalian Diving Reflex, a Canadian artistic collective. The program travels between cities, bringing together emerging artists and local communities. Acme Art & Design created a motion-first creative identity and communication materials for it.

The new program is complex to describe, and the materials needed to make it easy to understand and compelling to two very different audiences: institutional partners and young participants. The centrepiece is a playful motion graphics explainer video that answers the question “What is this chaos?” with animated diagrams and a cheeky voiceover.

Credits

• Designer: Michael Barker RGD

Parenting Series: Growing Art Collection by IS Design Labs

Parenting Series: Growing Art Collection began as a self-initiated side project, a mixed-media series created to find fresh creative inspiration and spark honest conversations about the unspoken realities of parenting. Moving away from digital client briefs, designer and artist Iliana Sergeev experimented with unfamiliar physical materials, including felt, plexiglass, infinity mirrors and LED signs. Ordinary domestic objects, such as toy blocks and a child's phonetically misspelled note, become dimensional, conceptual art set against raw themes of postpartum vulnerability. The collection documents the unseen emotional labour of caregiving and serves as a physical archive of fleeting milestones, challenging polished narratives of domestic perfection.

Turning private, domestic vulnerability into public art has built connections with viewers and validated the unvarnished experiences of parenthood. One piece was acquired by the permanent art collection at Michael Garron Hospital, where it gives patients and families a visual anchor for empathy and a safe space for reflection. The series continues to grow, with a sixth piece, showing that self-directed projects can carry real cultural weight and open public conversations about mental health and caregiving.

Credits

1. Artist and Designer: Iliana Sergeev RGD

The Promise of Music brand identity by The Agency of Love and Logic

The Promise of Music: The First World Congress on the Social Impact of Music is a global music festival organized by The Glenn Gould Foundation. It brings together programs from around the world that use music as a catalyst for social change, with a focus on youth, community development and urgent social issues. For its inaugural event, held in Toronto from Oct. 6 to 10, 2025, the festival needed a visual identity that communicated its mission, generated excitement and supported early fundraising. With no public presence yet, the identity also had to stand independently from the Foundation's mark.

The work began with a narrative framework, The Symbol That Sings, which positions music as a metaphor for collective transformation. Four themes shaped the festival programming: community, joy, education and performance. Rather than combine them into one mark, the identity uses four distinct symbols informed by Bauhaus geometry and Gestalt principles. Each stands on its own while working as a cohesive visual system.

The system is modular by design. Four icons, a vibrant colour palette, bold typography and a flexible grid scale from a five-slide donor deck to TTC signage while staying instantly recognizable. Each symbol carries one theme, so programming streams can be distinguished and colour-coded without commissioning new assets for every stream. A tagline is paired with the logo in early applications to explain the event's purpose, and a streamlined lockup is designed to take over as recognition grows. The identity gave the Foundation a credible visual presence for fundraising with government partners and major donors, strengthened confidence among stakeholders and established a foundation for an annual event with the cultural presence and ambition of other major city events.

Credits

• Design Director: Michaela Jantoska
• Senior Designer: Nata Nagovitsyna
• Digital Designer: Aaron Vince
• Account Executive: Alina Mehyd
• Strategy Director: Rachel Teoh

Royal Winnipeg Ballet by Bruce Mau Design

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is the longest-running ballet company in North America. With new leadership and a fresh artistic vision, the company needed a brand that could signal the changes taking shape. Bruce Mau Design (BMD) was asked to bring that ambition to life and recapture audiences through a new strategy, logo and brand identity, and digital footprint. The team studied the company's rich history, including its Prairies setting, its unconventional beginnings, the ambition of its leadership and the desires of its community, all of which shaped the new brand platform and visual expression.

The identity centres on a logo with a graphic W that stretches in position to signal Winnipeg's pride of place and the company's instinct to challenge conventions. The W and “Winnipeg” are colourized in the long-form mark to give the city the presence it deserves, and that gesture carries through a variable typeface that brings dynamism to everyday communications. The core palette separates the ballet company from the ballet school, using black to draw on the performance environment and white to pull from the school's studio spaces. A vibrant blue inspired by the prairie sky is the key brand colour, and in marketing communications, the key colour comes from the photography of each production. BMD also partnered with digital agency Plank to design an immersive website that improves usability and accessibility.

Credits

• Chief Creative Officer: Laura Stein RGD
• Design Director: Karol Dybalski
• Graphic Designer: Brendan Irving
• Graphic Designer: Dan Rivera
• Motion Designer: Jisung Park
• Web Designer: Marc Lauriault
• Director of Design Strategy: Kar Yan Cheung
• Account Director: Marla Garderis
• Web Design & Development: Plank
• Photographer: Danny Shumov

Toronto Symphony Orchestra rebrand by Underline Studio

The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) is one of Canada's leading orchestras. More than a decade after its last brand refresh, and as part of a broader strategic planning process, the TSO saw an opportunity to express more clearly who it is: an orchestra shaped by Toronto and committed to bringing people together through music. It approached Underline Studio to reimagine its brand to better align with its evolving mission: to help Torontonians connect with the powerful, emotional experience of orchestral music.

The updated brand introduces an elegant yet bold visual identity. At its core is a new logo that expresses movement and connectivity through an animated “S” in “symphony,” which responds dynamically to the music being played. Supporting the logo is a graphic system of abstract musical forms, developed as a symbolic expression of the brand's essence—music as emotion, storytelling and connection. The identity extends across posters, brochures, digital presentations, stationery, signage and social media, and was introduced in July 2026, as tickets for the TSO's 2026/27 season went on sale. See the project on Underline Studio's website.

Credits

• Creative Director: Fidel Peña RGD
• Creative Director: Claire Dawson
• Designer: Brittany Waldner
• Designer: Fidel Peña RGD
• Production Manager: Veronica Lee
• Photographer: Allan Cabral
• Photographer: Daniel Neuhaus
• Photographer: Daniel Ehrenworth
• Animator: Pablo Rausell
• Animator: Sachin Tartamella