The gift that kept on giving
A tribute to Heather Cooper written by Will Novosedlik
Heather Cooper's celebrated career began when she was eight years old.
As she tells it in the introduction of her 1987 book, Carnaval Perpetuel, her parents gave her a very special gift for her eighth birthday: a lovely wooden box with brass hinges, a leather handle and her initials glued to the front panel. It contained tubes of oil paint, bottles of linseed oil and turpentine and was accompanied by two canvases and a set of long-handled brushes.
She wasted no time experimenting with it, and before long she realized her parents' gift had unlocked another gift: a passion for making art. It also unlocked the door to a life and a legacy of artistic gifts she bestowed upon the world in the form of both personal and commercial work. Her range included paintings, illustrations, graphic design, brand identity design, package design and retail environment design.
She was one of those rare talents that could do it all. But at its core, the artistic love of her life was painting. Whenever asked what she did for a hobby when she wasn't painting, her answer was always the same: painting.
Her painting style was unique for the time. Looking at her work, one is reminded of the Italian Renaissance painters Sandro Botticelli and Paulo Uccello with their intricately detailed treatments of both flora and fauna. Compare, for instance, the treatment of flora in Botticelli's Primavera (c. 1480) with any number of Heather's delicately rendered plant forms. That level of detail not only requires deep concentration and unflagging patience, but also a profound love of nature. No illustrator I know paints as Heather did.
“I did not ever work with Heather, or with Burns Cooper Hynes. That said, Heather was a remarkable illustrator and I loved her work. She had an incredibly distinctive signature, and her work was greatly admired. In the world of Canadian commercial illustration, she has always been one of the most accomplished, and her work had a marked impact on our world of communication design.”
Ian C. Tudhope RGD Emeritus
“As an aspiring graphic designer, I was hugely influenced by the intelligent and beautiful work of Heather Cooper because of the way she integrated ideas and words, and images. The images she created were powerful—at times fantastical, even allegorical—and they recall the pre-Raphaelites. Like Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and William Morris, she took inspiration from nature—in resistance to the mechanical world whirring all around us. In the 1970s, Heather Cooper was a rarity: a female partner in an eponymously named graphic design firm, in a profession inhabited mostly by white men. Heather was able to carve out an enviable place as both a designer, and an artist. I am not sure that I would have co-founded a design firm without taking courage from Heather Cooper, and I am pretty sure my female contemporaries feel the same way.”
Barbara Woolley RGD Emeritus
As a graphic designer, Heather was engaged by a long list of top-drawer clients that most designers would kill for. The one most famously associated with her is Roots, with its iconic silhouette of a Canadian beaver as its visual identity. As with other retail clients, her work for Roots encompassed a complete range of items, from logo to packaging to in-store merchandising and signage. She would have learnt that comprehensive approach from her early years working with Don Watt, who employed this methodology of retail design for some of the world's largest retailers. He called it the 'total package'.
“It's 1974. I'm in high school. Negative heel shoes are the latest rage. And the ones to own are made in Canada, by a new company called ROOTS. One weekend I travelled from Oshawa to their one and only store in Toronto. As soon as you walked through the door the smell of leather filled the air. I had never been in a store quite like it. The craftsmanship was evident everywhere you looked—the products, the merchandising and especially the graphics. I didn't know what graphic design was all about back then, but the ROOTS brand resonated with me immediately. Every detail was considered—stunning black and white photographs of the shoemakers on the walls, engaging posters and handsome packaging. I liked the box the shoes came in as much as I liked the shoes. I didn't know it then, but that experience introduced me to the power of great design. Thanks ROOTS. Thanks Heather.”
Bob Hambly RGD Emeritus
A memory shared by Rod Nash Emeritus RGD:
I first met Heather around 1971/72 when her studio was in a building next to where my wife and I lived on Maitland Street in Toronto. Two colleagues from my Art College in Australia (RMIT) had recently come to Canada and were working in Heather's studio. They introduced me to Heather. Her work was already being recognized. And we watched as, over the years, she continued to be noticed and garner many awards. Very early on, Heather's talent was obvious. This allowed her to come into the industry on a different path than most. Apparently, she was hired by Don Watt when she was only 18, just out of high school. Amazing. Like many designers in the 1970s, my wife Liz and I enjoyed and appreciated the time Heather gave us to visit her studio: to show and talk about design and look at her latest projects and ours. At that time, I remember that her unique work had quite an influence on the increasing respect designers outside of Canada were giving to Canadian design.
From the early 1970s, Heather's studio's work and influence were also becoming recognized outside of Canada. She added a different quality to how Canadian design was being seen around the world. Apart from her iconic posters, there was often an illustrative and sometimes fun element in the logos and symbols designed at her studio.
This story is an example of how her global reputation was spreading in the 1970s. Back then, one of the VPs of a large corporate client of ours asked me if I thought I could set it up for his nephew, an art student, to visit Heather's studio. I said I thought that'd be possible. A few days later, he phoned and surprised me, by saying his nephew and two buddies from an Art College in London, England, had bought plane tickets and were coming to Toronto so they could visit the studio. They did, and I was delighted that they were over the moon after their visit. Heather joined the RGD in its early days and remained a Member over the decades—finally becoming an RGD Emeritus Member. She helped establish the association's early professional standards. She was also known to help advocate for design in Canada by working both within and outside of the RGD to do this.
Perhaps Heather's most longstanding application of the 'total package' approach was for the LCBO. It started with the visual identity, which led to the longstanding Food and Drink Magazine, which she art-directed for the better part of the 1990s. She also designed all the in-store signage and merchandising for the flagship store on Cooper Street in downtown Toronto and for the Summerhill store in Rosedale. Heather also developed package design systems for preserves maker E.D. Smith, Yardley cosmetics and the Spa at the Elmwood, to name a few.
Some of her most memorable work she did was for the Stratford Festival and the Canadian Opera Company. For these assignments, she created a world of mythical characters and creatures set in magical environments, all executed with her eye for intricate detail.
Despite Heather's assertion that her 'hobby' was painting, she also had another one: gardening. "She designed her garden the same way she painted", says her daughter Sarah. “The same level of detail, the same layering of form, the same vibrant colour palette. Being in her garden was like being in one of her paintings.”
“While I met Heather, about 15 years ago on a regional studio tour in Northumberland, I knew this iconic soul from her early work, such as the identity for ROOTS. That studio tour opened a door that I never imagined. Ms. Cooper took you beyond design into a world inspired by nature and her mastery of colour. Her canvases were large and drew one in. Some canvases were like magnets that held you there far longer than you'd expect. Her imagination was vivid and prolific. I became witness to her creative influence as I made my way through her multi-level studio. She wasn't just welcoming, she was nurturing by the work, by her interest in you and who you were. I wish I could have returned more often.”
Peter Gabany RGD Emeritus
“It is with great respect and sadness that I acknowledge Heather Cooper's passing. Heather was a remarkable talent whose work helped shape Canadian graphic design during a transformative period for the profession. At a time when companies were becoming increasingly sophisticated in their marketing strategies, her studio stood apart through its distinctive artistic and illustrative approach. Her work left a lasting mark on Canadian design, from the iconic ROOTS logo to the poster for the inaugural Toronto International Film Festival in 1976, as well as the memorable Couples resort campaign that helped reposition Jamaica as a premier vacation destination. Heather's creativity, originality and contribution to the profession have left an enduring legacy. She will be remembered with admiration and gratitude.”
Stuart Ash RGD Emeritus
In 2024, Heather's health began to fail. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's, and the onset was rapid and aggressive. She had made her last painting in 2023, signed it and left it on the drawing table. It lies there still, as if it were painted only yesterday, a constant reminder of what a huge talent that little paintbox unleashed and what an enormous gift to the world Heather Cooper was, and is.
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