I love birds and started collecting them as ornaments not realizing the meaning behind them. It is said that they symbolize joy and happiness. It is also, apparently, an old Scandinavian tradition to feed the birds on Christmas Day.

For this year's client and family holiday gift tags, I chose to illustrate a black-capped chickadee, and experiment with goil foiling. The chickadee is the first bird that captured my attention as a child. We had a family friend, Teddy d'Éon, who would take myself and my four siblings to explore nature in the woods behind our house. He explained that the chickadee's name sounds like his song: "chicka-dee-dee-dee". I remember those days like it was yesterday and my siblings and I are forever grateful to Teddy for making us appreciate nature and have fun, sans ipads ;-) 

Whether your favourite bird is a chickadee, cardinal or a goldfinch, try a new tradition and sprinkle birdseed on your doorstep on Christmas morning. I hope you get a visitor or two and that you have a HAPPY, LUCKY, NEW YEAR!

Jocelyne Saulnier
Joce Creative

 © joce creative

I am excited to share with you my recent feature in one of my favourite design resources, LogoLounge. From a pool of more than 23,000 logos, only 2,000 logos were selected by a panel of jurors to be featured in the 9th edition edition of LogoLounge - Distillerie Fils du Roy was one of them!

Distillerie Fils du Roy is a logo I designed for the design firm, Mistral Communication. The logo is featured on award winning cranberry liqueur, gin, anise and vanilla liquor as well as other products, all manufactured in New Brunswick, Canada. Labelling was designed by Mistral Communication.

As designers it's always nice to get compliments on your work, but super cool when the company who printed your work asks if they can feature it on their website!

If you look through JukeBoxPrint.com's website, particularly in the Hang Tag/Specialty section, you'll see a card I designed for Front Porch Mercantile. We chose JukeBox Print because they were able to print the hang-tag style cards with a silk matte laminate finish on a nice, heavy 16pt stock. The cards double as products tags and make a really fun card for Front Porch Mercantile to hand out.

And if you happen to be travelling through Lower Coverdale New Brunswick, make sure to stop by and visit the shop! Owner Wendy Batten's furniture and fabulous Canadian-made paint will make you want to re-love your furniture!

Picture this: you have just started your university course, and your prof has just announced that you will be grading your own projects. At first I thought it was a crazy idea, but I realize now what Anthony Mann (Tony to us) was giving us life and business lessons.

Tony passed away this week, and this blog is dedicated to him.

It is during this 2-D design class at NSCAD University, over 20 years ago, that I finally got it – I finally understood how to combine image with type. And because of that I have never been able to throw away the project that got me there.

Tony set up a long wooden table in his classroom; long enough to fit 16 mounted projects. Once our projects were complete; he asked us to line them up on the table. He stepped back, and then asked us to line the work, from best (right side) to weakest (left side).

My work at the time was okay. I was shy, and to be honest, it always seemed to stay in the middle of the wooden table – until the bicycle project. One day, Tony asked us take a sheet of blank paper, close our eyes, and draw a bicycle. We opened our eyes to see what we had drawn; we saw interesting lines, naïve, almost child-like bicycle drawings; but they were pretty cool. Then he asked us to turn them into an album cover. I chose to name mine Fahrrad (German for bike). Though one of my words used a font with an outline and drop shadow (something I may not choose today), it finally looked balanced. Up until then, I struggled with typography, but I remember the moment a friend of mine said; "Hey Joce, that's really good!" And I agreed. It was just black and white, but it was good because it was very simple and balanced.

And so my Fahrrad bike made it's way to the front of the table. I dared to move it, but most importantly the whole class also agreed it deserved the number one position on the table.

In Tony’s class we learned to check our egos at the door; we learned that constructive criticism is not a personal attack. If your peers felt that your work was just ok; it stayed in the middle; if it was fantastic, it made it way to the top. We had to toughen up to make it outside in the real world.

We also learned to work together and agree as a team. Sure, one or two disagreed with the order, but most of the time, everyone was on board with number 1 and number 16. Your position on the table measured the quality of your work and if you wanted to move up to the top positions, you learned to see the work of others as something to rise to. Finally, we learned that we had to have a voice. We learned to fight for what we thought was fabulous or worthy (your own work or someone else's) and to constructively disagree (okay… argue) about something that didn't deserve to be at the top. But the group decision always prevailed.

Thanks Tony Mann, and all of my design profs at NSCAD – you made a real impact on my design career.

If you'd like to read more about Tony Mann, go to : http://www.gdc.net/about/fellows/articles/71.php

Let's face it. Out of a family of five children, I was the "Gift Guesser" of the family. I'd peek, squeeze, shake my gifts or try to get at least one hint about my gift. So this year, I teamed up again with Kathy Mercure to create Gift Guessing Tags.

Printed on a beautiful shimmery paper stock, these cherry red and chocolate brown tags are attached with a silver string with fun hints inside. 

TO ENTER: Just post a comment below and let me know if you are a gift guesser or not. Three random winners will be chosen. You'll have the tags in plenty of time for next Christmas, though you can use them this for other occasions. Draw will take place December 23rd, 2012. Fun stories are welcome.

Hope you had as much fun with these as Kathy Mercure and I had creating them. Good luck, and Happy Holiday!

Three years ago when it was Parent Career Day, my daughter asked if I could talk about "what I do" to her kindergarten class. What I do, or graphic design, has been a bit of challenge to explain to many people.

"You design clothing?"
"No. I work with fonts and create logos, signage, posters, etc."
"Oh, you work in a sign shop and make the signs that go above buildings or on cars?"
"No,” I usually reply, "I design the them".

So to explain what I do to a group of 5-year olds, I showed them logos I've designed and then showed the children Internationally recognized logos they could relate to, like ToysRUs, Disney, and Lego.

After my short slide show, I asked the children to go to their table where I had placed dollar store packs of crayons and a white sheet of paper for each of them. I asked them if they could all draw, the Mac Daddy of all logos: the McDonald's Logo. Out of a class of 14, almost all of them took their little packs of Spiderman and princess crayons, and began drawing the Golden Arches right away. There were only 2 who didn't start drawing; one who just didn't seem to know how to put his ideas onto paper (but eventually got it) and the other who didn't understand the French version of "McDonald's". Once I pronounced it in English, he was all set to draw.

I thought the children's drawings were quite wonderful for their age. Most of them used the yellow and red and what really intrigued me was that some of the children also drew the whole signage structure that supports the MacDonald's sign. Most of their "Ms" were rounded and not one child attempted to draw the word "McDonald's" below or next to the arches. To them, the McDonald's logo is the Golden Arches. As the children were finishing their awesome drawings, another teacher strolled in to see what they were doing. One of them said with a big smile: "The lady is showing us how to draw logos; she's designed many before, like this McDonald's one."

I wish.

 The MacDonald's logo was designed by Jim Schindler in 1962.