This is a brief and cobbled-together compendium of recent design work by Grant Hamilton. Although my day-to-day job includes much writing and photography, I love the design part best. Please download my curriculum vitae (.pdf) (.doc) (.odt). For more information, or to contact me, email [email protected] or leave a comment at the bottom of the page.
Warning: some of these PDFs are multiple pages and can be dozens of megabytes in size.
Western Canadian Music Awards
(Click image for full PDF)
The Western Canadian Music Awards celebrate the best musical talent from the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon Territory. They’re a big deal. And in 2009, they came to Brandon, where I was proud to design and lay out the Festival Guide.
This 32-page booklet included basic information about the four-day festival, as well as the awards gala that was its culmination, but it was designed from the bottom up to be as user-friendly as possible. With a complete timetable on the centre spread, which coded to a map on the following page, and brief bios (which I researched) of all 53 performers, it was a fantastic exercise in usability and information density.
I enjoyed the festival and discovered a lot of great new music. But it was rewarding to see my guide, “out in the wild” being used and appreciated exactly how I had intended.
The Brandon Sun
(Click images for full PDFs)
The Brandon Sun is my daily bread-and-butter, and I see it as a regular test to lay out the pages that I see in my head. I spent extensive time designing the templates and stylesheets during our two most recent redesigns, shoehorning the biggest-possible news hole onto a page that has lost a full inch and a half in width. (I was in charge of both redesigns as we downsized from a 50-inch web to a 48-inch and now to a 44-inch web.)
Our readers generally support the change, and I found the challenge of a complete redesign to be both invigorating and fun. The sample pages above give a good overview of the new style of the Brandon Sun — heavy on large, bright photos, but with a conservative approach to news-side layout and design. I drew extensively on the history of the paper, but every element was modernized in a significant way.
Note: I did not personally design the bottom two pages (Sports and Lifestyle) that you see here, although I did create the page templates, including folios and nameplate.
Quasquicentennials
(Click images for full PDFs)
Both the Brandon Sun and its home city of Brandon celebrated their quasquicentennials (or 125th anniversaries) in 2007. The city was founded in 1882 with the arrival of the railroad, the newspaper actually got started first. I coordinated, designed and laid out the newspaper’s 125th anniversary centre-spread, but the real prize was my work on the Commemorative Special Edition of the paper that we produced for the city’s big bash.
From conception to execution, I took a leading role in assigning and editing — and even writing — stories, as well as coordinating the full layout of what became a 36-page broadsheet publication in two sections. The design of the special edition was intended to reflect the then-current style of the paper, but with deliberate echoes of the newspaper’s look and feel from eras past. Accordingly, I spent much time going through print and microfilm archives of early editions of the paper, and designed stylesheets that had a hand-pasted feel.
Words Alive
(Click images for full PDFs)
Words Alive is downtown Brandon’s premiere literary festival. We bring authors from across Canada to Brandon for a weekend of readings and workshops, described as a “literary festival with a book club atmosphere.” Since its founding in 2007, I have been vice-president and chair of the festival’s board of directors. I also design the festival’s promotional materials and am (titularly) the webmaster. I am particularly proud of the Words Alive logo, which was done in conjunction with Monique Perey of Eye Candy Creative.
The Consumer Goods
(Click image for full PDF)
The Consumer Goods are a Winnipeg- and Toronto-based band whose CD I first reviewed in 2006. When they contacted me about playing Brandon last summer, I quickly ran through the list of venues available and found none suitable. So I became a rock promoter, rented my own space, obtained the requisite sound equipment and liquor permits and did my own promotion. And I very nearly broke even.
I did up several poster concepts for Tyler Shipley, head of the Consumer Goods, and we decided to go with a faux-Soviet style that was based on the revolutionary art already adorning his CD.
More
I’m not actively looking to quit my current job — I love the work and I love the people — but I’m always interested in great new challenges. Download my curriculum vitae (.pdf) (.doc) (.odt). For more information, or to contact me, email [email protected] or leave a comment below.