A NOTE FROM THE DESIGN CO-CHAIRS

When asked to be co-chairs of the Marketing Awards for the 2023 Design jury, we couldn’t have been more excited. We took it as an opportunity to select a distinctly design-focused jury, who have dedicated their careers to pushing what design is, in Canada and beyond. A designer’s designer if you will. Our goal was to invite new voices to the design awards table to expand the conversation on the role and impact of design today. It was a blast! Amongst the jury, the dialogue was rich and lively. There were no elephants in the room, just curious minds. We debated, we challenged and most of all, we awarded some amazing work. Props to the jury for their consideration and diligence to truly understand the judging criteria for each category. The process was engaging, but not easy. The work was inspiring. Forty-two entries were shortlisted across 11 design categories. Each project was assessed individually and then reviewed in the context of other finalists within each category. After two days of deliberation, five projects rose to the top and were awarded Golds. It was a privilege to co-chair the 2023 Design Jury. A sincere thank you to the shortlist jury and to the live jury. You made us proud! A special thank you to the Marketing Awards team for the invitation to lead the Design Jury and for your stellar support and advice. You made the task rewarding.

Jan Avendano

Art & Mechanical

Chris Braden

Public Address

Shawn Lambino

Anomaly

Michael Mavian

Sid Lee

Ming

Mikaeo Associate Design Director

Jay

Wall Briteweb

Christine

Mangosing CMANGO DESIGN

THE M FOR MPACT AWARD: SPECIAL JURY PRIZE GOLD: Websites/Apps/Mobile

Although best known for international trips, Black & Abroad created “The Black Elevation Map” to focus on domestic travel given the upheaval caused by both the pandemic and the mainstreaming of the conversation around systemic racism. The data-driven map, by Performance Art, created a way to see and navigate the U.S. in a way that centres both Black users and the country’s Black-owned businesses and cultural organizations. The project features more than 30,000 points of interest and allows users to save favourites and explore dozens of curated guides. The map, a crafted patchwork of interwoven data and technologies, sits on a historical continuum of Black-led design and “counter-mapping,” a map-making practice interested in charting Black geographies. The map serves as an uplifting domestic travel utility that visualizes Black cultural data as elevation.

GOLD: Brand Identity

BRONZE: Packaging

To modernize Keurig Dr Pepper’s Canada Dry, Wedge took the key brand attributes - such as its signature colour, badge and crown – and combined them with a newly-designed custom wordmark to strengthen the brand. The wordmark featured a heritage-inspired typographic choice of a sharp serif to create a sense of flow. Consumer research revealed that the new design was easier to identify on shelves due to its simplicity, while simultaneously feeling like it was unchanged.

SILVER: Graphics

BRONZE: Brand Identity

RGD DesignThinkers is Canada’s largest annual conference for designers. The brand identity for the event challenged designers to “Defy” what they know. Words were paired with customized symbols in a playful way, designed to spark thought. The design was limited to the two RGD brand colours to show how even a restricted sandbox could yield a beautiful design. The brand identity worked across mediums and made its way onto the stage and into the speakers’ content. The graphic system consisted of 50 unique symbols drawn by four different designers.

ECD: Kristian Manchester

CDs: Olivier Valiquette, Lee Bradley Getty

CD: Eva Polis

ADs: Howard Poon, Dax Fullbrook, Adnan Huseinovic

Designers: Hilary Zak, John Naboye, Mike Berson

BRONZE: Graphics

As a way to create a connection between the Montreal Canadiens and a Gen Z audience that neither loves nor cares about hockey, Sid Lee created “OG1,” a sub-brand that celebrates Montreal not for its hockey exploits, but for being a city of originals. The brand narrative was based on the themes Gen Z values: individuality, self-expression and originality. The name stood for the Original One, a play on the “Original Six,” the name given to the six oldest franchises in the National Hockey League (NHL); the Montreal Canadiens is the oldest, its creation preceding the NHL itself. Every character of the acronym OG1 was inspired by original, sports or cultural ideas that define the city. The Canadiens reached out to a number of Montreal-born brands, businesses and individuals to borrow visual assets and transform OG1 into a canvas for original Montreal stories.

GOLD: Packaging

LG2

La Tablée des Chefs is a non-profit organization that has been fighting food insecurity and educating young people about food autonomy for 20 years. To celebrate this milestone, it launched “The Solidarity Sparkles,” a limitededition sparkling apple must. LG2 created 20 bottles of the same apple must but with 20 different labels, each featuring an apple depicted in a uniquely whimsical style and a limited colour palette. Every label illustrated one of La Tablée’s good works and a QR code led to text highlighting the organization’s culinary actions and community involvement.

ECD:

AD:

CW:

SILVER: Packaging BRONZE: Brand Identity

Ami Ami “Ami Ami” Wedge

To reduce its environmental impact, Ami Ami, a French winemaker, created a 1.5L box of wine that reduces the carbon footprint by 50% (when shipped) compared to a standard wine bottle. To change the negative association of wine boxes, Wedge approached each panel on the box as an opportunity to delight, with the aim of creating an overall feeling of being modern, unfussy and friendly. The logo was designed for a box: its proportion and shapes were conceived in parallel to the packaging design’s format and proportions. The box itself was designed to be half the size of traditional boxed wine in order to stand out on shelves with its portability and cuteness. To show the number of glasses available in each box, the logomark featured 10 cups in a playful pattern. To draw attention to facts on its sustainability impact, friendly illustrations were used, inspired by the Italian artist Fortunato Depero, known for his Futurism style and vintage Campari characters. The main typeface was inspired by those found on French wine crates.

To connect with younger consumers, Kraft Heinz launched a campaign for its ketchup using the A.I. image generator DALL-E 2, after discovering that the prompt for ‘ketchup’ would inevitably result in images of bottles resembling Heinz. The campaign, by Rethink, took to social media for suggestions for Heinz mashup image prompts and generated visuals from them. This included images such as “ketchup in space”, “ketchup cubism” and “psychedelic ketchup”. The A.I. images were featured on social media, in a long format video, on special edition bottles, and in an art gallery in the metaverse and in person. The campaign generated over 1.15 billion earned impressions and had a 38% higher engagement rate on social media than benchmarks. Even brands such as Ducati and Sportsnet chimed in with A.I. Ketchup image mashup requests.

Penguin Random House, the world’s largest Englishlanguage book publisher, launched “The Unburnable Book” in response to unprecedented levels of book banning in U.S. schools and libraries. The book was a one-of-a-kind, fireproof edition of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. Printed on Cinefoil pages and using heat-resistant inks and bound with nickel wire, the materials used to create the book were stable up to 2600°F. The campaign, by Rethink, featured a video of Atwood attempting to burn her own book with a flamethrower. The single edition was auctioned at Sotheby’s New York and raised US$130,000 for PEN America, an organization that promotes freedom of expression. With the story going global and reaching a 12 billion impression earned media value of $35 million, the book also landed back on the bestsellers list.

BRONZE:

YWCA

“Add the M” was an initiative by YWCA Metro Vancouver that highlighted gender inequality and encouraged gender equity in the sports world. The concept was simple: take the iconic logos from men’s sports leagues and add an M in front of each one – duplicating the way W is added to the front of logos for women’s sports. The campaign, by Rethink, was launched on YWCA social channels and was supported by key sports figures and gender equity activists. People were encouraged to hack logos on Instagram and in real life, using the hashtag #addtheM. A ready audience answered the call: the Women’s Football Fan Collective, for example, added the M to the English Premier League. The campaign made headlines across the globe and achieved a total overall reach of over 102 million impressions.

To explore new and more sustainable ways to use urban land, Carrefour Solidaire launched “Serres de rue,” which means street greenhouses, and installed them directly on the streets of Montreal. The campaign, by Sid Lee X Au/Lab X Carrefour Alimentaire, transformed car shelters into passive solar greenhouses that grow fresh produce. The visual identity was based on a car shelter that grows and transforms into a logotype, as well as a series of icons and illustrations used for company materials. With circular design in mind, old traffic signs were upcycled to create a learning route along the greenhouses for pedestrians and for school groups to learn about the science behind the project, sustainable ways to grow food and public policies that could be changed to allow the spread of similar initiatives. Gardening tools for the greenhouses were built from the same traffic signs. The first few crops were distributed to local low-income communities, and the project will continue to grow and organize school visits in the future.

Designers: Benjamin Lamingo, Charlotte Boisclair

AD: Jean-François Mayrand