Design Canada (2018)

(On TV, November 2020) Considering that you’re reading this review on a web site with its own custom logo and maple leaf in the image header, it won’t be a surprise to learn that I’m an unusually good audience for a movie that specifically examines icons of Canadian design. Design Canada gets a bit blurry around the edges, but it’s a documentary that looks at famous Canadian logos from the Canadian Flag to the Canada Wordmark used by the federal government. With interviews with the designers themselves and peeks at their archives, we get to understand how Canada’s best-known iconography was put together, its meanings and its effectiveness. We get a good look at the making of the CN, Expo67, Canada 1967, CBC and Roots logos. The influence of the Swiss school is clearly explained (with the Roots design philosophy offered as a counter-example—and significantly enough, it’s the only design identity spearheaded by a woman), with plenty of examples offered regarding the advantage of clean crisp logos. There’s quite a bit of discussion about how these logos contributed to the post-1967 sense of Canadian identity: One striking idea being that rather than try to present facets of the Canadian population (through a British union jack, French lily and First Nations leaf), the single-leaf flag promoted a sense of a unique identity in which everyone could see themselves. There’s even a discussion about how corporate identities sometimes get redesigned, often to go back to the original. (The original CBC logo designer is asked about the famous simplified redesign, and his answer is not complimentary.) Design Canada does lose itself at times—rather than maintain the focus on its strengths, it sometimes goes on tangents whose value is only revealed very late, if at all. But the result is nothing short of enthralling for design geeks such as I am—a clear, cogent overview of the symbols that unite a nation and the people who came up with them. I couldn’t stop watching it—and along the way, I learned more about things I thought I knew well.