Art in the Midst of Ache
Creating with Chronic Pain Creating anything when you’re living with chronic pain is hard. Like, really hard. It’s not the romantic, tortured-artist kind of pain. It’s the “my body feels like it’s made of broken glass and my brain is a foggy soup” kind of pain. And when creativity is also how you pay the […]
2025-05-21
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Honouring Women This Mother’s Day
Mother’s Day is only days away, so I want to take a moment to recognize and encourage all women: women who are mothers, women who are caregivers, women who are mentors. No matter how or who you nurture and lead, you are mothering. Your contributions, visible or not, public or private, shape families, communities, and workplaces every day. But honouring women means more than […]
2025-05-08
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Graphic design and the folk process
My biggest passion is music. I love nothing more than strumming the banjo, playing guitar, and singing in my choir. You may wonder, “It’s 2025? Why play the banjo?” It’s all because of folk music! When I was a child, my granddad handed me a set of jingle bells to accompany him while he played […]
2025-03-28
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Initiate’s first summer intern reflects on a summer of design
Emilie-Danni was our very first summer design intern here at Initiate. We asked her to reflect on her journey with us. As I sit down to reflect on the final days of my internship, I feel both nostalgic and exhilarated. It’s incredible how swiftly the past few months have flown by, each day brimming with […]
2024-12-06
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A musing about perspective
One of the few good things to come out of the pandemic was more time at home with my husband and business partner. Specifically, more time to go outside for walks was a daily highlight. More often than not, nothing exciting happened in these times. Sometimes, we’d walk for over an hour without exchanging words; […]
2024-08-05
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Hello, my title is not graphic designer
Disclaimer: I’m not trying to offend anybody’s profession, personal opinion or love of the term graphic designer. A lot of people might aspire to be graphic designers. The whole premise is that over the years I’ve seen a lot of people with a lot of roles that are called a graphic designer—a senior graphic designer […]
2024-07-22
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A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet
As my father’s daughter, I’m not shy, quiet, or demure but confident, exuberant, and outgoing. Instead of being described as such, like my dad often was, I was mostly labeled “aggressive.” I can’t remember with absolute certainty ever being told by our father that he wanted sons instead of daughters. But I am confident that […]
2024-07-08
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Vintage design treasures, by our designers
Some of us seek out vintage items, and some of us have been drawn to an item only to later learn of its robust history. Either way, here at Initiate we’ve realized that most of us own or collect vintage items, or love a good craft market! We want to share our favourite finds with […]
2024-05-27
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Things to consider when applying for a job at Initiate
Hint: it involves some initiative Having recently reviewed countless résumés with spelling mistakes along with portfolios, the ability to focus or pay attention to detail is becoming one of the most attractive skill sets to me as an employer. I’m sharing from the perspective of what Michael and I are looking for from people joining […]
2024-05-13
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Transferable Skills: From Policy Analyst to Graphic Designer
Geneviève is a graphic designer at Initiate. Before venturing into the creative industry, she spent 15 years working in policy analysis. Creativity is a circuitous path Like many designers, my path to creating hasn’t been a straight line. I came to Ottawa to study journalism, political science and public administration in 1994, and spent 15 […]
2024-05-06
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From student to mentor: the other side of the fence
As a 2021 graduate of this program, I have only been in the industry full-time for about 2.5 years. The imposter syndrome came in hot — thoughts like “I don’t have enough experience,” “I’m not going to give good advice,” and “I don’t know what I’m going to say” raced through my mind. Not to […]
2024-04-16
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My move into trade show design
Before Initiate, I had very little real-life experience designing for print from scratch. At a previous print production job, I was using templated sizes for documents, and nothing was larger than 12×18 inches. The company itself was the client since we were designing our own products, and I was sending my files to the senior […]