Amusing stories & views by us
To blog, or not to blog, that is the question. Through these musings, we hope to give you a better sense of who we are, what we believe in, and share our (design) perspective. Below, explore our creative opinion pieces and discover design tips and tricks to use in your daily life.
2024-04-02 Leadership
Birds do it; bees do it, and even creatives can do it
In November, I attended DesignThinkers 2023, a design conference put on by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD) in Toronto. I was thrilled to discover that Chris Do, an Emmy award-winning designer from the US, was the Keynote Speaker and would talk about selling. I had stumbled upon Chris’s work a year earlier, particularly […]
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2024-03-29 Design thinking
Designer spotlight: Morgan’s creative process
Can you share a pivotal moment or experience in your life that ignited your passion for design? How has that influenced your creative journey since then? It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what may have flipped the switch towards design in my life. I was the kid using MS Paint or KidPix to create tickets, invitations, […]
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2024-03-26 Design thinking
What I’ve learned in my first 6 months working at Initiate Marketing
1. “Export for Screens” in Illustrator allows for faster logo packaging When creating a logo pack for a client, you can save time by exporting multiple versions of the file at once. Choose File>Export>Export for Screens… Once there, click “Add Scale” to select the format and scale of the export. This allows you to export […]
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2024-03-19
Propel video series
Tourism and hospitality had been decimated by the pandemic, and Tourism HR Canada’s Propel Student Work Placement Program was poised to help the industry start down the road toward recovery. They came to us in late 2021 to create some videos to promote the program. There was one part of the project that presented us […]
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2024-03-12 B2B high tech Culture
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 […]
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2024-03-05 Culture Design thinking
HOW did I end up here? Or, my first-ever industry conference
Diving straight into the deep end After a trip into Academia to study film in university followed by 15 years in the hospitality industry, it was time for a change. I completed my Advanced Diploma in Graphic Design at Algonquin College this past year. I did my final semester’s work placement with Initiate and was […]
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2024-02-19 Leadership
Before quiet quitting, there was just… quitting
In June 2020, I quit my job and left an industry I had known for over twenty years. The idea had been percolating for months, but I took the world coming to a stop as a sign from the universe that some changes needed to happen. So quit I did. With quiet quitting getting so […]
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2024-02-12 Design thinking
Enhance your web browser with these designer extensions
Web browsers are easy to view with complacency. We mainly use them to search the internet, and in that aspect, all the brands available — Google Chrome, OS Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge — do the exact same job. And that’s the extent that most of us expect from our browsers, with exceptions being […]
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2024-02-05 Culture
“How was work today?”
Every single evening when I get home, my family asks this question, and every single evening I enthusiastically answer: “It was great!”, “It was so good!” and I mean it I came to this realization a few months into working at Initiate, and a year later there has been maybe one day that was just […]
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2024-01-26 Culture
Work-life balance of a new father
Why juggling everything works, for me I’ve always enjoyed keeping myself busy. I’ve worked as a full-time designer and part-time freelancer for the past 18 years while simultaneously teaching for the last 12 years; some semesters, teaching as many as 4 nights a week. Staying busy helps me stay focused and be more creative—I’m always […]
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