A new graphic design website is all about community, sharing, and spreading the work around.
For about eight years, a group of Guelph graphic designers has been getting together socially and informally every month to talk about their work, its challenges and changes.
Recently, the group was formalized as Designers of Guelph, and now it has an impressive new website highlighting what 18 local graphic professionals have to offer.
The website www.designersofguelph.ca launched on Monday. It features links to the designers’ websites - windows into the diverse, colourful, exploratory, inventive, and elaborate work of the local graphic people, with examples of the projects they’ve created for clients in Guelph and beyond.
All 18 live and work in Guelph, and include illustrators, web designers, packaging and marketing designers, a web copywriter, and photographer, among others. Barking Dog Studios, Blind Pig Design, Helen Dimitrijevic, Ebb + Flow Creative, and Ballyhoo Media are among the local designers included. Many of them work as freelancers or sole proprietors.
Any business, organization or individual needing a logo, brochure, poster, CD cover, or website can now go to one online location to find the designer that suits their needs.
The website was created locally, and features a symbolic twin-rivers logo by Andrew Forbes to reflect one of the city’s defining features.
Gareth Lind of the longstanding Lind Design, said part of the impetus behind the collective website was to create synergy around a stronger sense of community and sharing among local graphic designers.
Some are well established, others just starting out. Sharing work and know-how helps everyone.
“It arose out of a desire to break out of silos and talk to each other,” said Lind in an interview Monday, speaking of the early days of Designers of Guelph. “A lot of us are self-employed or sole proprietorships, and it is sometimes good to be able to talk shop.”
Under certain circumstances, members of the city’s graphic design community, he added, will spell each other off at holiday time or pass work on when swamped.
He said it has become more difficult to break into the graphic design business, and this collective effort could help those just starting out.
While a Google search is one way for a local client to find a local graphic designer, such a search will also bring up designers from outside the city, or even from aboard, who may not be familiar with the city or its business environment.
“We thought it would be useful to have one site where people can go and find designers,” he said. “The idea is to develop a bit of a synergy happening so that there’s a community feel. It is very Guelph in a way. I think there is room for more collaboration, even though we are, on paper, competitors.”
In a press release about the website’s launch, Art Kilgour of Write Design said the site highlights the breadth of design talent in Guelph.
“Even though it’s possible to crowd-source design offshore nowadays, there is real value in shopping locally for graphic communications expertise, and being able to collaborate with your designer face-to-face,” he said.
The website will help the local graphic design sector better market its strength to local businesses and beyond, he added.
Designers of Guelph invites other graphic design professionals to list their businesses on the site, which includes an application button on the home page. There are three criteria - you have to live here, you need to do design for a living, and you need to come out to one of the monthly after-work socials.
