Halfblacula: O Canada

So, here's the process work for my Canada project:

I found this project to be one of the most difficult to create conceptually out of all of them from the past school year. I kind of understood the premise, but having to selectively simplify the wide berth of Canadian diversity that exists was a challenge.

Brainstorming was a nice way to start off, and this was a fun way start to the assignment:

After this I basically did the same thing in my sketchbook, trying to figure out how to represent diversity and contrasts in a way that would be interesting or at least pretty.

I was trying to pick something specific because choosing something really general would've been too complicated to design. At some point, I remembered that Canada has two official languages! The contrast between French and English within the country and against other countries became the basis of my assignment. But I didn't really know what to do with that idea.

I really didn't want to turn this project into an infographic, so I thought about turning it into a typography piece, but the idea wasn't original whatsoever. I screwed around with a few more ideas and resolved to making something infographic-y.

So I had my idea, and I decided to do it digitally.

I was bored with it immediately. I also noticed that I was running out of room horizontally so I thought "Why not turn it on its side?"

I wasn't even finished yet, but I knew it would still be too boring. I wasn't crazy about where I was going with it, so I called it a night and decided to try again the next day. As I was laying in bed, I thought that if I added some more visual interest, some artwork and more colours, the whole piece would be informative but also kinda neat to look at.

I decided to add a couple Canadian animals into the mix, turning the columns of phrases into word balloons for each one, with definition in between. I liked this idea a lot more.

I created the animals and tried some different colours so the look wouldn't be so monochromatic. I fixed up the rest of the text and finished it up.

Since my project is based more off of words, I didn't find a lot of visual sources although I did look at some pictures. Here's a list of the websites I referenced for the slang included:

http://geekmom.com/2013/12/55-canadianisms/

http://news.travel.aol.com/2010/10/11/montreal-slang/

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Glossary_of_Canadian_English

http://www.gringaespanola.com/2009/11/the-quebecois-say-the-darndest-things/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_French_lexicon

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexique_du_fran%C3%A7ais_qu%C3%A9b%C3%A9cois

http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%AAtre_tiguidou

http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/10-quebecois-idioms-french-dont-understand/

http://cottagelife.com/73973/blogs/7-cottagey-words-youll-only-hear-in-canada

http://kaplaninternational.com/blog/fun-facts-canadian-slang/

http://www.cbc.ca/punchline/lists/10-uniquely-canadian-slang-phrases

http://www.macleans.ca/society/life/11-more-canadian-words-phrases-or-slang-most-americans-wouldnt-understand/