ECU 100 | Communication Design Students Explore ECU’s Past, Present and Future with New Publications

A new collection of publications by Communication Design students at Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECU) explores the university’s history, spaces and community perspectives to mark ECU’s centennial anniversary.

Published by Occasional Press at ECU, Stories of Emily Carr is a collection researched, written, edited and designed by third-year students as part of a class led by designer and ECU faculty member Katherine Gillieson.

“I thought our centennial year presents an ideal opportunity to shine a spotlight on our immediate location and encourage students to connect with the local community,” Katherine says. “And the students have developed some fantastic content. This collection stands as a unique documentation of ECU at this moment in time, as a campus, community, and cultural institution. The collection is also a distinctive piece of publication design demonstrating the depth of thinking, commitment and creative talent of our third-year Communication Design students.”

Stories of Emily Carr comprises nine separate publications, each created by teams of two or three students. Each team was tasked with developing a unique theme of their choosing. Their diverse topics include photo-essays and features on sustainability and community, ECU’s campus spaces, investigative journalism, and explorations of teaching and learning cultures throughout the university.

As part of their research, students interviewed fellow students, alums and faculty members, consulted the ECU Archives, and generated original photography and illustrations. They were also responsible for the full suite of publication tasks, including writing, editing, typesetting, designing layout, and preparing the volume for print.

Additionally, the project uses a typeface created by Vancouver-based type designer and Communication Design alum Alanna Munro (BDes 2013).

“This project foregrounds synthesis and community,” Katherine says. “It combines a solid structural experience in publication design with extensive outreach and place-based components requiring consideration of our immediate locale and history, as well as working with people.”

Third-year students Francine Capistrano and Tashu Kharbanda focused their publication on defining design culture at ECU. As part of their research, they interviewed ECU faculty members, including Alex Hass and Sahil Mroke.

“We took this opportunity to teach ourselves about different aspects of teaching and learning by talking to our community members. It was almost like killing two birds with one stone — learning how to create a publication and learning about design culture while we’re at it,” Francine says, noting their interviewees were less interested in definitions than in imagining future possibilities. “The discussion revolved mostly around what design culture could evolve into in the next hundred years.”

“In the beginning, all we had was curiosity and some questions,” Tashu adds. “What we learned is that there is no definition for design culture, whether in general or specific to campus. Instead, people form design culture. It is truly dependent on students and the community here. That’s why we included the line, ‘Make ECU a space you want to be in.’ That’s something I love in this book.”

With finished publications now in hand, the class has begun sharing them with the public, including an appearance in late October at the Alcuin Wayzgoose biennial book arts fair at the Vancouver Public Library’s central branch. Stories of Emily Carr will also appear at ECU in December as part of a publication design exhibition organized by designer, ECU faculty member and alum Robin Mitchell Cranfield (BDes 2003).

In addition to the print run, Katherine is also hoping to make digital versions available as e-books through the Occasional Press website.

“As we share this compilation with the public, the hope is that readers will learn and be inspired by the variety of stories covering the past, present and future places and cultures of the school, as we are poised to enter the next 100 years,” she says.