Bloor Improvement Group website: bigonbloor.com In my last semester of school, along with my mission to get a storefront as my Independent Study, I took a Strategic Brand Development class that was about making a brand book. I could have picked a hypothetical company and followed the teacher's generic outline, but I decided to halfway in the semester change my client to Bloor Improvement Group (BIG), a local community coalition with the vision to improve Bloor Street from Christie to Lansdowne. I was starting to get involved in their festival planning and also got hired on as their designer. This brand book was meant to capture the spirit of BIG and showcase the work of the community groups that were affiliated with the coalition. It is made with my own direction and understanding of what BIG was and how it should be represented. I am not entitled to comment on how this coalition should work, if it even exists, or if is a successful model. But what I can say is collaborative local community engagement is not an easy thing to set out to do. Volunteerism works only if you have a concrete system in place and people's egos can really break things apart no matter how great of a person they are. It's not easy to organize people and represent a community's best interest. It's also not easy to find people who are willing to go above and beyond in taking responsibility. It's wonderful to see success of a vision with the completion of one grassroots project (festival) but without an organizational strategy, nothing can sustain itself when it depends on people's participation—someone has to be leading and overseeing it all the time. I designed the BIG website with the content that was on its previously designed website. I designed the festival website that displayed all the participants as they signed up (did it manually the first year—lord). If it's not updated it's because I haven't updated it, not really my priority or responsibility anymore, I find. Now I'm proud to be part of the manifestation of an exciting organically grown festival. There was a need for it and it happend they way it needed to. I question its future but I'm proud to be part of grassroots community efforts. It's truly rewarding to see thousands of happy people on the street, for a festival you were a part of. I truly believe people coming together intentionally can make magic. |
    |
