After 8 years of working on important issues such as the environment and highlighting emerging leaders in Toronto, the Toronto City Summit Alliance recently underwent a rebranding process to become the Greater Toronto CivicAction Alliance.

The project was undertaken by Trajectory (disclosure: my parents run Trajectory) – a branding agency in Toronto. I was contracted to help in the redesign of their website. The resulting design, above, was implemented by another agency. The relaunch was hugely successful and I was happy to be apart of the project!

Tight budgets. Tight timeframes. BF Design tackled the design of the CivicAction website with the kind of design and web savvy that anticipated many of our needs before we even thought to ask. It’s a collaborative approach that makes for great work and delighted clients.

- Jeannette Hanna, Vice President, Trajectory

Over the past two years, I’ve been contracted by Playwrights Canada Press to design three book covers for some of their plays. The three pictured above are by some of the most prolific writers and performers Canada has to offer; Sky Gilbert, Maja Ardal and Anusree Roy. After reading the scripts for each play(s) and consulting with Playwrights Canada Press, a few sample covers were designed and passed on to the artists. I think the resulting designs are striking and communicate visually the content of the plays quite well.

I’ve quite enjoyed designing book covers. The cover for You Fancy Yourself by Maja Ardal is actually from a poster I designed for the show a few years ago. The show has toured extensively across the country and internationally as well.

I am always delighted with the work BFdesign does on our book covers. We are given several options to choose from, all of which are superb, and the final product goes a long way in creating the right image for our books.

I strongly recommend BFdesign, for both the design expertise that is brought to the work and the high level of professionalism.

- Annie Gibson, Publisher

In 2009 I had the pleasure of working with Artistic Producer Mitchell Marcus and Acting Up Stage company to design the marketing material for their upcoming production of The Light in the Piazza. Mitchell and I have worked together before on the Dora Awards and I’ve seen some of the past productions from Acting Up Stage and have always enjoyed the choices the company makes about which musicals they will bring to the stage here in Toronto. The show takes place in Florence and we wanted to create an image that evoked the sensual side of Italy, the old-world, the artistic and breathtaking beauty of the country. The texture for the background was our starting point. Once we had found that, the rest fell into place. I did a quick photo shoot one day to capture Jacquelyn in character to use as part of the imagery (unfortunately there was no budget to fly us all out for a photo shoot on location in Florence). The resulting marketing material turned out to be huge success.

Since then, Mitchell and I have collaborated on a variety of projects for Acting Up Stage including creating a company profile video, various fundraiser material and a company profile package for sponsors. It’s always a pleasure working with Acting Up Stage.

BFDesign is one of the best things that could have happened to our business. We used to take care of all of our own graphic design in house but it was very time consuming and we weren’t getting the results that we wanted. BFDesign creates eye-catching designs for us each and every time and understands our business and how to help us capture the imagination of our audiences. Blair’s efficiency and attention to his clients is stellar; working with him is like having a full time design person in-house!

Mitchell Marcus, Artistic Producer