City of Toronto

A rebranding of the City of Toronto's graphic identity to include a new logo mark, business collateral, and a graphic guidelines manual.

My Role

Creative Director & Designer on the personal project.

Main Goal

Establish an identity and graphic system that better reflects Toronto’s culture.

One city, many cultures

Toronto is one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world with over 100 different languages spoken within a small parameter. The city boasts an array of ethnic restaurants and neighbourhoods, innovative architecture, as well as a fairly large entertainment and arts industry. Yet its current identity remains lacklustre in appearance.

Similar to the way in which the iconic “I ♥ NY” logo conveys emotion and represents the spirit of New York, the City of Toronto too craves a symbol of its time. A symbol that could transcend itself and appear on everything from keychains to t-shirts to large signs across the city. Toronto is the hub of Canada and we need a strong identity to prove it.

Diamond in the rough

After collecting various data and research, it was time to find the best solution for our need. Knowing the kind of emotion I wanted to evoke, I set forth in exploring and roughing out ideas. This consisted of black and white compositions before introducing any colour.

“An identity performs better when it is strong, simple and stable, rather than weak, intricate and ambiguous.” - Hans Kleefeld

There’s a new kid in town

Settling on the favoured approach, with a close second, the new identity captures the city's vibrant culture. The play on the “O’s” not only emphasize the letter similar to how Torontonians are known to accentuate it upon pronunciation, but their movement symbolize the city’s urban progression and booming economy.

Once the logo was established, it was time to consider its application across various channels and develop a graphic system. This included a colour palette, typography, business and marketing collateral, to name a few.

Make a mark

A large part of my knowledge on corporate identity I owe to legendary Canadian designer, Hans Kleefeld. Grateful to have had him as a mentor and teacher, I gained a lot of valuable insight into the workings of a timeless and noteworthy graphic identity. There was a lot to be said about his old school method of teaching students to observe hard copies of pinned logos on a cork board.

“It takes effort to impress young minds with a need to step back from their beloved laptops and engage their brains in focused and critical thinking. Too many expect furious keyboarding and clicking to conjure up valid identity concepts mechanically.” - Hans Kleefeld

Not only did he advocate the importance of hand-rendered designs and sketches, but that less is more. Hans made a mark in the history of Canadian design and on me as a designer.