I’m very grateful to be living in this country called Canada, now celebrating its 150th birthday.

In my over twelve years of living here, I have found that the country’s kindness and warmth abounds and that, despite the generally freaking cold geographical climate, its friendliness gets expressed in many different and distinct ways. Mostly it’s in the conversations, populated with a lot of sorries, sureness, and substance. This friendliness is also embedded in the visual culture and history of the country, the shapes and symbols that together express the physical and psychic landscape we experience today.

While these lands have been inhabited by numerous peoples over thousands of years, Canada’s 150th makes it a relative baby among the nations of the world. In honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary, I thought I would share some personal and professional reflections on three important visual Canadian milestones.

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I’m learning that what sets designers apart is their attention to visual details. I remember the first time I noticed bad kerning between letters. Once the uneven spacing stood out to me, I could never read that word the same way. As a student studying design, I’m learning the importance of these details. I see that it takes a trained eye to pick up on the little things.

I’ve had the pleasure of spending the past three weeks learning from, and working with the Manoverboard team. I’ve observed their attention to detail and ability to pick up on discrepancies instinctively, and as a result I’m learning to become more attuned to noticing these details myself.

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18 years ago in March of 1999, Microsoft released support for favicons with Internet Explorer 5.

Have you ever noticed that many websites display a little icon in your browser’s URL bar and bookmarks? That’s a favicon (which is short for favorite icon). While often taken for granted, the favicon can be an outlet for creativity, and an opportunity for a web developer to put a “special touch” on a website. The smallest size of a favicon is 16×16 pixels (seen below). That’s really tiny!

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Manoverboard celebrated its 15th anniversary in January. While I’m not big on celebrating business-focused events, I am well aware that this is a milestone.

I’ve reflected upon this anniversary quite a bit, actually. Staying in business for a single year is hard. Doing it for 15 years somehow seems like defeating the odds.

But we did it.

And I’d like to think that the longevity has a little bit to do with giving away work.

I know that sounds counter-intuitive. It might even sound dangerous. But when I started the company in Brooklyn fifteen years ago, the dot-com economy had crashed and, in its wake, I saw an abundance of nonprofit organizations who were in dire need of design and technology services. My goal was to start a business that would help those nonprofits and, on occasion, give the work away for free or at a lower cost. That was the goal.
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With every new year we tend to assess the many facets of our lives and focus on the things that are not working. This seems to be common with every passing year, so I decided to see how I could curb the amount of time I spent staring into my phone. Even as I write this, I have already been interrupted by the urge to check it.

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