Intersections exhibition showcases Vancouver’s design talent

Streets and intersections are the building blocks of a city, but they are often overlooked and under-appreciated. Intersections, a new city public art program, is aimed at highlighting the diverse character, geography, and histories of these cross streets.

Posters reflect city corners

Seven Vancouver designers collaborated on a graphic design exhibition to be featured at Waterfront Station. Each designer selected an intersection at random and was given the task of representing the past, present and future of each on a large 36” by 54” poster.

The only guidelines were to fill the poster completely, and to include an ampersand between both street names on each. Beyond that, designers were given the opportunity to run wild with their own creativity.

Working Format, a graphic design and typography studio, curated the exhibition and created the SE Marine and Knight poster.

Ross Milne, a founding partner with the firm said that this intersection was unique because they “had to acknowledge [its] importance, without celebrating it.” One of the largest and busiest intersections in Vancouver, it’s also home to the most car accidents in the city.

Two key aspects of the exhibition are design and celebration

‘‘One of the mandates was to create an opportunity for designers specifically. With a lot of grants for public art, graphic design and designers get excluded from it because there`s this discrepancy between for profit and not for profit. Because of this, we find we are not able to participate in the arts based programming in the city,” said Milne.

This exhibition is also a way to “recognize our really, really fantastic design industry in Vancouver [and] bring awareness to some of the hidden gems in our city.”

The first public launch of all seven posters will be on Jan. 31, at an off-site reception at The Chinatown Experiment, 434 Columbia St.  from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Reported by Brenna Brooks