Category: From the Design Team

As the project work for Canada Beyond 150 kicks off, it’s natural to want to align your efforts to a final product. As participants in a policy development initiative, you might reasonably speculate: Is this about creating a new policy or program? Is this about developing a new tool that could help the Government of Canada better deliver services? Or is this about something different altogether, something that I haven’t yet imagined?

As one of the project planners for Canada Beyond 150, I know that the project is designed to have very real and tangible outcomes. Each of you will help develop policy prototypes to test and refine in collaboration with stakeholders and partners in the civil service and beyond. Along the way, you will also build up your policy knowledge base, assemble a new and innovative toolkit of methods and approaches, and forge enduring relationships with stakeholders and partners.

I will add that there are very likely to be a number of intangible outcomes too. Outcomes that we can’t strictly speaking “plan” for, but outcomes that will contribute to culture change, enhanced capacity in the policy community, and better results for Canadians all the same.

Continue reading “What’s this all for, really? – A note to Canada Beyond 150 participants from a member of the project design team”

Stuart Forestell

Stuart Forestell works in Priorities and Planning with the Privy Council office, where he provides advice on issues in the justice, transport, infrastructure, trade, and national security and defence portfolios. He has previously worked in cyber security policy and health policy. His background is in the arts and humanities, with a focus on the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, the modern Germans, and the post-modern French.

When you meet someone for the first time, one of the most common questions is about your career. Usually, when someone asks me what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a graphic designer, they respond enthusiastically “Wow! Where?” But when I tell them something like, “With the Government for an organization called . . .” I don’t even get a chance to finish my sentence before being met with a disinterested “Oh . . .”  Just because I work for the Government doesn’t mean I make boring things!

When the Canada Beyond 150 project launched in June 2017, people asked me if the visuals had been done by an agency. They were surprised to learn that the designs were done internally and by a public servant. This just goes to show that government graphic designers as just as capable of creating dynamic, modern visuals.
Continue reading “A Day in the Mind of a Government Graphic Designer”

Isabelle Poirier

Graphic Artist, Isabelle Poirier, is a heavy coffee drinker with a passion for everything artistic. Graduated from University of Ottawa, Isabelle has a Bachelor degree in Fine Arts with a Specialization in Photography. She also obtained a certificate in Web Design from Algonquin College. She is curious and is always trying to find new ways to be and stay creative.