Posters join ROM's design collection

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By Heather Travis
Monday, April 6, 2009
Three University of Western Ontario posters have been added to the Royal Ontario Museum's (ROM) permanent design collection.
 
For 10 years, Bhandari & Plater Inc. Integrated Design Communications in Toronto, was commissioned to create promotional materials for the university.
 
 
Among the designs were national scholarship and admission scholarship posters, as well as a principal poster. Together, they have been recognized for their unique designs by the ROM and the Advertising and Design Club of Canada.
 
“We really had a mandate to do something different than the happy, glib university photographs,” says design director Sunil Bhandari, adding the posters were included in the 50th anniversary book for the Advertising and Design Club of Canada.
 
“It took a while to get there,” he adds. “I just always said, there’s got to be more than this.”
 
 
The three posters in the series have an artistic feel, with silhouettes of a hand, the back of a head and the University College tower filled with symbols of the arts, sciences, engineering, and social sciences.
 
“We tried to bring it to a new intellectual level that you had to think about,” he says, adding the goal was to “make a piece that is timeless.”
 
At the time, Bhandari says the posters received mixed reviews.
 
The posters were included in a design show at the ROM in 1999 and are said to represent a period of design before the advent of stock photography, the internet and reduced budgets for original creative ideas and imagery. They were designed in collaboration with Canadian illustrator Sandra Dionisi.
 
 
The campaign that included these posters also won the designer of the year award from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education.
 
“It was in a sense experimental and I think that’s what university and education is all about,” he says.

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