I'm redrawing the identity of Edmonton — my own city — and it isn't landing the way I expected.
A product can be replaced, repositioned, quietly retired if it fails. A city can't. It's where people were born. It's on the letters that come to their door and the sign at the edge of the road when they drive home at night. It carries decades of history, and none of that history asked my permission.
There's a particular weight in designing something you then have to live inside. I'll see this work on a bus. My family will see it. In twenty years I'll drive past a sign I set the type on and feel either glad or a little ashamed, and there's no version where I get to be indifferent to it.
That has made me slower, and more careful, and I think a little better. When you can't walk away from the result, you stop reaching for choices that are only clever. Clever is easy to fall for when you're starting out. It earns a nod from other designers and not much from anyone else.
A city doesn't need clever. It needs to be recognisable, and durable, and dignified. It needs to work on a garbage truck and on a concert poster and on a form somebody fills out on the worst day of their life.
It's my backyard, and I've been trusted with a small piece of how it looks. I don't take that lightly, and I wouldn't trade a single hard hour of it.