Designing for creative voices
Ottawa Design Club
Renaissance Zine 0006 ↗
Renaissance is the sixth edition of Ottawa Design Club's annual zine, a volunteer-led publication dedicated to amplifying creative voices through a shared theme. Exploring rebirth and renewal, the 176-page issue brings together artists and designers whose work reflects both the challenges and possibilities of transformation.
As one of three designers working under the creative direction of Ottawa Design Club co-founder Izzy Poirier, I designed approximately ten spreads for the publication. The project offered an opportunity to reconnect with Ottawa's creative community, push beyond the boundaries of my day-to-day practice, and contribute to a platform celebrating the richness of local artistic expression.
I joined Ottawa Design Club after returning to Ottawa during the pandemic, seeking both creative connection and opportunities to give back through design. Renaissance brought together artists, designers, photographers, and writers around a shared exploration of renewal, culminating in a launch event that celebrated the contributors and the city's often-overlooked creative community.
For me, the project became as much about fostering connection as it was about creating a publication.
Each artist approached the theme through a different lens, exploring topics ranging from motherhood and identity to reinvention and self-acceptance. Rather than applying a rigid system, I treated each spread as an act of interpretation—identifying the emotional core of the work and allowing it to guide decisions around composition, colour, image selection, and print treatments.
The goal was not to impose a visual style, but to create space for each voice to resonate.
Designing within a team required balancing individual expression with collective cohesion. While each designer brought a distinct perspective, we worked within a shared framework of typography and visual direction to create a publication that felt unified without sacrificing creative freedom.
The experience challenged me to embrace ambiguity, trust intuition, and rely on dialogue and critique as part of the design process—skills that continue to shape how I approach collaborative work today.
