`You never really know where your path is going to go'
33 years later, Nobel winner still using designer's logo
When Karin Jager saw on the news that the World Food Programme had won the Nobel Peace Prize last week, she saw something else: the logo she had designed more than 30 years earlier.
Jager, who is head of the graphic and digital design department at the University of the Fraser Valley, was a young Vancouver designer with a social conscience when she got a call inviting her to travel to Italy to design a brand identity for the United Nations food organization.
“I was a student at Emily Carr, graduated in 1985, and my design career began with an internship at Environment Canada,” said Jager. While still an intern, Jager created a poster for a local non-profit focused on food security: Vancouver's urban farm, City Farmer.
When a colleague from Environment Canada joined the World Food Programme and needed a brand identity that communicated its mission of ending hunger worldwide, he called Jager from Rome.
Jager got on a plane with a suitcase crammed full of art supplies. “Everything was tactile back then — pen and ink and paper.”
The logo was her first major international project. It was also her first major international trip. Jager, who spent three weeks in Rome, where the UN's agriculture and food security teams are headquartered, describes the experience as the highlight of her career, combined with “total culture shock.”
“It was a powerful piece to work on.”
Designing for a non-profit requires an empathetic approach and a focus on the mission, said Jager.
“The World Food Programme is a helping organization, so I really wanted to convey the many aspects of the program, the movement of commodities around the world, the giving and receiving of food, the hand representing the donor world and the three major continents, and the ear of corn, stalks of grain and rice.”
Design wasn't just conceptual work in 1987, it was manual labour. “It was all done on card stock, hand drawn in ink. We would render something in ink and take a photo of it to create these clean versions of the logo. Everything was pasteup. We were cutting out different sizes of the logo and working on the typography.”
Jager said that while she is gratified to see that the artwork she designed is still representing the program, she was “overwhelmingly” pleased to hear the WFP had been recognized by the Nobel committee for its humanitarian work, focusing on food security in conflict zones.
“The work they do is so hard, working with the world's most vulnerable people to offer a basic need.”
Jager practised design in Vancouver for about 25 years before joining Capilano University, where she was instrumental in creating their IDEA School of Design. She recently moved to Mission where she has worked to revitalize the graphic and digital design program at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Jager still has the original artwork from the WFP project, and is reflective about the lessons it brought her.
“The projects become personal,” said Jager, who believes design can offer young people deeply meaningful work.
“The opportunities are endless. You never really know where your path is going to go, you are always going to be discovering new things, and you are going to evolve as a person and create concepts that are impactful and authentic.”