Two Dawson College Graphic Design students have earned second and third place in the esteemed Marc H. Choko Bursary competition.

Visitors to the McCord Stewart Museum can view the work of second-place winner Catherine Lin and third-place winner Laureline Dodin in the atrium until April 26. Alongside their posters, the exhibition features works by five other Dawson Graphic Design students.

“I greatly appreciate this honour as it allows me to have concrete validation of my skills,” Catherine said. “This contest has allowed me to have an even better understanding of how others perceive my design. It tells me that I should be more trusting of those around me and to try and see things in a different light. Shutting down compliments is quite similar to shutting down criticism. No constructive comment should be overlooked for any reason. This contest has allowed me to take a little step into the world of poster designing and fighting for a just cause through visual language.”

Catherine’s work, titled Avenir Déchiqueté, reflects the shredding of the Earth portrayed in her design. She explained: “This is the future that awaits us if we continue to keep up with our over-consumerist habits and reckless actions. Us, using up the resources of the Earth, for what? Products we throw out before finishing them. Products we forget about in a few days’ time. Products that break before you can even use them. I started this project wanting to have a strong visual to accompany the text. I wanted to focus on a message that would be loud and clear, maybe even incite a bit of panic over the state of our planet.”

Catherine spent about four weeks completing the project. “It went through different iterations: concept changes, typography changes, colour changes. But it finally landed on a simple Earth with a third of the background being pitch black and shredding paper filled with products we overconsume: make-up, toys, clothes. A normal-looking picture of Earth, slowly getting destroyed due to our actions.”

For Laureline, the award was deeply meaningful. “Winning this honour is a way to tell myself and the people around me that, indeed, I have found my path,” she said. “To be able to tell your family or an employer you won an award reassures them and enables more trust. It means you care about your field, and you are good enough to have won a provincial competition. Right now, winning third place tells me that I am a good designer. I thought for a while during this winter that maybe I had seen it all, maybe this career wasn’t for me. I doubted my designs. But getting this recognition gave me a boost of confidence. It was just what I needed to finish my DEC in Graphic Design at Dawson.”

Laureline’s poster, titled Glanons or Let’s Glean, was inspired by Jean François Millet’s The Gleaners, which famously depicted three women collecting leftover grain after harvest. “In my poster, the three women are collaged, picking up the scraps from a clothing landfill in Ghana,” Laureline explained. “The time it took for me to create this went mostly to the time it took to think about it, around two months. Then it all went fast; the only thing that did not was placing all the typography, slowly merging into the word Surconsommation.”

Proud teacher François Martin (pictured in the accompanying photo, with second-place winner Catherine Lin) noted that out of 100 posters submitted to the competition, seven of the 15 runner-up posters on display at the museum were created by Dawson students. These works will also be included in the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec (BAnQ) archives collection.

Catherine and Laureline received $500 and $250 respectively, along with a one-year membership to the McCord Stewart Museum. Their designs were selected by the Société des designers graphiques du Québec (SDGQ).

Note

About Graphic Design at Dawson

Catherine: “What I enjoy most about Graphic Design at Dawson is the variety of things that they teach us—from design history to using inks and paints, animating posters and designing pamphlets. You will never be left with nothing to do. I learned many things in my two years here. I learned how to more efficiently communicate—whether with fellow students, teachers, or visually through my designs. I learned how to bind a book. I learned how to use software. I learned so many things. Everything that I have done here will help me in some way, shape, or form in the future. Even the tiniest tasks build experience or become learning moments. Every mistake reminds you of what not to do; every success shows you the way toward a more interesting path. Everything accumulates into something useful. The aspect I’ve appreciated most about this program is how it makes me practice asking for feedback and how to receive it. Projects go through multiple rounds of critique—on a small scale with friends or in front of the whole class. Constant attention and revision build character. It is a skill to take constructive criticism and use it to perfect a design, and this program truly helps hone that skill.”

 

Laureline: “What I like best about Graphic Design at Dawson is that we are encouraged to be really independent. Even though in first year the teachers guided us closely, we still had a lot to hand in. In my second and third year, I became much more independent—I hardly recognize myself from three years ago. I am very proud. Now, I try things without anyone’s help, I speak up, and I know my own mastery. Others’ approval doesn’t really matter anymore. This mindset will set anyone up for success in the field of Graphic Design.”