If you are celebrating the Lunar New Year, here's a simple wish from all of us at Barrett and Welsh: may the the Year of the Ox reward all your hard work with abundance and prosperity.




Article: Creative Commons License 2009 Gavin Barrett
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

Another logo "poster".
This time it's a poster of the logos of a few major international rail transit brands.
If you'd like a larger version, simply write to me and request a copy.
Coming soon, reviews of individual logos and brand identities.

Article, poster and blog, copyright Gavin Barrett 2009
All logos and trademarks shown are the property of their owners.

A common sobriquet that describes Chinese Canadians with a job in Hong Kong and a home and family in Canada.

The term finds its provenance in the post-1997 phenomenon that saw many Chinese Canadian families set up homes in Canada while the main breadwinners returned to Hong Kong to earn their living.

Then, as now, it was often easier to find employment in one's country of departure (and certainly more lucrative), than to find an accepting and open-minded employer in Canada who was willing to accept your credentials and experience as valid, and willing to pay you equitably, on the basis of those qualifications.

At the same time the communist government in Beijing deployed several measures to reassure Hong Kong Chinese that it was business as usual in Hong Kong. Though no such promises were made in the area of political freedom, the fact that Hong Kong continued to prosper after the hand-over encouraged many Chinese immigrants to return.

Nonetheless, in a classic demonstration of circumspection so prevalent in Asian culture, they maintained their status as permanent residents or Canadian citizens. They also maintained their homes in Canada and, typically and sent their children to Canadian schools and universities, while they shuttled back and forth (hence the term astronaut - for the amount of time spent suspended above the earth).

It is estimated that 2/3rds of all male immigrants from Hong Kong live outside Canada according to a 2007 Vancouver Sun article quoting a study by the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia.

And oh, the real Chinese astronauts - the guys who do the spacewalk - they're called taikonauts.


Image via NY Times, copyright: European Pressphoto Agency


Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

We've been very busy of late, redesigning brands or creating new branding for transit services. The process is usually elaborate and painstaking, and in order to do it right, I've had to traverse the universe of transit and transportation brands several times.
I must report that I've been horrified by the poor strategic and creative quality of most transit branding.

On occasion however, I've been thrilled by truly intelligent and iconic work.

I thought that I'd share both kinds from time to time. I'm kicking it off with a "poster" image of the logos of most of the major transit service brands in Canada. If you'd like a larger version, simply write to me and request a copy.


Article, poster and blog, copyright Gavin Barrett 2009
All logos and trademarks shown are the property of their owners.

This exceedingly simple TV spot for German Rail says it all without words. Stille Nacht indeed!



Agency (& City): Ogilvy Frankfurt
Creative Director(s): Christian Mommertz, Dr. Stephan Vogel
Copywriter(s): Dr. Stephan Vogel, Alexander Haase
Art Director(s): Christian Mommertz, Kirsten Rosenberger, Marco Weber
Production Company (& City): Telemaz Commercials GmbH
Film Director(s): Eugen Stemmle
Production Company Producer(s): Eugen Stemmle
Agency Producer(s): Julia Staerkel
Other(s): Director: Eugen Stemmle, DOP: Michael Krauter, Editor: Daniel Reusch, Sound Design: Christian Schneider (Pearls Musik)

Article and blog, copyright Gavin Barrett 2009

A billboard headline is typically 10 words.
Where on earth would an 82 word headline work on a billboard?

On a Mumbai street of course, where the traffic crawls.
Oh yes, Mumbai gridlock gives you plenty of time to reflect on the cleverly written copy: an exhortation to ride transit more and drive cars less. I should know. I lived there.
Copywriter: Sonal Chhajerh, Art Director: Sanket Pathare
via Ads of the World.


Article and blog, copyright Gavin Barrett 2008

Asian American is a catch-all phrase that covers Americans whose origins are East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), South Asian (mostly Indian, and to a lesser extent Pakistani and Bangladeshi), South-East Asian (Vietnamese and Philipino, and to a lesser extent Thai, Malaysians, Indonesian, Cambodian and Laotian). The idealized definition, would simply be all Americans of Asian origin.

However (and rather interestingly), West Asians (Turkish, Persian and Arabic-speaking peoples), are not typically included in this group, in popular usage. (Perhaps it's not that catch-all in the end?)

The phrase Asian American enjoys preferred use by the US multicultural marketing industry, which tends to use it to separate and simplify the two main multicultural markets thus: Hispanic and Asian American. In Canada, where the Hispanic market is still relatively small, and where familiarity with the disparities between the various Asian ethnicities is high, there is no such grouping; the closest would be the term visible minority.

Some famous Asian Americans (ethnic origin in parentheses) are: Governor Bobby Jindal (Indian), Yahoo founder Jerry Yang (Chinese), NBC news anchor Connie Chung (Chinese), Dr. Deepak Chopra (Indian).

Deepak Chopra image, via nndb.com
Jerry Yang image, via businessweek.com

Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

After writing some 10,000 words in this blog, I thought I'd like to see how one of my favourite web services handles the content. Wordle, as some of you may know generates these elegant dense tag clouds of any content input by you. I input 9999 words - I think the limit is 10,000. This is what I got. Some observations: though I think I've covered the South Asian and Chinese communities equally, Wordle has split South and Asian, so the resulting cloud shows a bias towards Chinese coverage, which isn't the reality of course. (Hmm, lies, damned lies and tag clouds?!)

http://www.wordle.net/
Images of Wordles are licensed


Article: Creative Commons License 2008 Gavin Barrett
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.