Located just outside of Toronto, Weston Common’s Artscape Hub was created to build on the community’s existing creativity and cultural richness, offering a new and vibrant central gathering place for people to come together to create, learn and celebrate the arts both indoors and outdoors. Featuring over 20,000 square feet of space for art studios, gatherings and community events, the project also adds new housing to the area with 360 rental apartments for the public and 26 affordable live/work spaces for artists
and their families.

In designing Weston Common’s visual identity, signage, and environmental graphics program, our firm turned to the use of vibrant colours inspired by the community’s cultural richness to help animate and this new community space dedicated to the arts.

For the brand identity and visual brand language, we incorporated saturated, bold colours and traditional textile weaving patterns. This was inspired by the mosaic of multicultural traditions one encounters when visiting Weston, which is home to a rich diversity of both newcomers and long-term residents.

The colour palette is also suggestive of the hues used by the Group of Seven painters, tying in both the local context and the theme of Canadian art. As Weston Common is close to a major transit hub, the typeface chosen is Johnson, the same one used for the London Underground, giving a subtle nod to the importance of transit to any
new urban development.

The environmental graphics create a distinct and cohesive sense of place.