| Every year at this time the backs of buses and the fronts of T-shirts are emblazoned with a new logo to commemorate CJSW 90.9 FM’s annual funding drive. To create it, Calgary’s listener-supported campus and community radio station enlists the help of an artist to provide a visual representation of a medium that is purely sound-based.
"I wish I could say that it is a well-thought-out process," says Chad Saunders, CJSW station manager, "that we take so much time and effort to develop it. But sometimes we wake up and go ‘Holy shit, we need a logo.’"
For the most part, the images created for past funding drives have been designed by locals or ex-patriate Calgarians. This year, the 20th anniversary, is no exception. However, the artist that contributed this year’s logo has unqualified international status.
You might not be familiar with the name Geoff McFetridge, but there is a good chance you have seen his work. After moving to California to get his MFA in graphic design, the former Calgarian has since gone on to create award-winning clothing graphics, shoot music videos and design title sequences for TV and film (most notably Freaks and Geeks and The Virgin Suicides). A member of the über-hip visual collective The Directors Bureau, alongside such luminaries as Roman and Sophia Coppola, McFetridge still has ties to Calgary, as evidenced by the T-shirt designs he created for local record store Giant 45.
"I think the hardest part was (that) he’s good, so he’s impossible to get a hold of," says Saunders. To celebrate CJSW’s 20 years at the bottom of the dial, McFetridge has come up with what Saunders describes as "School House Rocks meets the Devonian Gardens." Filled with references to the number 20, the logo has an element that will no doubt inspire nostalgia in those radio listeners who lived in Calgary before our population cracked half a million.
"You’ve got to look for these little things all over the place on the design," says Saunders. "It’s fun because on the decimal point on the 90.9 it says ‘Drive decent’ and for anyone who lived in Calgary in the ’70s and ’80s… every station wagon had an orange sticker with XL radio on it… that said ‘Drive decent.’ It’s basically taking already questionable slang and making it bad English."
Saunders is quick to point out that the copyright on the slogan from Calgary’s well-loved AM radio station lapsed in 1996 so the appropriation of it is completely above board. He also notes that the logo quite vividly illustrates the concept of "radical radio," which is one of the main themes of this year’s funding drive.
"It’s a design that I think people in a few years will go, ‘That was thinking,’" says Saunders, "because Geoff McFetridge, sadly, is too typical of what happens in the Canadian art scene. Artists and designers go off and then we kind of catch on once Europe and Asia have exhausted that style."
So now that the preparation is complete, will McFetridge be calling in to donate to this year’s funding drive? "He pledged by giving us a pretty great deal on the artwork," says Saunders. "I think we owe Geoff more than he owes us."
CJSW’s funding drive runs from October 15 to 22. The pledge line number is 220-3838. |
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