canadian design is worth its salt

CBC Arts has a great photo feature on a new site called The Canadian Design Resource.

The Canadian Design Resource [...] offers something new and necessary: a perpetually growing web database of homegrown products, past and present, from furniture to fashion to packaging design. A glance at the CDR suggests no tidy, overarching themes or trends — our design heritage is simply too haphazard and unsung for that — but rather a trove of clever, quietly innovative items...

Hear, hear.

Explore The Canadian Design Resource for yourself. I love that they feature not only highly-visible design, like the CBC logo and Canada Post mailboxes, but also designed elements you know (and love) almost through osmosis, like the Windor Salt box.


Much like Douglas Coupland's Souvenir of Canada (and it's sequel), The Canadian Design Resource celebrates everyday Canadian quirks that we take for granted.

The Canadian Design Resource is run by the Toronto-based design collective Motherbrand. These clever cookies also run The Cabin Project: Canadian designers re-imagine the myth of the cabin. I love this project. And not only for their wood panelling and flat-image composite pictures. (Though, honestly, that would be enough right there. Ok, so now you know how to win my heart.)


You really have to trawl through all the works on the the site yourself, but my faves include the cork tablecloth


and the HWY 400 Series plate with the insanely small Parks Canada logo,


and the Memory Wallpaper. (Wood panelling and flat images again. What can I say, I'm easy.)