back home

We cannot believe that this amazing trip has come to an end. It was a great experience in a great country. We really met a lot of nice people! Thank you all for having made this happen! Thanks especially to

emrys (for being the most concerned boss and providing the sled island tickets),

jocelyn (for being the best hostess ever),

jen (for giving advice and taking us out several times),

laura & brad (for the great shed party and the balkan band),

joey (for showing us how to do silkscreen print),

kelly & giles (for the most luxurious rooms and the insight view in your great design),

leigh (for the great bbq at your house),

dwayne (for showing us the work of ”combine“),

jason (for showing us the work of ”karo“),

jacquelyn (for admitting us to your agency),

brian (for the exciting job and the beer delivery),

paige (for taking us to steve‘s house party),

chrissy (for giving the connection to Twist Image),

samantha (for the ottawa-to-do-list),

cathy (for the toronto advice),

udo (for showing us the work of gottschalk and ash),

christian & julie (for being soooooo friendly and living for creativity, not money),

mr. li ( for taking time to show the huge printing shop),

jamalf (for keeping us from going crazy),

mick (for admitting us to your agency),

isaiah (for taking us to the best goodbye party

we ever had),

ken (for giving advice and taking us out)

beatrice (for taking care of us and introducing us),

jonathan (for being the most friendly fruit loop and taking us to the great beach),

kirsten (for the great dinner, blueberries

and homemade jam),

kate & morgan (for showing us your great design, giving us exciting jobs and taking us out),

and ray (for your great illustration sample).

week 13

Too bad ... only one week left to discover this beloved country. We traveled throughout Nova Scotia and got to know beaches, a finwhale, seals, dolphins, moose, cheesy b&bs, very friendly people, seafood, lighthouses, barred bridges, potholes, bunnies, sunsets without sun, Simpsons and other crazy garden sculptures and much more exciting things.

The last three days we spent in Montréal again. We met Beatrice, her boyfriend Derek and Ken of Twist Image again for dinner and explored Montréal‘s nightlife. Thanks Ken for bearing with us so long despite being a self-confessed nerd :) On our last day we met Isaiah of Twist Image again. Thanks for taking us to the open air electronic party piknic. It was the best farewell party we could imagine. Because of this party we added techno to the list of our favorite music. What a great atmosphere ... especially as it started to rain!

week 12

On Sunday we moved into our most expensive bed & breakfast to date to prepare for our new job at co&co on Monday. The three partners kate, morgan and ray are all very talented, creative and we admire their work a lot. Moreover we got along very well, which lead to some meals and beers together. We got two exciting jobs. Coincidentally one was the creation of a rocket-logo, which means our trip started (rocketday) and ends up with rockets.

Another person worth mentioning is Jonathan, who used to work for Twist Image in former days and is a good friend of Isaiah‘s. Thanks for taking us to the the nicest beach of Nova Scotia, man :) and thanks to Kirsten for the delicious meal and the tasty homemade jam.

week 11

It‘s time for some work again. We started at Twist Image, a digital marketing agency with 50 people (the biggest agency we have been to so far). The only print job they had was to create new business cards, so this was our mission for the following week. Mick, the company‘s founder, welcomed us and showed us around. For being such a successful boss of a big company, he‘s still pretty young, very nice and not arrogant at all. In addition, a completely new experience we had was to be separated from each other for the first time in the past two and a half months. But fortunately our desks were only ten meters apart :). At lunch we were feasted by the lovely people of Nomad Cafe. And last but not least: thanks to Beatrice, Isaiah and Ken for giving advice and taking care of us!

On Friday, we left Montréal and headed towards Halifax. We planned to stay one night in Québec City, but this didn‘t work out at all and became the most horrible night of our journey. The 30th ”no vacancy“ sign raised our despaired laughter. Finally, at 4:30 am we got a room. Thanks to our fatigue, we didn‘t care about the mold everywhere ... But in retrospect, quite an adventure :)

week 10

one week holiday! we took ourselves some days off to get from toronto to montréal and visited interesting spots on the way. We decided to do this with a rental car which unfortunately had some problems. our reservation hasn’t reached the rental office and as we finally convinced them to give us a car, we were suspected of having caused some scratches on the first meters of driving out of the parking space ... weird!

an enormous traffic jam and some hours of driving later, we finally got rewarded for all this trouble by the impressive niagara falls and a cheesy pink motel in style of the 60s.

the next days we stopped at a very beautiful part of the lake ontario, took a boat to see the thousand islands, visited ottawa and finally montréal, which was rightly recommended by so many people.

we were happy to meet jen (from rocketday) there again and went to the oshega festival, a big music event.

week 8 + week 9

we worked at espresso. we got a really great job (that we’re not allowed to talk about because it’s still in progress) and our own room, called little bavaria. time ran by very quickly and unfortunately we didn’t get the chance to get to know most of the people very well because everyone was very busy. anyway espresso, with its mostly very young staff, is a fun place.

at the weekend, paige, a member of espresso, took us to a house-warming party. we had a lot of fun by talking to some nice and some crazy people. fortunately toronto has a great nightlife and we sampled the pleasures of it.

when we finally had to say goodbye to espresso, brian, the art director, presented us an awesome gift: a canadian fake-passport in which everyone left some nice words. thanks again for this creative souvenir! In addition to that, we got lots of helpful tips for our forthcoming trip and also a contact to an agency in montréal where we’re going to work next.

week 7

toronto ... what a great city! we discovered so many nice districts and walked around until our feet smoked. unfortunately we also detected reams of cool shops and spent to much money.

toronto was also the city that we got the most feedback from and thus we met two agencies and one design studio.

pantrypress was the first one. christian and julie, the owners, are really very friendly people. they showed us their great little studio with some beautiful old machines for printing and cropping. they do nearly everything on their own and we admired their individual style.

afterwards christian arranged a meeting with mr. li from movable, a quite big printing company. the friendly mr. li took a lot of time to show us around.

espresso was the next agency. we were cordially welcomed by some of the approximately 20 members and got a very nice job announced. we had a welcome-beer in the kitchen and decided to work at espresso for about two weeks.

the last agency we met this week was gottschalk and ash. We got to know udo there, a german guy who used to work with stankowski and now lives and works in canada since a couple of years. he gave us an agency tour, invited us for lunch and told us about the differences between canada and germany in the matter of personality and design.

week 6

for most of the week we worked on the fishten website, first we tried to create it via squarespace. the software seemed to be very bullheaded, because it didn‘t obey at all. maybe, we just couldn‘t figure it out. anyway, nadja started to do the coding in dreamweaver and sometimes became a bit desperate. giles took us to combine and karo and they gave us an interesting introduction as to how they work. thanks dwayne and jason for taking your time, we appreciate that. also kelly and giles told us a lot about their work and design philosophy. we really share their attitude. on friday the well-known stampede started and of course we had to take part in this special event! like typical tourists, we bought some cowboyboots and went to the grounds. it was quiet similar to the „oktoberfest“ in munich, just skip the bavarians and replace them by cowboys! we had a lot of fun and a new favorite song: „save a horse, ride a cowboy“. but finally we rode our horses (not any cowoys!!!) to toronto!

week 5

finally, we reached calgary and moved in with our new chiefs. we were coordially received and thrilled by our own luxury rooms. kelly, who is running hartman design studio took us to an amazing big photoshoot. after two days, spending time on the set, our task changed. we started to come up with some concept ideas for the new fishten website, a design studio, also headed by kelly and her husband giles. they create fantastic work for different art galleries. besides working, the sled island festival filled our time with some great concerts. thanks, emrys, for the free entrance tickets!!! if we were canadians, we would vote you for president!

week 4

this week was all about nature. we spent some awesome :) days around and in the rocky mountains on our way from victoria to calgary. we stopped many times on the way and stayed over in kelowna, golden and banff. we were happy to move our rusty bones and did a lot of hiking. we admired the dense forests and turquoise water and became friends with some squirrels.

week 3

we spent another week in victoria. we were still at rocketday and got a new great challenge: a website for transmission, a music congress and festival. 

furthermore we visited a screen printing studio and got to know joey, who gave us an introduction in this craft and helped us to get our motifs on some shirts. That was great fun and we decided to continue silk screen printing, when we get back to germany.

unfortunately we finally had to say goodbye to rocketday and celebrated this with an illegal beer in a nice park nearby the sea. Thanks again for all, rocketday. We had a great time!

week 2

For the past 5 days we have been working with rocketday, a small design studio in victoria bc. we‘ve rarely met such nice and hospitable people. we stay at jocelyn‘s house and finally found a new mum and a really cool friend. she‘s very talented in design and photography, very interested in other cultures and fun-loving. 

our first projects are still in progress; a new rocketday website, businesscards, information sheets for the gdc (society of graphic designers of canada) and we are looking forward to getting more tasks. emrys, world‘s friendliest boss, delivers insight into the studio‘s working process and really takes his time in showing us everything. 

we don‘t even have to worry about our forthcoming trip. Jen, a freelancer at rocketday, recommended lots of places on the way from vancouver to calgary and beyond...many options for places to stay. 

In addition, a big party will take place on saturday evening. laura, a very music-loving member of rocketday invited us. we feel very comfortable about staying with these nice people, have interesting tasks to solve, join BBQs and are surrounded by great nature, seals, otters and dogs. what else do you need?

week 1

the 24-hour trip to vancouver really worked us over, we were everything but wide awake and even happy about our nasty smelling bedding in a downtowns' hostel. the two agencies, rethink and wassermann+partners, who once were interested in our project didn't respond anymore and faked death. what a successful start! nowhere near enough, nadja had to see a dentist because of yesterdays' dinner and left with one tooth less.

after some cozy days in vancouver, uclulet and tofino we finally reached victoria. thrilled by an encounter with a black bear in the wild, we were ready for some action. we met emrys, laura and jocelyn from rocketday for lunch and got our first job. see, it works.