The Square One team of Arcelia Ocana, JL Lum and Salim Hassan have a problem… They need to make room on an already full shelf for yet another prestigious award! These three brilliant Digital Design graduates worked in tandem, while they were students in the program, on three separate graduate projects that fit together beautifully as one — the Square One project. And their collaborative graduate project has been garnering awards ever since they completed it 8 months ago — starting with an award for ‘Best Graduate Project’ at their graduation, followed by two Impact Awards (‘Sum of Its Parts’ and ‘Difference Maker’), and culminating in the Salazar Award for Interactive Design. Now, they can add the Jim Rimmer Community Scholarship for Design to the list!

Jim Rimmer was a pivotal influence in Canadian letterpress and private press. Many of his typefaces, such as Albertan are ubiquitous in print and digital graphic design worldwide. His stature as an icon was recognized in 2007 when he was awarded a fellowship by the GDC.

The Jim Rimmer Community Scholarship for Design Award is dedicated to demonstrating the value of outstanding design solutions that enhance and contribute to empower a community, non-profit organization, environmental or social cause. The winning projects demonstrate effective solutions that affect action and promote positive change.

Square One is a website focused on helping highly regarded professionals transfer their skills and careers while immigrating to Canada. The three projects were divided as follows: Documentary Production & Editing (Arcelia Ocana), Branding & Interface Design (Salim Hassan), and Information Architecture & Development (JL Lum).

The award was announced yesterday evening at Practivism 4. Many of our faculty really wanted to attend but this event coincided with the Slam, so Senior Instructor, Miles Nurse, went on behalf of all of us to show his support to Arce and JL (Salim couldn’t make it as he was celebrating another major achievement — his marriage!). Even though we couldn’t all be there, we were sending good vibes towards the UBC direction where the event was taking place at the Centre for Integrated Research
on Sustainability (CIRS).

Arce, JL and Salim, we’re so very proud of you! Congratulations again!!