In 1958, Arthur became the managing editor of Canadian Art, where his radical redesign brought a new dignity and maturity to magazines in Canada. Pearl McCarthy, in the Globe and Mail, wrote of Arthur as the “Top Man in Typography World” in 1959. He became actively involved in the emerging professional societies, including the Society of Typographic Designers of Canada, and the older Club of Printing House Craftsmen. His design for Portraits of Greatness, a book of portraits by Karsh for the University of Toronto Press, brought an architect’s attention to detail and knowledge of his medium, as evidenced in the complexity and meticulousness of his specifications for ink, paper, layout, and typography. Other key books include J. Russell Harper’s landmark text Painting in Canada (1966); he wrote and designed the E.B. Eddy Handbook of Printing Production (1967), which made a clear argument for the international modernist style through its form as well as its text; and in a somewhat looser, more poetic style, he designed The Barn (1972), written by his architect father. Later in his life, he was to abandon the promise of an international design style, and turned to more familiar and vernacular forms, such as cartoons and cereal packaging, in his search for clarity and effective communication.

Although he changed business models, company names, and partnerships frequently throughout his career, he knew how to hire talent: Gerhard Doerrié, Burton Kramer, Fritz Gottschalk, Jean Morin, and Ken Rodmell, among many others, all went through his offices. In the 1960s, he formed a partnership, Graform Associates, to work on signs and directional systems for Expo 67; he made a proposal to the world fair’s chief architect Edouard Fiset and design head Norman Hay, and got the job because no one else had yet thought of it. While a partner in Newton Frank Arthur, his services were contracted to the Canadian government to direct the Discovery Train, a traveling exhibit that crossed the country to great fanfare in 1978.

Expo was a triumph of simplicity and clarity. Believing that more signs only reduce effectiveness, his 1965 report called for the entire fair to have 65 directional signs, 14 site maps, 14 area maps, and 14 directories: radically simple means by which to move millions of people. Words were used if necessary, but pictures were preferable, and colour was indispensable. Some two dozen custom pictographs were developed for the fair, including a single standardized arrow for all purposes, and male and female washroom signs which were too simple and too similar, causing consternation until they were replaced by more illustrative versions. Much more successfully, animal silhouettes identified the parking areas; not only highly memorable and therefore very effective, they were also a signature for the positive, optimistic modernity reflected in the Expo experience.

When work in Canada dropped off after Expo, projects in the United States were central to his career, including the US Postal Service; General Services Administration (designing bilingual signs at both north and south borders of the U.S.); New York State Urban Development Corporation; and an unobtrusive but effective system of highway signs for the State of Vermont. For the New York State University Construction Fund, he developed signage for a dozen campuses during the massive construction boom in American universities. This project led him, in 1970, to write a manual which was an important statement on his thoughts on wayfinding and signage, and a key influence on his role as founding member of the Society of Environmental Graphic Designers, in 1974. At home in Canada, he also produced signage for the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia.

Arthur devoted much professional energy to public standards. He worked with Public Works architects to make government buildings navigable and accessible; argued for training in electrical standards; helped draft Canadian Safety Association standard Z321, “Occupational Safety and Health Warning Signs,” to provide universal warning signs for all Canadian workplaces; and he worked on establishing barrier-free standards in buildings and signs alike. These initiatives could involve major commitments: the first CSA meeting was June 27, 1974, and it took three years of meetings to reach consensus. But, as he was to write: “Standards do not inhibit creativity. They liberate it.”

Paul Arthur, who died in 2001, embodied the idea of design as problem solving, and was fearless in following this logic wherever it took him. A tireless and sometimes blunt campaigner for logical and effective design, Arthur’s career encompassed several disciplines, bringing permanent improvements to all of them.
— Brian Donnelly


Frances Emily Marshall Johnston (Miss) (1921–1998)
(Miss) Frances Emily Marshall Johnston (as she wrote it in her résumé) was President and Chief Executive Officer of The Museum of Promotional Arts, and “a student all her life.” She took art classes, later becoming an assistant instructor to Arthur Lismer at the (then) Art Gallery of Toronto. In the late 1930s she graduated from the fine and commercial art program at Northern Vocational School in Toronto. She planned to be a professional artist and designer, and won a province-wide poster competition sponsored by the Junior Advertising and Sales Club of Toronto. (Where are they now?) These qualifications were apparently not enough to overcome the effects of the Depression, and she moved into secretarial and administration positions in museums and libraries. She also worked in the education department at the Art Gallery of Ontario between 1961 and 1966, and was a ceramic jewelry artist who owned her own kiln.

She conceived the idea for The MPA (she insisted the capital ‘T’ was mandatory) in 1978. “This is the first museum institution to foster the concept that the whole planet is a museum containing objects in everyday life that are worthy of musing upon for what they represent in the history of humankind and all life.” It was, then, a ‘museum without walls’ somewhat in the mold of Malraux, except that its object of study was focused on what she somewhat vaguely called the promotional arts. “Among the promotional arts,” she wrote, “are such things as flags, signs, book illustration, advertising, packaging, the religious arts, and many, many more.” A list of great generosity, but with perhaps one guiding interest: she confessed she was “mad about the letters of the alphabet and the numerals because of their power to influence.”   

It would require an equally generous act of definition to see The MPA as fully a museum since, as noted, it had neither a building nor a collection (unless we count Miss Johnston’s lifelong interest in collecting shopping bags). It was an enthusiasm of hers; she produced an irregular newsletter, EMPA, and hosted well-attended annual speaking events. Named in honor of Carl Dair, the first event was held in 1980 at Massey College. The 17th Annual event, for example, was in 1996 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and looked at the evolution of photographic technology in the digital age. It was sponsored by BGM imaging, and featured a panel of photographers, the president of BGM, and Miss Johnston. The newsletters were always a single folded sheet, sometimes hand typed, and sometimes beautifully typeset on a volunteer basis by some of the best typographers in Canada, notably Rod Macdonald, the designer of Cartier Book, and the late Ed Cleary. They always included one original photo, stamp, matchbook, miniature calendar, or other tipped-in artifact.  

Following her death, in February, 1998, the posthumous issue of EMPA (March–April 1998) contained tributes to her as a one-woman show: determined, gentle, and practical. It also noted that her Museum, while it is everywhere around us, was an idea sadly shared by only a few. Anthony Jenkins allowed, in the Globe and Mail, that it was “an idea whose time has not come and isn’t expected to come all that soon,” perhaps destined for a future, “gentler age, when people have time to muse.” Miss Johnston summed it up, suggesting that “as soon as you say ‘museum,’ people think ‘building.’ Getting them to think ‘whole planet,’ goodness me, people think you’re nuts!”

Besides the legacy of her project and her works, Miss Johnston left a bequest to be overseen by MPA trustees Jim MacLean and Ted Morrison, part of which was applied in 2003 as seed money to help launch a joint research project in Canadian design history, with primary funding by the Department of Canadian Heritage, and managed jointly by Sheridan College, the Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art (ccca.ca), and the Ontario College of Art & Design.
— Brian Donnelly


Albert Ng
Albert Ng is the person responsible for the establishment of professional accreditation for graphic designers in Ontario, which was a first for North America and the second such occurrence in the world. He is the Founding President of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (RGD Ontario) and also know as the Father of Accreditation. The scholarship award program for graphic design students which he initiated more than 10 years ago had grown to eleven separate awards by 2002.

Albert drove the idea of accreditation for Ontario graphic designers in order ensure and enhance professional standards in graphic design, to encourage high standards in graphic design education, to promote rules of professional conduct and ethics in professional practice, and, to protect and promote the rights of professional graphic designers. His aims included raising awareness of the value of graphic design amongst government, business, other professions and the general public.

In late 1990, after a year of research on the feasibility of accreditation by Albert Ng and Rene Schoepflin and with less than ten people (including practitioners, educators, representatives from related industries and students) the Graphic Design Professional Accreditation Committee was established. In order to convince the Ontario government to support the legislation required for accreditation, the group needed to demonstrate that a majority of the industry in the province was behind the idea. Since at that time the Ontario GDC chapters, which became the founding bodies of RGD Ontario, could only claim a few hundred members from a population of over 2,000 graphic design practitioners and educators in Ontario, the first task was to build membership.

By late 1993 the GDC in Ontario had grown from two chapters to four, and on April 25, 1996 Royal Assent was given to legislation creating the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (ARGD/ON, now called RGD Ontario), the self-regulatory professional body for graphic designers in the province of Ontario. The founding bodies of RGD Ontario were the former Ontario, Ottawa, Northern Ontario and Windsor chapters of the GDC. RGD Ontario was given the right to grant graphic designers who qualify the right to the exclusive use of the designations Registered Graphic Designer and R.G.D. and became the governing and disciplinary body for its members. RGD Ontario was mandated to serve the best interests of both the graphic design industry and the public in the province of Ontario by establishing and promoting uniform standards of professional knowledge, skill and ethics for all graphic designers in Ontario.

Albert’s devotion to the profession began when he started studies in architecture, graphic design, calligraphy, drawing and painting in Canada and Hong Kong. He started his professional career in a multidisciplinary practice with architects and designers and relocated to Toronto in 1974.

Albert has worked as a designer, consultant, and professor with a variety of agencies and institutions. His clients including the Royal Canadian Mint, Metro Caravan, Lantana Non-Profit Housing Co-operation, CFMT, Toronto Hydro, the Metro Toronto & York Region Labour Council, the Earth Spirit Festival and the Society for the Preservation of Historic Thornhill on visual identity programs, signage systems, illustrations, posters and exhibit designs. Albert has also been juror for several graphic design and art shows. He has been interviewed by many Canadian and international newspapers and magazines.

Albert Ng’s contribution to establishing RGD Ontario was honoured in part by being assigned the first membership number (ON 001). He is also a Past Vice-President of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (Icograda), Past President of GDC Ontario, Past Director of Toronto Design Exchange, Advisor to the American Graphic Artists’ Guild Certification Committee, Co-Chair of the Central and South America Graphic Design Professional Accreditation Ad Hoc Task Force, Chair of Sheridan College Graphic Design Program Advisory Committee, Member of Ontario Ministry of Education College Standards and Accreditation Council and Ontario Representative for the Graphic Design profession responsible for the validation process for the 1999 Ontario Secondary School Curriculum.

Albert Ng is listed in Who’s Who in Ontario.