Mabelle Arts

Helping to unlock the creative potential of the neighbourhood.

Mabelle Arts brings people together across real and perceived differences through shared activities. They prioritize action over conversation, focusing on fun and creative projects with tangible impacts, including economic opportunities for participants. They believe that by working together, strangers can become neighbors and friends. The resulting social capital strengthens communities, fostering celebration in good times and solidarity during challenges.

Mabelle Arts engaged Puncture during a pivotal time of redefining their strategy, mission, and vision, while undertaking a major community-driven park revitalization project. As part of the project, a new building called The Belle, was being constructed to become a landmark for the park and a cornerstone for the community to engage in arts, culture and with one other. Taking on a visual identity and website refresh, Puncture’s goal was to capture the the evolution of Mabelle Arts and their presence as a lifeline within the community.

Understanding the impact of the park and significance of The Belle, the visual identity embraces the unique angles of the building’s roofs to communicate the idea of overlap, intersection, and connection. The angles influence the logo, design system and monogram.

Using the same shape from the monogram, an asterisk motif was created to suggest the idea of “more” and to create a simple framework for their language and messaging.

Altogether these angles, asterisks and bright colour palette captures the positivity and strength Mabelle Arts brings throughout their work and community while also lending itself to communicate the diversity of their programming and what they do.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingDigital

mabellearts.ca

Founded in 2007 by Executive Director Leah Houston, Mabelle Arts launched out of a highly successful four year residency on Mabelle Avenue. Since then, Mabelle Arts has grown into an innovative and sustainable charity with strong roots in community-engaged arts, grassroots community development and placemaking. With a yearly budget of $1 million, Mabelle Arts has grown into a strong and stable organization with deep roots in our local community.

Yonge-Dundas Square

Celebrating 20 years of connection, community, culture, and diversity in a prominent Toronto public space.

Yonge-Dundas Square is a unique focal point of the downtown Toronto community. The square is designated for use as a public open space and as a unique event location. The square has a rich history and is a meeting point for the arts, community and culture.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
Branding

In celebration of it’s 20th year, the team at Yonge-Dundas Square worked with Puncture to create a brand campaign to celebrate this anniversary. The campaign was inspired by five important themes: connection, community, culture, together, and diversity. The foundation of the system uses bright colours, historical photos and text, all on a square grid — inspired by the concrete squares at Yonge-Dundas Square.

The design highlighted the Square’s diverse history and also helped advertise events over the 2023 summer period. The on-site work helped add to the vibrancy and excitement of events at the Square. Our team is looking forward to seeing what will happen next at Yonge-Dundas Square!

Robert McLaughlin Gallery

A brand refresh and new website design for the largest public art gallery in the Durham Region.

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery (The RMG) engaged Puncture in 2021 at a time when they were establishing a new strategic plan with a fresh mission and vision. Puncture took on both a visual identity refresh and a complete website redesign with the goal of better reflecting the RMG’s updated mission, collection, and cultural presence in the region. 

Emphasizing the RMG’s artist-centered and community-focused approach was a significant goal for the project. We achieved that by opening up the RMG’s logo, and creating a playful colour palette and inviting layouts for the website

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingDigital

Website Development
Helios Design Lab

Gallery Photography
Darren Rigo

rmg.on.ca

The Robert McLaughlin Gallery is the largest public art gallery in the Durham Region of Ontario, Canada. It houses a compelling collection of modern and contemporary Canadian art numbering over 4500 works. They are an artist-centered and community-oriented public art gallery that brings people from diverse backgrounds together to engage with art that inspires new perspectives, generates meaningful conversations, and creates a sense of belonging.

Scarborough Proud

Creating a brand that celebrates the culture, community, and diversity of Scarborough.

Scarborough Proud is a collaboration between Choice Properties and a series of non-profit organizations that serve the area. To kick-off its opening, Choice spearheaded a 6-week activation series that transformed Golden Mile Plaza, a mixed-use community at the gateway of the Golden Mile on the new Eglinton-Crosstown LRT, into a gathering space for the local community to connect and celebrate.

Recognizing the need for a unique visual identity for their opening event, Choice Properties reached out to Puncture to create a brand that aimed to capture Scarborough’s rich and multicultural community.

Industry
Corporate

Service
BrandingDigital

The team at Choice Properties worked with Puncture to create a unique brand identity for Scarborough Proud that celebrates the borough’s vibrant culture. The brand was inspired by two central themes: authenticity and belongingness. The foundation of the system uses bright colours, bold typography, and dynamic shapes inspired by the multicultural community.

The design highlighted the area’s rich and playful nature and provides an infrastructure that will guide the Choice team throughout the event, marketing, and beyond.

TAS

Developing a bold and personal visual identity system for an unconventional impact company.

Industry
Corporate

Service
BrandingDigital

tasimpact.ca

TAS is an unconventional impact company. Their mission has always focused on impact-driven development, but as they honed and refined their process, they needed a refreshed brand that better captured their bold and personal approach. 

Puncture first tightened up TAS’s logo to have more visual presence at smaller scales and to enhance flexibility across digital applications. We then developed a whole new visual identity system that connects more cohesively with the geometry of their logo, and that better integrates and celebrates imagery, video, and messaging.

Pride Toronto 2024

Celebrating our right to Be.

Industry
Arts & CultureNon-Profit

Service
BrandingDigitalMotion

Pride Toronto 2024 embraces the powerful theme of “Be”—a declaration of existence, authenticity, and the fundamental right to simply be. More than just a theme, “Be” is a manifesto—a rallying cry that unites the 2SLGBTQI+ community and its allies in a bold, unapologetic celebration of identity, diversity, and human expression.

Puncture supported Pride Toronto in bringing this vision to life through dynamic marketing and communication assets, ensuring that the festival’s message resonated across digital and physical spaces. From refreshing the festival’s theme identity to producing digital marketing materials, wayfinding, onsite signage, and the official Pride Guide, our work helped shape an inclusive experience.

Together, we made Pride Toronto 2024 an undeniable presence—one that invites everyone to be seen, be heard, and simply be.

plazaPOPS

Building a new website and visual assets for a community organization that transforms underused spaces into accessible gathering places.

The new website for plazaPOPS captures the energy of suburban main streets in Toronto, using a vibrant colour palette and expressive street sign motifs.

Industry
Arts & CultureNon-Profit

Service
BrandingDigital

plazapops.ca

plazaPOPS is a non-profit organization that transforms parking lots and other under-invested spaces, into free, safe and accessible gathering places. Largely located along suburban main streets where vibrant culture already exists, plazaPOPS partners with these local community groups, landowners and businesses, to support and celebrate these vital connections.

Their initiatives impact many different communities, in which Puncture was asked to create a new website that helps visualize and showcase the value that’s being created. The website captures the organization’s playful personality and forward-thinking initiatives, and provides an infrastructure for their events, programming and research—creating an open invitation for everyone to get involved.

Toronto Biennial of Art

Building a visual identity, communications toolkit and wayfinding strategy for Toronto’s first-ever biennial of contemporary art.

In 2019, prior to launching the inaugural Biennial to the public, TBA came to Puncture to define its visual identity. A key feature of the Biennial is that all of its exhibition sites are located near waterways that are significant to Toronto: Lake Ontario, the Humber River, Don River, and more. We came up with a vibrant brand that is inspired by nautical flags and symbols, these appear in the bold graphic devices we created. 

The system is bolstered by artwork treatments, a celebratory and accessible colour palette, and a custom wordmark to bring the importance of public and free art to the city’s consciousness. In addition to visual identity, we helped simplify the Biennial’s communication platform and got it to its most distilled form, “72 days of Free Art”.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
Branding

The Toronto Biennial of Art’s (TBA) mission is to make contemporary art accessible to everyone. For 10 weeks every two years, local, national, and international Biennial artists transform Toronto and its partner regions with free exhibitions, performances, and learning opportunities.

Since the inaugural year, we have worked with TBA on all aspects of their marketing materials including communications, digital production, graphic design, video production, motion graphic design, and environmental and experiential design. 

Invest Brampton

A brand refresh to support the innovation and success of the City of Brampton.

Industry
Corporate

Service
BrandingDigital

Canadian Country Music Awards

Celebrating Canada’s biggest night in country music with glamour.

Industry
Arts & Culture

Service
BrandingMotion

The Canadian Country Music Association (CCMA) is a membership-based, not-for-profit organization committed to the promotion and recognition of Canadian country music. Built upon the foundation to educate, elevate and celebrate Canadian talent, the CCMA progressively heralds the spirit, community and creativity that country music fosters.

Each year, the Canadian Country Music Association honours its members who have excelled during the past year, with a Canadian Country Music Association Award. The CCMA turned to Puncture to elevate their look with glamour and create visually stunning marketing assets for the 2024 awards show in Edmonton, Alberta.