Possible Worlds is one of very few collaborative art & design spaces in Ottawa, Ontario. Possible Worlds offers a platform for artists of various disciplines to sell their work, organize events, network & operate workshops. They are also one of the few spaces in the city that offers access to a risograph printer. I connected with Possible Worlds in the spring of 2023 in an attempt to begin working with them on pro-bono design work as a way to begin connecting with some of the artists in my community.

This was the first design project I had the fortune of working on. I was tasked with designing a series of bookmarks for Possible Worlds to distribute at events and also sell at their storefront. I had very few creative limitations, other than to ensure the bookmarks were appropriately branded and could be printed correctly on a risograph (meaning I would be limited to a maximum of two ink colours instead of a traditional CMYK prints). This presented a particularly novel creative challenge that I willingly embraced. Focusing on the organization’s title “possible worlds”, I opted to design a series of vignettes that peered into possible worlds, alternate realities, and alternate dimensions, with surreal characteristics far outside of our known reality.

While bookmarks are a relatively simple final product, I’m proud of the process I developed to ensure I was my creativity was not limited by the risograph restriction. I began by designing a series of scenes in 3D, and rendered them out at very high resolutions, before performing a very convoluted process to reduce these complex images down to two ink colours, utilizing transparency to its fullest extent. The resulting images were incredibly detailed and complex images, something rarely associated with risograph prints.