APT Member Highlight- Duncan Noel Campbell

Name: Dun­can Noël Campbell

Posi­tion: Art Direc­tor, U of R Press

URFA APT Mem­ber Since: I’ve been at the Uni­ver­si­ty since Jan­u­ary 2009, so it’s approach­ing 11 years as an URFA APT member. 

Pro­vide a descrip­tion of your posi­tion, and what a day in the life” at your job might look like: 

No day is ever the same. U of R Press is a very col­lab­o­ra­tive unit so you get to hear about and con­tribute to dis­cus­sions that don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly involve your role direct­ly. Also, there are always new things com­ing up, excit­ing new projects and inter­est­ing prob­lems to solve. My role at the press, in sim­pli­fied terms, is to cre­ate and main­tain a high lev­el of qual­i­ty to the look” of the press: any­thing we cre­ate that goes out in the pub­lic sphere has to meet my approval, and that includes all our book cov­er designs and book inte­ri­ors. As the only in-house design­er at the press all the cov­ers and most of the book inte­ri­ors fall to me to design (I over­see the few inte­ri­ors that get farmed out to oth­ers). All pro­mo­tion­al pieces like ads, posters, cat­a­logues, pro­mo post­cards etc. are also designed by me too and have to meet a high lev­el of graph­ic design and professionalism. 

What about your posi­tion is the most rewarding?

I love that I get to use my skills to bring books into the world — and I get paid to do it! How great is that? Graph­ic design­ers often find oppor­tu­ni­ties in the world of cap­i­tal­ism and adver­tis­ing, which doesn’t align well with my per­son­al inter­ests. Here I get to work on impor­tant things like the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge through our aca­d­e­m­ic pub­li­ca­tions and par­tic­i­pate in the revi­tal­iza­tion of Indige­nous Lan­guages through our First Nations Lan­guage Read­ers and Indige­nous Lan­guages for Begin­ners series. I feel very for­tu­nate and hon­oured to be involved in that work.

What is the most challenging?

I think the fast pace of my job can be a dou­ble-edged sword. By neces­si­ty, design­ers have to be deep thinkers and pon­der-ers. It’s all about solv­ing com­plex com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems and pre­sent­ing them clear­ly in a visu­al for­mat. And for that you need time. How­ev­er the world of pub­lish­ing is very dead­line dri­ven and fast paced, so an old man like me gets tired. I always seem to get it done though.

What’s your favorite part of work­ing at the U of R?

Hav­ing a front row seat to all the inter­est­ing vis­it­ing schol­ars and artists. There is always some­thing inter­est­ing going on here to see and expe­ri­ence.

What’s some­thing inter­est­ing about your job that most peo­ple might not know about?

I designed a book about bums that received a num­ber of design awards and gar­nered some inter­na­tion­al atten­tion for the design. The book, Read­ing From Behind, A Cul­tur­al Analy­sis of the Anus,” by Jonathan A. Allan, and pub­lished by U of R Press in the Spring of 2016, has an irrev­er­ent title but was a sol­id aca­d­e­m­ic book by a tal­ent­ed schol­ar. The design chal­lenge for me was to acknowl­edge the cheeky nature of the book and its title, while main­tain­ing an air of sophis­ti­ca­tion and not incur­ring the wrath of cen­sors. I knew I couldn’t put a butt on the cov­er but in man y ways the book real­ly required it! The design solu­tion turned out to be very sim­ple: a large hand-drawn aster­isk which was both a nod to the work of Kurt Von­negut and a ref­er­ence to our cul­tur­al puri­tanism (we often use aster­isks to replace swear words when writ­ing). The cov­er was well received and was even fea­tured in a week­ly col­umn on book design in De Volk­skrant, a Dutch dai­ly news­pa­per. It real­ly was a designer’s once-in-a-life­time oppor­tu­ni­ty to have such a crazy prob­lem to solve land on your desk.