Overcoming Digital Divides

Making complex barriers visible.

Partners: Ryerson Leadership Lab, Brookfield Institute and TELUS; City of Toronto
Role: Led the full visual direction
Scope: Identity, custom illustration, layouts, digital assets, official reports
Design outcome: One illustrated system that made policy-heavy research feel welcoming, from workshops to reports

Mapping Toronto’s Digital Divide cover illustration

Overview

Overcoming Digital Divides was a six-part national workshop series on the systemic barriers to digital access in Canada, co-presented by the Ryerson Leadership Lab, the Brookfield Institute, the First Nations Technology Council and SFU Public Square, with TELUS as title sponsor. The content was policy-heavy, so the design needed to make it welcoming without making it simple.

Illustration as an access point

I created a cohesive visual identity with custom illustrations, layouts and digital assets. Each illustration focuses on one community or barrier, such as rural and remote communities, low-income households, people with disabilities, youth and older adults, within a shared colour and illustration language, so together they read as a connected series.

A satellite dish among pine trees — Workshop 1Indigenous, Rural and Remote Communities

People climbing ladders of different heights toward a screen — Workshop 2Low-Income Communities

An older man lost in a circuit-board maze — Workshop 3Older Adults and Digital Literacy

A close-up of a pink keyboard — Workshop 4People with Disabilities and Accessibility

Neighbours working and connecting from their balconies — Workshop 5Public Internet Access

Young people stepping between oversized phones — Workshop 6Youth and Digital Skills

One identity, many partners

With several presenting partners and a title sponsor, the identity had to sit comfortably beside a row of logos. I built it on ITC Avant Garde and Rooney Sans, an eight-colour palette with tints for depth, and clear illustration rules: people reflect a range of ethnicities, genders, body types and incomes, with no stereotypes. Each illustration then flexed into event banners, square posts and stories.

Visual identity slides: typography, eight-colour palette, collateral example and illustration components

From campaign to research reports

The same illustrations and palette carried into the reports that followed, including What We Heard and Recommendations and Towards a Digital Equity Policy for the City of Toronto, which I designed as Design Lead at the Ryerson Leadership Lab. That work laid the foundation for Mapping Toronto’s Digital Divide, a multi-year research initiative supported by the City of Toronto, where I designed the official reports and turned survey findings and multi-source data into visual narratives.

Covers of the Workshop Series, What We Heard and Recommendations, and Towards a Digital Equity Policy reports

Toronto’s Digital Divide key findings infographic

Policy you can see at a glance

Ideas like affordability or a policy goal are hard to chart. For Towards a Digital Equity Policy, I turned each of the five recommendations into an object people recognize and joined them with one path, so readers could see the whole plan before reading the detail.

Illustrated pathway of the five digital equity policy recommendations for the City of Toronto

01Digital equity goal
02Affordability
03Community broadband
04Digital literacy
05Accessibility

What the work supported

1,300workshop participants

1,000recording views

82%said the workshops moved Canada’s digital divide conversation forward

88%agreed the workshops included diverse, relevant perspectives

These are campaign results that the design supported.

All work Next: Dais Reports