Several new attractions were planned for Canada’s Wonderland‘s new Winterfest event, held the first time in 2019. One of which was a celebration and exhibition of prominent holidays that occur during the winter season. The intention was to create faux stained glass panels to be backlit and placed adjacent to a primary park walkway. Nearby plaques would provide some information about each holiday.

I was approached to contribute to the project by designing the feature art for each holiday’s stained glass display. Five holidays were selected for the inaugural Winterfest event; Christmas, Chinese New year, Diwali, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa.

Each panel was custom designed in Illustrator as to provide maximum flexibility for colour corrections and changes by the client. A last minute change required each panel to be reduced from 1200x2500mm to 900x2500mm panels prior to being printed on semi-transparent film and mounted within a thin-framed shadowbox. Each frame was attached to poles flanking the selected walkway, with portions of the key art used to make banners adjacent to them.

This was an exciting, challenging project. My first professional work completed not related to horror or Halloween, and the first purely graphic design project, this marked a significant departure for me. My experience producing studio presentation work for university was critical to successfully crafting a printable display-piece, but there was much time spent attempting to correct the levels of each piece, providing a cohesive colour palette, and integrating graphical effects to simulate stained glass. Ultimately the stained glass effect was too light and isn’t visible from the pathway.