THE CHALLENGE

The National Black Canadians Summit is an annual event organized by The Michaëlle Jean Foundation (FMJF) and presented by TD Bank group that takes place over 3 days. Every year, the Summit mobilises and unites 1200+ Black Canadians from across the country from diverse sectors and backgrounds and every year this number continues to grow. It serves as a crucial platform to discover inspiring local and national projects, explore initiatives that work, and participate in enriching discussions. So that together, the community can build a more equitable and inclusive society.

For 2025, the 4th Summit will take place in Montreal for the first time. This year’s theme revolves around the idea of using Art as a vehicle to convey their message and connect with the youth. As a growing event with ambitions to become an even greater annual pillar in the Black community, the summit needed a fresh new look that would solidify its credibility and relevance to different generations of Black Canadians, while leaving a lasting, memorable and recognizable mark and legacy for future events.

THE SOLUTION

“At the Michaëlle Jean Foundation, we firmly believe in the power of the arts.”

With that in mind, we contacted mutlitpliscplinary Montreal based artist Franco Egalité aka Francorama, to use his art piece, Unreality Of Time, as the main artwork of the event. We were inspired by his colourful, joyful, uplifting and human art style to represent the spirit of Black Canadians and the summit’s mission. According to Franco, “this illustration is an image of reaching the highest summits of our convictions and values by surpassing ourselves. Its main objective is to encourage the ascent of our ideas.” Most fitting for the event.

THE SOLUTION

A pathway to Justice

Our design team started ideating what is the best way to incorporate Franco’s work to the brand communication of this event. We wanted to develop something that could be used for future events, with the idea that the summit could solicit artwork from a new artist every year. We opted for abstract shapes, loosely inspired by the summit’s acronym “NBCS” to create a window effect. Not only does this add a versatile graphic element that we could expand on, but the window peering into the artwork is representative of the summit being a “window”, door or pathway to the justice, recognition and development of Black Canadians.

THE SOLUTION

We developed a brand identity around Franco’s art that was aligned with the long term vision of the Summit.

The sun-like head and elated figure inspired feelings of enlightenment, community, humanity, freedom, empowerment of people during the summit, to shine light on Black Canadians impact, legacy and contributions. We adapted the shapes and artwork to different, bilingual communication tools which the FMJF used to market the event.