Digital Design + Development

🎂 Happy birthday, Charlene Roberts!

We're celebrating with a look back at the First Line Mortgage identity Charlene built as a Communication Design Diploma student — a complete brand system in bold red and black, from the monogram and patterned collateral right through to letterhead, business cards, envelopes, branded pens and pencils, and a responsive website mockup.

Strong mark, consistent system, and no detail left unconsidered. Exactly the kind of thinking that carries a designer from student work to professional practice.

Wishing you a great one, Charlene! 🎉

🛸🎧

Remember when Misko DeeJays Valent was a student in our Communication Design Diploma program and kept bringing these awesome music-industry-inspired designs to class?

Today he's still going strong as a DJ. Miss your energy in class Misko!

CHECK OUT this food truck branding design by Communication Design Diploma graduate Sarah Fox created as part of her capstone project. 🥬 🥣

Sarah now runs Indygirl - a design agency that specializes in branding for neurodivergent entrepreneurs: https://indygirl.ca/

It’s great to see where our graduates take the skills they developed here—especially when they go on to build something of their own! 🙌

BACK IN THE DAY… 🖥️

When layers and masks in Photoshop were the only way to create composite images, making something like this was a lot of work! It took technical skill and patience to bring all those elements together, but the real skill is being able to use those tools to create a mood and tell a visual story.

This piece was created by Communication Design Diploma graduate Jason Thompson, currently working as a Project Support Specialist at Medium Rare Interactive Inc., when he was a student in our Computer Graphics course.

Prepping for this fall's Graphic Design and Branding course, these great packaging designs for craft brewing keep coming up! 🍺

This one by Communication Design Development graduate Jennifer Thornton-Hughes when she was a student is just so playful and fun! Doesn’t it make you want to dig your backpack out and head off on an adventure? 🎒

CHECK OUT the new Special Olympics Comox Valley website created by instructor Meg Wilson and Web and Mobile App Development Diploma graduate Trevor Jacob!

Working within a very strictly defined design system while at the same time allowing the local spirit to come through can be a real challenge, but these two made it work.

So great to see our graduates putting their skills to work on projects that make a difference in our community! 👏

https://cvso.ca/

SHOUT OUT to Amanda Woloshyn! 🙌

Amanda is a Senior Project Manager at Medium Rare Interactive, Inc., a long-time member of our Program Advisory Committee, and a founding member of Comox Valley Tech Talk. She is a strong supporter of the tech community in the Comox Valley and has organized countless tech gatherings and opportunities for people to connect over the years.

She has also hired many of our graduates, including Communication Design Diploma graduates Amanda Goodrick and Jason Thompson, and Web + Mobile Application Development / Advanced Diploma graduates Yosuke Hasumi, Nathaniel Tubb, Dominic Yarmie, and Ian McKenzie.

But Amanda’s support of emerging talent goes well beyond hiring. She is a generous mentor who shares her knowledge, makes connections, creates opportunities, and helps our graduates find their footing in the industry.

We’re incredibly lucky to have people like Amanda supporting our students and helping build a stronger tech community in the Valley. ❤️

THROWBACK THURSDAY!
We love packaging design and this candy box designed by Communication Design Diploma graduate Brittany King when she was a student in our Graphic Design and Branding class is no exception.

Brittany is currently working at ABC Printing & Signs, where we know her incredible attention to detail is right at home! Her ability to think through both the design and the physical production of a piece makes her a great fit for the world of print.

So great to see our graduates putting their skills to work! 👏

MEET Oleg Medvedev! 👋

Oleg is a 2026 Post-Graduate Diploma graduate and the recipient of this year’s Best Coder Award at our grad show. 👑

Oleg has been working as a full-stack engineer since 2020, so he came into the program with significant real-world experience. He may have a bit of a gruff exterior, but underneath it is one of the most generous people you could meet. He was always willing to support his peers, offer thoughtful feedback, or troubleshoot a problem.

And Oleg takes on big challenges. In Capstone this year, he started with an incredibly ambitious project, managed to complete it before midterm, and then decided that apparently one huge project wasn't enough—so he took on another one that was even more challenging. 😅

The Best Coder Award was very well deserved. Congratulations, Oleg! 👏

Check out his capstone project: https://learndigital.dev/students/oleg-medvedev/

What happens when one of our faculty members uses AI to finally build a project they’ve been thinking about for years? This. 👇

Preparing for this academic year, I spent a lot of my summer using Claude Cowork to experiment with AI-assisted coding.

This project, Every Film Ever Made About the Holocaust, is based on a 16mm rolling-credits film I made many years ago. I always wanted to turn it into an app that would allow the data to be sorted by time, country, and genre, but I lacked the coding skills to make it happen.

Trying to figure out what approach to take, I was mentored in Laravel by the very talented Chris Geelhoed and took a React course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, but I never spent the 30+ hours it would have taken to sit down and really grapple with learning how to build this particular app.

This summer, I made it in 7 hours: 3 hours to collect and clean the data, and 4 hours to code.

I'm happy with the outcome, it looks and functions the way that I wanted it to, but it is kind of anti-climatic not to have sweated it out on my own. I don't have the same feeling of accomplishment, even though I was the one making the decisions.
https://every-film.mwilson.imgd.ca/