About Jim Donoahue

Jim Donoahue began his career in Toronto in the early 60’s. He was creative director of the renowned type house, Cooper & Beatty, spent some time with the MacLaren Advertising Agency, joined as a partner in the design firm Burns, Cooper, Donoahue & Fleming, and in 1978 opened an office under his own name.

His logos and symbols are seen across the country. The Canada Wordmark, TSN, Global Television Network, Investors Group and Marathon Realty are some of the marks he has made. His posters always get framed, his ads get read, his annual reports and brochures are taken seriously.

Jim is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, and the prestigious Alliance Graphique International. His work is internationally known and has been featured in Japan’s Idea magazine, Switzerland’s Graphis magazine, England’s Modern Publicity, Canada’s Studio Magazine as well as Communications Arts in California. In 1993, he received the Les Usherwood Award for lifetime achievement from The Advertising and Design Club of Canada.

Cooper and Beatty Collection.
Available through the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Articles About Jim Donoahue

Applied Arts
"One of Canada's most successful and prolific designers, Donoahue has won wide acclaim for his succinct, eye-catching logos, each perfectly attuned to the product or organization it represents" Doug Dolan

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Les Usherwood Award
"So now, at long last, it gives me a special kind of pleasure to see Jim Donoahue receive the treasured Les Usherwood award for lifetime achievement. No one deserves it more. Nobody does it better." Ken Rodmell

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Communication Arts
"These are days when attention-getting appears to be measured more in cheap dissonance, even mindlessness. One occasionally wonders whether a rational approach can stand up to the din of the noisy but hollow success. An eye cast northward across the border toward Jim Donoahue's estimable work hearteningly suggests that there can be abundant invention without giving up any claim on reason." Jerome Snyder

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Novum (Gebrauchs Graphik)
"Today Jim Donoahue is one of the most renowned Canadian graphic designers - his «Canada» modeling is known to every world traveler - and this may be possibly ascribed to the fact that a close relationship to type and the areas associated with it is first and foremost the right tool for real accomplishments in the field of trade mark design." Dieter Urban

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