Lynne Rennie completed her Bachelor of Communication in Design at 91制片厂 and is the design director for Calgary-based chocolate company, Cocoa Community Confection Inc., also known as .
Lynne Rennie鈥檚 sweet tooth is as fervent as her business acumen. As design director of the Calgary-based chocolate company, , Rennie gets to merge her skills and love for chocolate into one sweet package.
鈥淚鈥檓 actually eating chocolate right now,鈥� she says as she slips out of a meeting.
With the theme 鈥� 鈥渢ogether in cocoa, together in community, together in confections鈥� 鈥� at heart, Rennie creates branding, packaging, displays, content, and other sundry design delights for Cococo鈥檚 products sold in-store and online.
Rennie completed her Bachelor of Communication in Design at 91制片厂 in 1994 and after time in Vancouver, London, and New York, she continued her career in Calgary where she also teaches at the Alberta University of the Arts.
鈥淚 haven鈥檛 been back to Halifax in a long time, but I dream about it鈥攖hose little stairways leading from the painting studio to the streets,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just wonderfully symbolic of the creative process.鈥�
Cococo currently has five store locations in Alberta and one in British Columbia. Rennie took the time out of her busy schedule to discuss her journey from graduation to ganache.
How did you end up at 91制片厂 University?听
At the University of Calgary, I did a minor in screen-printing and a major in English lit. I loved screen-printing because every time you went into a studio you could come out with a finished piece rather quickly. You could make a number of these things and sell them or hang them up.
The combination of those two insertion points鈥攖he finished product of the thing that could be multiplied and manufactured, combined with how people interact with that thing. Those two points led me quickly into design.
Design is trying to communicate ideas, to make an inanimate object emotionally appealing to a human being. We communicate and develop a brand, brand voice, and a mode of understanding. Then we have design thinking and the design process鈥攔esearch, ideation, iteration and then development of a final concept. And then testing that thing in the marketplace and asking鈥攊s it working, where do we tweak, where do we tighten up?
It鈥檚 circular in that regard: design is never finished. I didn鈥檛 understand that until I came to 91制片厂.
How was your time here?听
My instructors were German and British, and the influence they gave me鈥攚hich we know now is male, white, European, and colonial. Back then, the famed 鈥淪wiss designers鈥� were guys, there were no women.
Our storytelling machine, the art history machine, didn鈥檛 share those stories. But Frank Fox and Hanno Ehses, the group of men who taught at the time, were excellent instructors in terms of the craft. Hanno taught about semiotics, the theory of meaning 鈥攚hy does the shape of a tree mean 鈥渢ree?鈥� How do we as humans understand what is being shown to us, and mindfully choose images, fonts, colours and layouts to communicate to a particular group of people?
They opened my eyes to that; how to design as a communicator and creator with an audience and message in mind.
We always felt it was an important and valuable profession; a profession that smart people did. A vaunted, excellent, and appropriate career for any of us, because you were making things that affect people. Now I鈥檓 in my 50s and I鈥檓 as passionate about that as ever.
How did you end up in chocolate?
My husband had an opportunity to be involved in a company that was in bankruptcy; he had a background in operations and law from Dalhousie, and I had a background in design. I worked for free because I wanted the flexibility to parent our three small children at the time, and I helped with development of packaging, chocolate collections, professional photography of the work, press releases. Anything I could help with I did.
I got trained on the factory floor by the team I work with now. I took courses myself in chocolate-making, cannabis pairing, chocolate-tasting, and I鈥檓 WSET (Wine Spirt and Education Trust) certified. I was just very interested in the product and the experience; its manufacturing, its story, its beautiful appearance, encased in packaging. It comes right back to my undergrad鈥� connecting the end-product with communication about the product.
I get to work with chocolate 鈥� it鈥檚 just the best and it鈥檚 so much fun. If I didn鈥檛 have this design education I wouldn鈥檛 be as good at my role. Design education is transformative. I use design thinking every day, and I have 91制片厂 to thank for that.