T-Shirt design identification
July 4, 2024 12:22 AM   Subscribe

I would like to know more about this design on a Canadian T-Shirt. What are the symbols for? Who's the author? Does it have any political/cultural significance? I don't want to accidentally advertise something I don't support.

I tried reverse image search but only got a Twitter profile with the same logo/design.
posted by gakiko to Society & Culture (6 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
On my phone Google image search found this page with the image:

https://www.calicultural.com.br/estudar/estude-no-canada-vancouver-ou-toronto-4-semanas/

https://www.calicultural.com.br/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/canada.png

Looks like it's a custom design for students from Brazil studying in Canada. Seems innocent enough to me?
posted by slimepuppy at 2:51 AM on July 4, 2024 [1 favorite]


Best answer: I see nothing offensive or suspect on the bottom two-thirds. You have a Haida style bird head, and the heraldic lions from a couple of provincial flags, and the fleur de lis from the Quebec flag, Inuksuks and a simplified sailing boat, probably intended to represent the lymphad on the New Brunswick flag, simplified to look more Viking. There are bands that likely represent the water depicted under the lymphad. And there is what looks like a pair of hockey sticks.

All that is definitely innocuous.

Above that however is an arch made out of brick, and I think the two masses on each side that looked at first to me like a cracked surface are actually meant to be half spruce trees. But the snake, the star and the crenelation, and why an arch are beyond me at the moment. There is a good chance that the triangles pointing upward are meant to represent the mountains on the Yukon crest. Again, afaik innocuous.

I'm going to guess that the arch made of brick is meant to be an igloo, drawn by someone who doesn't understand the physics involved in building an igloo, nor the fact that a tunnel slanting downward is an integral part of how it's built for a reason. It's gotta be an igloo. Maybe the snake is smoke coming out of the igloo! Smoke never comes out of an igloo. If you had a big enough vent to deal with visible smoke your igloo would not work. But it might be meant to be a winding river in the far north, like the Moose River.

I would be confident enough that most of the motifs are drawn from the official provincial and national heraldry, with the exception of the hockey sticks, the Haida bird, the igloo and the trees and river that I would have no qualms wearing a shirt with this image on it.

And maybe the star is Polaris, meant to represent the North Pole, given how people in the far north traditionally used stars to find their direction.

I think you are good to wear it if you like it.

I think the artist deserves credit for putting a lot of thought and creativity into this image. That was fun to deconstruct.
posted by Jane the Brown at 3:49 AM on July 4, 2024 [11 favorites]


Best answer: It seems to be made up of symbols representing various national and ethnic groups that are significant to the history of Canada, some of which also appear in provincial flags. Here are the ones I recognize:

The bird head is an example of the stylized art tradition of the indigenous people of the west coast.

The fleur-de-lis is a symbol of France (and part of the Quebec flag).

The Lion Rampant (standing lion) is a symbol of Scotland (and part of the Nova Scotia flag).

The horizontal lion is a symbol of England (and part of the flags of New Brunswick and PEI, and the coat of arms of Saskatchewan).

The inukshuk is a symbol of the Inuk people and Arctic peoples more generally (and part of the Nunavut flag).

The tree towards the top I think may be intended to be a white pine, a symbol of the Haudenosaunee/Iroquois of the northeast.

And then obviously you have a pair of hockey sticks in the middle.

I'm not familiar with this design as a whole and I'm not sure who created it, but I don't see anything obviously offensive here.
posted by mekily at 4:13 AM on July 4, 2024 [6 favorites]


With things like this sometimes it's not just what a symbol actually means but also the impression you think it might give to other people. Like, if you think someone might see you wearing it, wonder if it's a symbol of something hateful, and feel uncomfortable around you because of it.

I also interpret the symbols mostly like Jane the Brown, but (a) it took some time to decode, and (b) rather than the individual symbols, what stood out to me at first glance, and maybe from a distance, is the overall shape (the tshirt must be a bit stretched out of shape because the maple leaf looks more like a cross, which it doesn't in slimepuppy's image) and the parts that look like a snake, star, brick oven (I too decided it must be an igloo, but it took time to get there), and sharp crown. Those elements, combined with the cross shape, did create a sort of ominous first impression for me.

(Also I'm not sure how respectful it is to have hockey sticks be a more central symbol than the Raven, but that might just be me nitpicking.)
posted by trig at 4:15 AM on July 4, 2024


I am quite positive towards this design, once I deconstruct it, as a serious attempt has been made to make First Nations symbols prominent. Hockey sticks as used in ice hockey are believed by many to be originally Mi'kmaq, so I won't quibble about them being more central than the Haida bird.
posted by Jane the Brown at 6:18 AM on July 4, 2024 [3 favorites]


Best answer: A Wayback machine search of a website that calls itself Canadian Design Resource/Nor attributes the design to a David Xia and says it was designed for Wordans, a t-shirt company, in 2012. The main objection I can see to the design is that it's likely by a non-Indigenous artist (Xia is likely a Chinese name and not really in line with any Indigenous surnames in Canada, but who knows for sure - it might be this David Xia), but if you already own it or it's used I think it's fine because you're not denying Indigenous artists a sale or anything.
posted by urbanlenny at 9:33 AM on July 4, 2024


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