That’s a good question, I’m glad you asked. For the last 10 years the name of our company was Launchpad Creative. Not gonna lie, I feel very attached to that name. When you’ve run a company for a decade and it’s a brand that feels so close to your personality, changing its name almost feels like you’re changing your identity. At least, that’s how I felt for a long time and that’s what held me back from making the change. I’ve known for the past couple years that rebranding the name was important. Launchpad just didn’t seem to suit our mission anymore. We even, started internally playing around with the name Astra.
“Astra is the accusative plural form of the Latin word astrum 'star' (from Ancient Greek ἄστρον astron 'star', from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ster-).”
This name stood out to us because it wasn’t too big of a departure from the concept of Launchpad. We’ve always had the space theme. I think it’s something that has always spoken to me, I often have had my head in the clouds as well I can still remember being a kid laying on top of my shed, staring in the stars and just, thinking about all the possibilities. Last summer, 2023, have worked on one of the most important projects of my career. It was pivotable. It was a pivotal moment. You can even say it was a bit of a paradigm shift for us. I don’t know, paradigm shift seems like a bit much, but it was definitely an evolution. we had the opportunity to work with the government of Canada to integrate indigenous design and art into a flagship federal building. 25 Saint Clair St. is a massive project. The government of Canada undertook to make its first building completely carbon neutral. There’s a bunch of technical stuff so what I’m gonna do is leave a link to an article right here that I could explain it better. Don’t click away yet though because I’m not done, lol. I guess it’s not too surprising that the motif that we chose for the integration was originally called under one sky. I’ve known about sky stories through the indigenous lens for many years. But this was my first opportunity to fully That. As this project evolved, we started to realize that some of the art and themes had to do with the earth had to do with the horizon. It had to do with the sky. It had to do with the sky, the horizon, the Earth. It dawned on me, I had the perfect acronym for this project - SHE: Sky Horizon Earth. We don’t call her mother earth for nothing.
Sidebar: Mother Earth is in fact an Indigenous concept. Among the Ojibwe and Potawatomi, for example, the Earth is viewed as having spiritual significance, and many ceremonies and traditions revolve around honoring the natural world. This respect for Mother Earth is not limited to Indigenous cultures of the Americas but is also found in other Indigenous groups globally.
*put in reference link
The idea encourages stewardship, reciprocity, and interconnectedness with all living things—humans, animals, plants, and the land itself. This philosophy contrasts with more extractive approaches to nature, emphasizing care and sustainability over exploitation.
Summer of 2023 was a weird summer. There was some significant changes with the team and I was having this completely bizarre disconnection and reconnection with the universe. That’s a story for another day. I kept thinking about the rebrand. The name change is where it had to start. I have always had a hard time explaining exactly what our creative agency is. We do design, we do videos, we help people and their companies better understand how to communicate their core message. There’s a diverse amount of things that we do within our collective. Ultimately, I realize, or I figured out how to articulate it myself and the people I work with, all artist, all designers, what we have in common is that we are storytellers. We help people tell their story in a variety of ways. We’ve been doing this since the beginning of time, we have been doing this since there were no stories to tell other than stories about the sky, sky stories.
Can’t forget to talk about our icon. Yes it’s an owl face. I’ve always felt a weird connection to owls. I think it’s because they represent wisdom. They are peaceful, but can be very powerful when they need to be. Also one day me and my partner were walking through the forest and, an owl followed us. It was nighttime. It swoop down and landed on a branch in front of us and just stared at us. We took a different path. It swooped down again landed on a branch and stared at us again. It was probably hunting us to be honest, but I still took that as a sign. The next day I showed up to the office and I was like. Great Scott, I’ve got it, or icon has to be an owl face. That’s as deep as that went, but I won’t forget that owl anytime soon.
What am I hoping for the future of Sky Story? That’s a big question but I’ve never been more cleared in my entire professional life. It’s always felt a bit merky. I always had this weird mish mash of creative abilities. I didn’t know how to label myself, nor did I want to. I knew I wanted to help people tell their stories. That’s still true. I believe I’ve always felt the same way about how to identify culturally too. Again, a mish mashed ethnic make up. I am Indigenous, West Indies, and a dash of French and Irish. People feel comfortable when they can put you into a category and because of their discomfort you want to put yourself into one too. You’re like “I’m this…” and somehow magically that will make them feel at ease. For me, the clarity is that I’m more comfortable with some of the ambiguity. I’m ok that I have multiple internal sources to draw from. I’m excited to connect more deeply with my cultural identity through my work. This will become very obvious very soon. I hope, anyone still reading this, gets to come on this adventure with us. I hope we get to talk and share ideas. Who knows, maybe we will even work together at some point.
That’s it for now… Miigwetch!
