Holy Rosary Cathedral is in, but the SkyTrain is out.
When Kelly Hady started work designing a Jubilee Year banner for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, she sought ways to blend the official Vatican logo with local landmarks. The first drafts included famous icons such as the North Shore mountains, the Lions Gate Bridge, and the SkyTrain, said Hady, who began working in the archdiocese’s Communications Office in mid-July. In addition to laying out and designing The B.C. Catholic each week, she creates graphics for various offices at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre.
Designing a Jubilee image that could be adapted for use as a prayer card, website background, and a banner outside the pastoral centre was a new and different task, but not entirely unfamiliar. New to Vancouver, Hady focused on what struck her as a recent arrival to the city. “The dynamic angle of the SkyTrain almost perfectly symbolized pilgrimage and journey,” she said. Visible in glimpses throughout the city and integral to many people’s daily commute, it seemed an ideal choice—until Archbishop Miller and his advisers provided feedback.
“They felt, reasonably, that it dominated the design too much,” she said. “They also thought the sunset was too disconnected from the meaning of hope, and the overall colours were too gloomy.”
She went back to her digital canvas and drafted several more concepts revolving around the ideas of pilgrimage and hope.
“I studied the theme by reading through documents provided by the CCCB as well as the papal bull Spes Non Confundit to understand the theme and what it symbolizes,” she said. What stood out for her in the documents was the power of God’s forgiveness and the hope offered to those on a journey of reconciliation, no matter how long.
Hady huddled with Communications teammates to review the feedback they had received. “They became a review panel that could assess all the design iterations before they were submitted to the Archbishop,” she said. With their diverse perspectives, they offered valuable insights on her design choices. “That, combined with an understanding of the Archbishop’s personal preferences, helped guide the revisions.”
Negative feedback almost led the team to settle for the CCCB’s default banner with the RCAV logo. “But I strongly advocated for an original banner, seeing it as an opportunity to symbolize the theme in a unique way and to highlight our Archdiocese’s commitment to spreading the message of the Year of Jubilee far and wide,” Hady said.
In the new versions, she replaced the SkyTrain with Holy Rosary Cathedral. “It’s a symbol beloved by Catholics and cherished by the city for its historic architecture,” she said. To properly represent the cathedral, she studied its dimensions from various angles to ensure the design would work across a range of sizes, from a two-storey banner to a prayer card.
She also revised the colour scheme, introducing golden sunlight for warmth and emphasizing warmer tones over sombre blues.
“The concept was never about achieving strict realism, but about gathering elements that evoke a distinct Vancouver feel,” she said. As a result, the elements of the cathedral, mountains, and sun may not be geographically precise but capture the city’s essence.
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