The Cosmic Clock

And the creation of the Flourish! School Food Society 

Brand Identity System

Athor, a world-renowned scientist, who has staked his 60+ year career and reputation behind the universal theory of gravitation in Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi masterpiece, Nightfall, says this to himself after he’s faced with evidence that changes everything he knows about the solar system, “So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs, then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.” This is a lot harder to do than we might think ...

Ever since I can remember the light of the stars shining down upon my mum’s back garden when I was a little boy I have been fanatically obsessed by the infinite wonder that they seemed to possess. Like some cosmic magnet that wields an unimaginable power over Mother Earth, the night sky just seemed to pull my cognition upwards anytime the dreich Scottish weather permitted a viewing. And to this day, albeit under the now far more forgiving skies of Victoria B.C., this same natural force still pulls my head upwards anytime the cosmos reappears after the sun sinks beneath the horizon. 

Much has changed since that wee boy used to climb onto the garage roof in the middle of the night with a blanket and a cup of tea - he was an old man at the age of 8! But it’s still a curious thing to consider the power of love, and how she naturally draws every vibration of our emotions towards an interest, and how little effort it seems to take for that passion to hold our attention spans for hours on end. Before he even knew what the Creative Flow was and how it seemed to bend and warp our perception of time whenever he found it, back then, on that grated garage roof at 2am in the morning, the wee boy seemed to step outside the boundaries of time itself whenever his love affair with the night sky blossomed into the wee hours of the morning.

Fast forward almost thirty years to the present day when everything cosmos-related now seems to be radically polarized between two seemingly incompatible cultures; data-driven algorithms that now bear the brunt of the lifeless ’observational’ work done by astronomers and astrophysicists, and astrological cultures that hold dear to their hearts a more human-centric approach to the stars above. Naturally, I’m a Libra - or so I thought - and so I like to seek a fair and just balance of the two without ever planting my flag on either side but I am naturally biased toward the scientific method given my design background. The irony of the present day is both seem to be relying on experiences that don’t involve direct observation and this should raise some serious alarm bells even in the most devout followers of either belief system. 

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I’m not relying on artificial aids that do the work for us; it’s sort of like reintroducing manual labor back into the heart of a natural science to strengthen the muscle rather than weaken it by offloading it to a machine. Please don’t panic, there are pictures.

As this creative journey backward through history continues to build momentum, relying upon direct observation and practical experiences with old-world tools [compass, pencil, and straight edge] to strengthen my sensory bond to the laws of Nature; the dominant rhythms in the sky that govern all life on earth, just over a year ago, I set out to expand my perception of solar and lunar movements. To put it simply, without knowing this at the time, I was studying the passage of time itself. And it’s important to elaborate on what I mean by perception here by stating that this is purely focused on the power of the imagination and our ability to perceive motion at the emotional level. I’m not relying on artificial aids that do the work for us; it’s sort of like reintroducing manual labor back into the heart of a natural science to strengthen the muscle rather than weaken it by offloading it to a machine. And imagination is key for this particular study - and any cognitive motion for that matter - since planetary and star motion is imperceptible to us at this scale because of how little we are in comparison - Nature has a poetic way of humbling us all with that observation alone. 

Fortunate for the little boy who still regularly imagines himself lying on top of that grated garage roof at the age of 8, step one for this study involved just a small leap further for his imagination. I’m pretty sure the weight of a 5,000+ year-old giant would immediately crumble and lay ruin to the entire town of Lenzie never mind the single-car garage that he was lying on but there he was, standing on the shoulder of history; borrowing the ancient zodiac wheel, created and calculated with a geometric system rather than the conventional calculations used to evenly divide a circle into 12. It quickly and efficiently provided him with a stable point of reference for him to track solar, lunar, and planetary motions according to our geocentric perspective here on Earth and as he blindly waded forth into culturally charged territory, the boundaries of which were oblivious to him until the end of his journey when he experienced some startling encounters with other passionate followers of this old system.

“Have you ever wondered why the half-moon is called a quarter or three-quarter phase? I sure did ... So much reading … forgive me, pictures are coming!

So how does one track the position of the Sun if we can’t directly observe the constellation that he sits in front of during the month? The harmonized power of two polar opposites comes into use here, both in a literal and figurative sense. By deductive logical reasoning, we can perhaps illuminate and intuit the reason for ‘logical’ existing in the very name whose 21st-century cultural following seems to demonize any instance of it when it appears. By astrologically following the moon over the course of a month, from one constellation to the next, in a radially linear fashion anti-clockwise around the wheel, waiting for her to blossom brightly into a full phase, and by taking note of the constellation that sits behind her, we can indirectly point towards the position of the sun. We can easily infer this from direct observational experiences. An alignment has occurred, without which a full moon wouldn’t be possible. And so he sits on the opposite side of the zodiac at the time of a full moon. Now that first positions have been set, when Artemis dims to a three-quarter phase we can now mark in our second position on the wheel. I must pause here for a quick minute. And it directly involves the beauty of this method. Have you ever wondered why the half-moon is called a quarter or three-quarter phase? I sure did. No matter how many explanations were tossed at me none of them made sense until the correct graphic system was used to communicate its illusory motion around the earth. How could it be a quarter if I see a half-moon?! For the first time in my life, the reason behind this categorization came into the light. By using the zodiac wheel as my point of reference it became clear that the moon had traveled three-quarters of the way around the wheel therefore in its three-quarter phase, and, revealing at the same time, its opposite on the other side of the wheel - the first-quarter phase. The new moon of course begins where the sun sits currently. I was only 2 weeks into this study and already I had expanded my knowledge of something I’ve been looking at passionately for well over three decades.

And so it continued, month after month, paying attention to my emotions as the solar year progressed until about six months in when I started to notice something odd. I dismissed it at first because I wasn’t paying too much attention to the accuracy of my observations, that is to say, I was aware of a margin of error by degrees and how I was positioning the moon on the zodiac - some constellations are larger than others. But around the time of September, or what seemed like September if I was going off of the conventional calendar - but I’ll get to this true crime story later - the position of the sun seemed at odds with the astrological star sign of that given time in the month. I’m not that well versed in astrology but I stood firmly aligned to their system while being opposed to this direct observation for four or five more months - I mean, I became quite attached to the identifiable traits associated with Libra. And that began to concern me. I was completely refusing to accept the visual evidence that lay in plain sight right before my very eyes because of how much cultural weight had been anchored around this belief system.

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I thought of every single person I’d ever come across who spoke passionately about their identity and how it aligned with a star sign and then my heart sank ...

In the end, I thought my geometric calculation was wrong so I came flying back to the future to use an app called Star-Walk2 so I could get an unbiased reference on the position of the sun. And sure enough, the old-world geometric calculation with its compass, pencil, and straight edge, had accurately matched this data-driven algorithm's presentation of the sky at night. My mouth dropped. I thought of every single person I’d ever come across who spoke passionately about their identity and how it aligned with a star sign and then my heart sank. It was all wrong. There was a considerable delay in the illusory motion of the zodiac and I thought “… damn, I’m not a Libra, I might be a Virgo. Well, I can’t exactly rearrange the cosmos to suit my belief so I better change my belief to suit the cosmos.” What was clear was the passage of time and how we align our births to the position of the stars in the sky, at this point in time, during the first quarter of the 21st century, was off by a long shot. I couldn’t say for sure that this sky was the same back in 1984. Something, somewhere recently, relative to the last 100+ years, it changed. But did it speed up or slow down? And why isn’t this common knowledge?  

But I had profited so much more from the practical experience of observing and tracking it first-hand rather than just relying on other models or the hundreds of thousands of books and blogs out there that profess to know what’s going on that I once again felt like that wee boy on the garage roof again, exploring and discovering things for the first time. It was exciting! And seemingly out of nowhere the correct orientation of the zodiac became apparent. Turns out Mother Nature is both intuitive and logical! Especially when we are aided by thousands of years of history to back us up. And so Spring naturally found its place at the 3 o’clock position. March / April marks the return of life in the northern hemisphere, which happens to stand in the East position of the wheel. The sun rises above the horizon-tal and springs upward towards the summer solstice who now stands at the 12 o’clock position. He then starts to move down towards the vernal equinox before Fall-ing and setting in the west into the underworld for six months, dropping the energy, tone, and COLOUR of all organic life on the planet, including us pesky unforgiving humans. The theoretical and practical principles of color, geometry, and music are all the same, and so the color wheel accurately points out the color shift of leaves as we approach the Fall. The electromagnetic vibrations that begin to engulf the planet cue Mother Nature’s maestro to shift genres. And since Nature’s language is emotional it stands to reason that the way we interpret and communicate her principles should be in a romantic sense. And so Persephone dances off with the evil side of the sun's nature for love's sake, taking all life in the northern hemisphere with her to keep his dark side company while he rules over the lands of the dead until they return again in the Spring - which happened to mark the New Year in times gone by. I for one find the fall and winter months to be particularly treacherous. Poor decision-making, lapses in concentration and emotional control, creative capabilities dropping due to the slave-like demands of 21st century life, hibernating long hours of the day while being completely unable to sleep at night - dark moods indeed! - but once I started to bond with Nature in this way I realized something that turned my entire worldview right-side up for the first time in my life. This is Natural behaviour. I’m doing nothing other than intuitively following the natural rhythms of Nature. So much for seasonal depression disorder, manic-depressive disorder, and Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Energy levels are supposed to drop and this is what an expansive and highly creative imagination looks like when it’s humming along at top speed - when I’m rapid and engaged, I’m calm and relaxed, when I’m bored, I’m distracted and a nightmare to deal with - so I went from believing that I was disabled to believing that I could develop and master my emotions now that I knew the rhythms that affected them most, and without a single pharmaceutical drug in sight!

The winter solstice marks the harmonic node in our orbit where most religious festivals celebrate the return of the sun - The Cosmic Clock reveals why - this is the point when the sun begins its journey upwards from the lowest energetic point on the wheel. This also happens to be my absolute favorite time of the year, like our ancestors were purposefully supporting the point in time when all life on earth needed an emotional boost to help them on their way back to Spring. And nothing boosts me more emotionally than a community get-together and when I’m thinking of the ones I love so as to brighten their lives by gifting them something that might warm their hearts, even if it’s just a card.

And so It wasn’t knowing, it was doing that made the difference! I felt a stronger sensory bond to the rhythms of the day and night and all of a sudden, like a threshold had just been breached, my imagination began to see the motion of the planet, the moon, and the sun in a completely different way. The Cosmic Clock and the origin of our analogue clocks revealed themselves with the sun acting as the annual ‘hour’ hand and the moon acting as the ‘minute’ or moonth hand. And over the course of 12 months, my perception of the passage of time changed forever. I have a 200-year-old oak tree supporting my argument that our calendar is in fact wrong and that our lunar months are all out of whack. A curious thought when we consider that ancient Celtic peoples aligned their lives to the moon rather than the sun.

But I hope you will forgive me, it’s not a case of being right, it’s more a case of following Nature’s example than anything else. Backward is forward, down is up, principles of perception mirror our cognition, it’s the opposite of what we have been ‘taught’ to think, and the wandering stars that harmlessly and unconsciously fool us into thinking they’re heading one way when in actual fact they’re going the complete opposite direction stun most of us into a humble state where curiosity and inspiration around this cosmic truth tend to bring two polar opposites into harmony. Some of us are of course insulted by this cosmic sleight of hand but that has nothing to do with me and more to do with the propagandized belief systems that appear to be taking aim at us all through no fault of our own other than being blind to the power that controls the cultural biases and fictions that we grew up in or attach our identities to.

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To learn from practical and direct experience with old-world tools and to encounter the same obstacles that our ancestors did

Please allow and afford me the space to be clear, I’m not here to insult or prove anyone wrong, all I’m doing is sharing my experiences around a love that I nurtured for well over 35 years that started one night on top of that garage in the honest to goodness hope that it’ll inspire your creative curiosity to explore the natural world first-hand and to reveal the power of graphic and visual communication and its ability to enhance our perception of seemingly complex systems so that we may be able to solve them with a high degree of efficiency almost every single time. It doesn’t matter if it’s been done before or how many times you hear that this is the end of science or how many blogs you read from some other source or how many documentaries you’ve seen. What matters is that you do it yourself. To learn from practical and direct experience with old-world tools and to encounter the same obstacles that our ancestors did so we can better strengthen the muscles of our hearts and minds and the relationships we have with each other and the planet. To bring us closer to the electromagnetically inclined spiritual fibers that bond us all to the vibrating consciousness that is the cosmos rather than mindlessly swiping them away towards the clutches of a nefariously controlled A.I.

But enough of Tech Noir and the Terminator, let’s come back to R2D2; they almost fooled us all by thinking it was going to be guns-a-blazing! The rhythms of Mother Nature are more like jazz than anything else. It can be tough to follow at first but once you find the rhythm and the key and are able to improvise according to her laws you’ll be astonished at what appears before you when it’s done for love and nothing else. That’s the Power of Love after all; “don’t need money, don’t take fame, don’t need no credit card to ride this train” - and while I was riding that cosmic train, without any other thought than trying to figure out how I could share this with the world, waiting at the next stop for me was a local non-profit society called Flourish! School Food Society. They jumped on board and approached me through my friend Nev to design and create their Brand Identity system. And what exactly does Flourish! do? 

“Flourish! School food society brings nourishing change to the way students eat and learn about food in schools. We at Flourish are working to help build school meal programs for all students that are supported by curriculum-connected, experiential learning opportunities in school gardens, kitchens, and composts.” Matthew Kemshaw - Exec Director

They focus on introducing garden learning into school curriculums up and down the island but it’s not just about teaching kids how to grow their own food or supporting low-income families by giving them access to their meal programs, it’s fundamentally about re-bonding our youth to the land. It’s about getting their hands dirty in the garden. It’s about hard work and perseverance when it comes to navigating the pitfalls of planting, growing, and harvesting a crop. It’s about reawakening the marvel of social interaction when it blossoms over a meal at a table, especially one stocked by healthy organic food they grew themselves. And what better way to inspire the youth of our time off the dopamine-depleting algorithms that form the psychological foundation of 5-12 second ‘smart’phone content than to raise their heads to the very wandering stars that peer down on us every day and just so happen to govern the fundamental rhythms and forces that create our food which we need to sustain ourselves.

And so like a perfectly timed harmony, a chord appeared. The root and the perfect 4th of my study chimed with the perfect 5th of Matthew Kemshaw’s non-profit society where the story-driven principles that form the foundation of my practice, and my latest study into the cosmic rhythms of the natural world, blended seamlessly into their Brand Identity System. 

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... the communications strategy involved aligning their identity to the solstices and equinoxes of the solar year ...

Created and inspired by the geometry of music, their primary identifiable mark was technically drawn with a compass in order to tune the design into a frozen composition of music. This ensured the likability of its appearance much like we intuitively recognize when a note is in tune or out of tune. It aimed to communicate principally as a symbol rather than a literal realism such as a fork or a dinner plate. It stands to represent the flourishing of the heart, body, and mind when it’s nurtured by love and hard work from the ground up. The natural associations to the garden are self-evident but where this identity stands out from others is its ability to adapt to the seasons. Just like their home-made menu, they strive to provide only what the land offers them at that time of the year and so part of the communications strategy involved aligning their identity to the solstices and equinoxes of the solar year. At each harmonic node the color changes. Nature leads by example which is precisely what Flourish! is attempting to do in schools across the region. The color wheel of my study then pointed out with a high degree of accuracy what those colors should be. It became the perfect way for Matthew and his staff to communicate in a natural way the very essence of their company to students at school. 

Then came the chorus. The ideation of a How to Grow Food book that would stand to reinforce Flourish!’s brand narrative while leaving something tangible behind that silently sung an old-world hard-cover fabric feel to the experience. A companion in the garden for teachers and kids at schools that aimed to guide the basic steps needed to start growing their own food. And since this was all about the natural rhythms of nature, The Cosmic Clock became the calendar as opposed to the lifeless and linear block system that we’re all accustomed to, thereby showcasing the brand’s adaptability to the seasons while introducing an entirely unique way of how to plan, organize, and prepare crops to grow throughout the year. This geocentric approach was then designed to communicate the focus of each season where we picked 3 crops for each that stood in the center of each graphic with its planting season and harvest season spiraling outwards around the cosmic clock with the sun, as seen from Earth, circling around us throughout the year. 

Fundamentally, this created an opportunity for students and their parents to see for the first time the true cyclical nature and progression of time and the cyclical beginnings and endings of organic life on the planet. But this all seemed a little too technical despite the system utilizing a mature approach to visual communication which still touched on basic principles of ABCs and squares, circles, and equilateral triangles that form the bedrock of our cognition. What we needed was a harmony of both the logical and intuitive sense of nature. And so through Rockslide Gallery and a brief conversation with Logan Ford, I was put in touch with local indigenous Coast Salish artist Andrea Fritz who picked up on our creative direction and ran with it creating beautifully designed chapter art for each season. Andrea’s attention to detail accurately portrayed the close proximity of the sun in winter - the opposite of what we might think - in what happens to be my favorite piece of the lot. And so Flourish! now has a sincere way to introduce kids to the rhythms of the land while being able to inspire them with local indigenous art, which happens to fill some of the elementary schools in the lower Vancouver region. Art and science together again at last! 

The final pages of the book were conceptualized around an activity where kids and parents could work and play together but off the screen. The idea was to bring kids' focus back into the natural forms and rhythms that are inherent within the very foundations of nature herself. They happen to form the bedrock of our cognition so a pattern recognition game was created. Behind the scenes, as with any great video game or board game, the value of the education inherent within the experience is somewhat hidden. This is no Zelda or Tomb Raider but it aimed to do something similar at the base level, to enhance cognition by allowing kids to focus on geometric visuals that have been tuned into frozen compositions of music. To nurture their intuitive pattern recognition skills by giving them its primary source of sustenance. Geometry. The ABCs of cognition in all of us.  

All of the drawings were hand-drawn and aided with a compass to show that failure is an option and one of the stops we all must take on our route to success, that mistakes are part of the process, and that the imperfections shown add to the overall beauty of the art.

And to wrap it all off we ended it with an all-mighty Quest to challenge curious students. A visual road map that broke down the steps that created the Flourish! Brand identity. Created by hand and offering the chance to win a Garden Starter Pack which comes with one-to-one guidance if they’re able to complete the quest which includes encouragement to share a good deed for their community so they can purchase their own compass to complete the drawing, it’s the boss level of the entire story. This will prove to be challenging for both parents and kids! And at every Spring equinox, a winner will be chosen providing the perfect opportunity yet again to sincerely and honestly continue sharing the brand narrative of Flourish! School Food Society.

That, in the end, is what it’s all about. Did it really take us a year to get here? It probably took you a year to read this. But it started with the foundation that all good companies and relationships are founded upon. Good people. A well-thought-out Brand Identity system that has the capacity to grow its consistent traits and characteristics into every form of communication that the company then harvests to relate to people they wish to serve. 

It’s art, design, and science all harmonized into the perfect chord. A creative direction that actually depends on the flourishing uniqueness of human nature once it opens up and begins to grow on its branches while staying true to the trunk of the overarching genetic strategy that will bear the fruits of success every single time if it’s adhered to, and followed like an adventurer wandering the forests with a compass keeping them on track. Not to steal and farm their data to psychologically manipulate their buying decisions. Website, video content, photography, books, art, activity sheets, story-driven copy, psychologically tuned typography, how-to manuals, information cards, and sponsorship booklets, the entire package is a creative strategy to bring success to how people honestly and sincerely relate to your business. Yes, it costs money but it’s an integral part of any business that wishes to set sail with a good mast-head, a tuned compass, a pristine rudder, a memorable flag, and a trustworthy hard-working team with a good command structure to top it off. 

If it’s not there then you’ll quickly lose all respect and customer loyalty. Visual communication that tells a story in an appealing way, something honest that holds true to your brand promise from beginning, middle to end. It’s a morally inclined philosophy and it’s one that sincerely bonds customers to any company that aims to honorably serve their community inside and out. It’s not about user experiences, customer retention, SWAT analysis (how militaristic!), target markets, or forgetting about members after they sign up. These terms and misguided methods have a machine-like and militarized terminator feel to them. It’s about relationships. It’s always been about relationships. Fostering and nurturing the rhythms of Mother Nature that unite us all. Failure leads to success! Whether it’s with the sky at night, the ocean on our doorsteps, music, art, design, science, or, most importantly, friends and family, it’s playing the notes of intuition and logic, at the same time! One without the other leads to false perception. It’s about getting to know the client and the service they wish to provide to the community and then sincerely and honestly bonding with that community to explore what it is that they need using first-hand, direct observational experiences so we can create consistent communication that will stand the test of time and live long in the memories of whoever experiences or interacts with them. Nature leads us all by example, and all we have to do to pick up on her musical rhythm and the needle on her compass is to lift our heads up and pay attention. Because when we do, we all Flourish! In our own unique way. As Huey Lewis and the News sang … “That’s just the Power of Love!”

No stock photos, templates, or A.I. generated images were used in the making of this study. Everything you see was hand-crafted and then built in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, and Bridge to produce this test-run google-doc presentation. 

Product and portfolio photography of the Flourish! Books were created by SergioP.com - $732.50

Hardcover + fabric  book printed at Bookart.ca  - $3,100 for x100 copies

Soft cover books printed at imetropol.com  -  $611.68 x100 copies

Coast Salish Art by andreafritz.com  - $2,000 for x4 pieces of digital art with limited license. 

Flourish! School Food Society - $22,000 for work created thus far minus costs above. Website design by rossalexnaderwhelan.com and built by Nev Gibson at indivision.ca (charged separately.)

Archival research, concepts, visual communications strategy, graphic design, photography, astrophotography, and everything else by yours truly: rossalexanderwhelan.com 

Special thanks go out to my darling wife Kajia for the emotional support and willingness to make room for the creative madness all over the walls at home. Nev Gibson for introducing Matthew to me. Logan Ford at Rockslide Gallery for introducing me to Andrea, and, of course, Haus of Owl for the lessons and experiences that guided this practical old-world scientific study into the light. May this same light in turn bring you closer to the geometric and musical principles inherent within Mother Nature, our own psychology, the things you love the most in this world, and the grand overarching cosmos that we’re all part of, because, in the end, we can’t exactly rearrange the cosmos, can we?  The universe brought us together but the 20th century pulled us apart.  

The How to Grow Book will be distributed to over 30 schools on Vancouver Island.

To be continued …

“We don’t need wings to Fly”