Canada Holidays

Sneak peek of some designs from the project

My friend Paul Craig and I have worked on a couple of projects together in the past, and like to keep in touch even though he lives far away in Ottawa. In November of 2019, he mentioned he was working on a small project that showed all of the statutory holidays in Canada.

Paul's Project

Paul told me he wanted to make this project for a few reasons:

• Help people to figure out which days they get to have off of work, and when. Sometimes holidays fall on a Saturday, and people aren't always sure which day to take off. Friday or Monday?
• Learn about SEO and try to rank on search engines
• Play with tech and make a neat design, making something moderately useful
• You can read Paul's writeup

Paul had started building his project out when I joined the project.

Paul's MVP version of the site while he was still working with building out the data

My Contribution

I took a look at his site, and spent a couple hours iterating on his initial design based on the data Paul was using. I provided a few different versions to improve the typography's visual rhythm, improve colours, add visual interest, help with the affordances for the drop downs, and organize the holiday data into a more usable table.

UI mocks that I provided to Paul based on what we discussed on a brief call together

I met with Paul on a call to go over the designs, and let him pick and choose what he wanted to use. He picked up a few ideas, and has iterated on some stuff since. I've been pretty hands off since then, but enjoyed spending a few hours to help a friend.

Design iteration we landed on together

Project Outcomes

• Canadian citizens can figure out which holidays they get off for work.
• Paul owes me a favour someday.
• You can view the site here