not "two sides of the same coin"

 A little rant:

A common saying that I hear in organizations and companies is, "Diversity and Inclusion are two sides of the same coin". 

Here's an example, from an article at the Alberta CPA website (but they aren't the only ones saying this):

Rubbish!

It is true that a coin has two sides and it's not possible to have one side of a coin without the other, but it is certainly possible to have diversity without inclusion. 

Think of pre-apartheid South Africa -- there were white people and Black people (= diversity), but the Blacks were not included and the whites, though in the minority, held all the power (no inclusion).

Think of Canada - there is great diversity, but many minoritized people are excluded, some even from basic human needs like clean drinking water. 

Think of your company or organization. There is probably much diversity among the employees overall, but most likely, the higher in the organizational structure you go, the more white, male and cisgender it gets. So clearly, there is not inclusion at those levels.

[electoral wards in Edmonton given new names by Committee of Indigenous Matriarchs]

Edmonton has revised its electoral boundaries, and at the same time, renamed all the wards with Indigenous names selected by the Committee of Indigenous Matriarchs. 

My new ward is #5, named O-day'min, meaning strawberry or heart berry. 

The city's page about the new wards includes explanations of the new names, pronunciation guides, and information about how the name was chosen for that ward.

If you live in Edmonton, check out your new ward using the links at the bottom of this post.

How did this come about?

creating a diversity and inclusion icon

Recently I had the opportunity to be involved in the design of a logo to be used for internal, diversity and inclusion-related events where I work. 

Now, here are some of the constraints. The design will be of an icon - size 550 x 330 pixels - that will appear in a webpage and in an email newsletter. We don't have masses of space nor the option of fine detail and lines of text that would be available on a poster design or a billboard. This clearly will influence the design.

Now, a common rule when designing logos is that you first design in black and white, so that the design's effectiveness is not dependent on colour. This is because often, things created in colour get photocopied in black and white and you don't want to end up with a meaningless or unreadable image. However, in this case, as the design will only appear on computer screens and almost never printed black and white, this rule is not particularly applicable.

My first idea was the provincial outline turned into a six-piece puzzle, with each piece a different pattern or shading. Here's my sketch:

I kind of liked this, though it is rather impersonal, as it shows interconnectedness and can indicate diversity abstractly. This is one of the difficulties of a logo or icon for diversity and inclusion in general. It would be much easier to design something for one specific group, such as for disability-related events or Indigenous events. In this case, we either need to show D&I abstractly or in a way that includes a wide variety of specific diversities.

So realizing that the above was too detailed for the size requirement, I contemplated a four piece puzzle but that seemed to lose too much.