As seen on Everyone's Creative

2025 Canadian Federal Election

34 Pages, 2 MB Much more thoroughly designed than anyone else’s documents. Feels like a real print document. Lots of images but only 2 MB – well optimized for web without crushing all the photos into sludge. No attempt at making an accessible document

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Abysmal. Ugly Just an utter mess. This looks like someone’s homework they forgot to do for their high-school communications class (ask me how I know)

Exported from InDesign for Windows. No other info, unfortunately, but it’s fun to figure that out.

67518e749146d42121c34729-Immigration-Policy-Printout-EN.pdf

Exported from acrobat, which makes me think this was assembled from separate parts. Maybe the individual platform sections could tell us more?

No title, author, etc. This is also now the earliest export of the parties, slipping in ahead of the Bloc.

It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that the PPC uses the same font as the CPC. It feels like a kid copying the kid next to them’s test answers (without considering if the kid they’re copying from is even very smart).

Many of the stock photos used feel exceptionally stock. They feel like parodies of stock photos.

The “Issues” and “Facts” columns aren’t always balanced so it leads to some really awkward layouts.

Every page is using this weird, very wide two-column layout. It doesn’t do anything to present the information in an interesting way and it has the textual experience of having someone rant at you. It’s just wall after wall of text in this very repetitive but not very rational structure.

43 Pages, 9 MB No cover page or introduction - it just jumps right into i

67e0726aab41348a5dc41108-ppc-platform-en-2025.pdf

I feel bad for ragging on the CPC’s PDF filename...

Not passing checks like everyone else. The actual page design is very default feeling and so doesn’t present major issues.

The actual platform page adds little that the menu doesn’t have. It’s odd how happy all the design feels. It stands out to me that this almost looks like a not-for-profit for children or something.

The platform pages give you a ton of text and bury their actual policy. This feels misleading and manipulative in how it is laid out (first we have to set the terms of reality before you can understand what our policy is) because it is.

The actual platform part of the page gives you these weird check-mark paragraphs. I suppose the use of the bold headings helps with parsing the high-level information but this very clearly feels designed not to be read in depth by most people.

Clicking “platform” gives you a giant drop-down menu of options from the policy. Even the really stupid and offensive ones! There is a link to a PDF platform here, too.

Navigation: First thing you can click is “About.” This is the second party to have the actual word “platform” in the navigation.

Visit Site: First thing you get is a rotating banner that prompts you to join the mailing list, find your candidate or join the party.

...I can’t promise that their font selections came from dafont, but they aren’t not on dafont...

Site, like everyone else, fails accessibility checks. But since the plat

Visit Site: First thing you get is a donation prompt.

Archive of website at time of research.

No title, author, etc. Exported from InDesign for Mac. Notably, this is the earliest export of the major parties. That feels like it also tracks with how much more polished this looks.

Mon dieu! This document actually has a conclusion.

Lots of pictures but no visual aids.

The layouts are really nicely assembled. Not exciting but for a policy document they aren’t offensive or overly boring which is much more common.

3 pages, 82 KB No introduction or context No logo All text is live and can be selected/copied No tags, language info or title Tables aren’t named within the metadata so they just show up as “elements” No title, author... no metadata at all.

Bloc Québécois

Archive of website at time of research.

This feels like the appendix to the website content and not a different format of the same content. In a way, this is similar to how the Conservatives presented the information. The website has far more visual appeal.

First impression: HIERARCHY IS HERE!!!

Side Note: The inclusion of the audio platform is cool, but it’s not exactly a high-quality audio book... it’s introduced by one of their candidates and then read by a robot.

blocqcplateforme-2025web.pdf

Notably, they actually just call the platform their platform, and the link takes you right to the PDF. No website mirroring the content of the platform. Interesting!

Navigation: First thing you can click is “Le Chef” – the party leader.

Exported from InDesign for windows – also feels flipped. I would just guess that Green Party are Mac people. Maybe not, though, since Macs aren’t really repairable and create a lot of e-wa

Also no real conclusion. Ends with a page of green. On brand, at least

Not passing PDF Accessibility in some common places. I do feel like the inclusion of the audio platform makes this less of a

interesting that they didn’t include the illustrations from the website anywhere and instead kept things all text-based.

very plain and bare-bones

Very nice core page structure. Nice asymmetry. Nice logical heading styling.

124 Pages, 1 MB

PDF Platform

GP-Platform-English-Final-1.pdf

to the robots, this isn’t accesible this seems largely due to the colours used for buttons

to my eye, this is very accessible text is readable hierarchy is clear the inclusion of an audio platform is a first and a real effort towards inclusion and helping people access your message

Web Accessibility

super clear structure. Interesting custom illustration that has meaning (even if it’s shallow).

Platform: you can download the platform, you can read it on the site, and you can listen to an accessible audio version of the platform.

Navigation: first thing you can click is... the platform?! I don’t know if this is right...

Visit site: first thing you get is... a call to go vote? That’s weird. I don’t even see a picture of the leader(s) of the party!

The end of the platform does leave you with a call to action. The end of every platform page on the website leaves you with a mailing list sign-up form.

Used mostly Raleway, a nice Google font that does a lot of the heavy lifting for the design. However, their using so many of its weights. Owners is an Adobe font.

Here’s a shocker: this was made on a MAC! For some reason the CPC seem like PC people. The use of InDesign to set this up and the file name make me imagine this was not done in-house and may have been a cheap contract job.

Interesting to note that this was exported out on April 23rd, which is a full two days after advance polls closed in Canada and less than a week before election day.

No title, author, metadata at all

You can see here how the entire text content of the page is seen by the PDF reader as one text box. That means that, while this “passes” for reading order, there’s actually just no structure on the page. It’s just... plopped in as-is.

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Tagged PDF Has language set no title no bookmarks which indicates to me that headings may not have been set up properly (or at all) no image alt text same issue with headings for the tables

The lack of any design common sense leads to so many little problems like how many hanging orphaned words there are. Two in a row!

No use of visual aids, graphs, or even icons to help break up information. I guess PP is the icon used throughout. I can’t confirm but PP may be from shutterstock.

The tables are live text, can be parsed, selected, copied, etc.

Unlike their website, this PDF is so big because none of these images are compressed. This is huge for a random image. Also this composite makes PP look tiny – if those people behind him walked up to him they’d be like twice as big as he is.

Guys, you should have used this much higher-res image for the website background. But... I guess you’d need to know how to compress it effectively to use it on the site without making it look like shit. So maybe we’ve discovered the issue.

The energy going into masking out PP and this asian woman used to represent immigrants is used throughout and makes everything look so fake. Making things look more fake is arguably on-brand for PP so this may be a positive decision?

There is budget here – so many photos that are clearly staged. The Liberal photos feel mostly like editorial photos from one event, and the NDP had basically no photos, but this feels like they spent all day taking these.

Absolutely no design sense. This thing is just a page filled with text and some images thrown in. The margins are suuuuper narrow and the font styling is so similar that nothing stands out. It just makes everything blend into sludge. lots of bold text but when you do that every paragraph it stops adding and just becomes the default. at least it’s black on white.

+1 for giving us this weird-ass image to use for whatever we want.

PDF Platform Design Review:

30 pages, 12.9 MB fist impression: not named well for a file the public is meant to download

20250418-CPCPlatform-8-5x11-EN-R1-pages.pdf

PDF of Platform

This site similarly fails accessibility checks.

but not every page gets a video. No love for the fisheries???

Some very basic hierarchy. They’re clearer than the NDP but they are saying significantly less. They’re mostly being clearer here by using default styling and failing to actually try to do anything visually.

...so, each “page” of the platform is very little text and a video! Maybe they all aren’t videos, but the first is.

Plan content is online, but you can also download the “full” plan! At first glance, this seems very complete and clearer than both Liberal and NDP.

First impression: this photo sucks. Not a comment about the content, but the quality. It’s awful, too low-res, very JPEG-y and should never have been used for a background.

Interestingly, this isn’t a design pivot from recent sentiment turning away from PP. In Jan 2025 the site has the same navigation (though, his name is the main heading on the page so maybe that was to avoid redundancy).

Navigation: First thing is... not the leader? Well, it is, once you click into the menu, but this is a clear distinction from the other two main party’s navigation.

Visit site: first thing is... not a donation prompt? It’s the homepage and an animating button prompting us to “read the plan.”

Screen-Recording-2025-04-25-at-2.19.11-PM.mov

First thing on site visit? Donation prompt and an election day countdown!

Seems to be working for Minister of Public Procurement, and was likely just tasked with finishing up this document and was the person who exported it. I don’t imagine this was a one-person job.

This one was exported by Piper McWilliams! Also in Microsoft Word?

It’s not great to see that there’s no Alt text for the charts, graphs and design elements. Maybe Microsoft Word isn’t the best tool for the job here?

It does end unceremoniously and just sort of... stops.

Design wise, this is just a nice boring document version of the website. It doesn’t do anything differently, and if anything it’s just less of a smooth experience than the webpage. Hierarchy, readable text, simple layout, graphics and design structure all persist from the website.

Copyright notice... on your party platform? If anything I feel like you should make this Creative Commons 😅

Canada-Strong.pdf

Plot Twist:

Designer with the Liberal Party and PMO for about a decade. ...Microsoft Word? Darrell???

Set up in Microsoft Word (lol) by the great Darrell Dean! I don’t know who that is... who is that?

PDF of Costing Plan

Canada-Strong---Fiscal-and-Costing-Plan.pdf

5 pages, 674 KB Doesn’t have Liberal Party logo or letterhead? No branding? Doesn’t even say Liberal Party at the top? All text is live and can be selected except the “Canada Strong” logo thing “Canada Strong” logo thing has no alt text. A blind person would have no idea what this is. Is tagged Language set Combo of google and microsoft fonts

Not everything is properly outlined, so when I open up this shield icon the weight of these strokes isn’t fixed and expanded into a shape.

The icons seem well structured. Not super tidy but functional.

Accessibility: On first glance, this is way stronger than NDP in terms of the visual accessibility. I can read it. It’s black on white. The red can be a bit much sometimes, but, cleverly, they don’t use it as the background colour for all the text on the page.

According to the checker, it’s still failing but I don’t think that we should be designing for robots.

The things that are failing are few and are big headings, not the actual body of the platform.

Certainly all just stock. But not doing much to be strategic or consistent about what kind of stock used.

Live HTML Tables

The graphs are SVG. Love that. Can’t be compressed and won’t become a burden on the site in terms of bloat.

Correction: some images have alt

Images have alt text but it doesn’t really add much. “Unite” Cool.

Charts, design structure, visual aids! All of this goes a long way towards breaking up the wall of text and making things more inviting to r

Hierarchy!!! We’re breaking down information into clear sizes and order of importance.

Weird aside but I don’t love “cstrong” as the permalink for this to be under. Not searchable, logical, or even really readable. Why not “our-plan” or “2025-Platform”?

Leading with High-level contents summary that breaks things down logically and clearly is a good idea. I like the use of plain text and HTML links leading places. I look at this and can parse it and I understand where I’m going.

Very deep structure. Multiple pages. Sticky navigation that means you have context for where you are and what you’re reading.

Also seems to be an online platform. However “Our Plan” feels much clearer than “commitments”

Navigation: First thing you can click is about the leader

Main navigation: first thing you can click is about the leader

First thing on site visit? Donation Prompt

Overall, seems well put together but like no extra effort went into tagging the document, making it accessible or adding any interactive features.

cost-of-commitments.pdf

The one PDF you can download...

Platform ends unceremoniously. If anyone did suffer through reading all of this white text they would just be sort of cast into the abyss without any conclusion or bow put on the platform. But maybe you want to donate?

Icons are SVGs, which means they always look good (enough) but the style of icons is inconsistent and the finish quality of some (the food icons, for example) is a bit messy. At least it’s all outlined.

Interestingly, whoever built these pages was referring to it as the platform, even though they don’t in plain text.

None of this takes away from the fact that the design choices regarding text and colour just don’t make the platform easy to read.

While nothing mandates that political parties follow the Accessible Canada Act, it feels a bit hypocritical to mandate things for federal agencies but not follow them when you’re campaigning for the authority over those agencies.

I have my thoughts about accessibility checking tools like this... those are for another time. It’s important to be consistent and if you want to form a government I think you should aim to at least follow your own governments guidelines. This is especially important for the “progressive” party

No graphs, charts, or even call-out text to draw you eye to anything. Everything is bold. Everything is equally important and equally hard to read.

There’s an attempt at hierarchy, which is nice to see... But it isn’t a great attempt and the use of bold for everything makes things kind of mush together.

Clicking into these boxes reveals more bold text. I’m going to say going with white text on orange or blue was not the best or most accessible choice. In fact... how accessible is it?

There’s no use of visual aids anywhere.

Core structure: one big block of text with more blocks of text. Not much breaking up the information. Absolutely nothing visualizing any of the information beyond generic icons.

These buttons are just linked headings to move further down the page.

It’s very text heavy. Not a bad thing to have a thorough platform, but not very elegantly broken down for consumption.

Web-only design... interesting idea but poorly communicated. Most people probably aren’t going to download a PDF (so having the platform fully online seems good) but it’s so not clear at a glance that this is their election platform and not just the party’s principles or values.

Reviewing the Platform Design & Communications

The url (ndp.ca/campaign-commitments) makes this clearer but it feels crazy not to use the word platform anywhere

After searching, I realize ”Commitments″ is the party platform for the election?

First mention of “platform” I find isn’t about their platform

Can’t see the platform itself in the main site navigation

Checking:

For PDFs:

Party Platform Design & Communication Review

How much thought did they put into helping you understand what they value and how they think they can govern?

How much effort and care do they put into communicating that to you?

How do the parties communicate what they’re planning to do?