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Case Study

DND Directorate of Honours and Recognition | Orders, Decorations and Medals

DND National Defence, The Directorate of Honours and Recognition, Ribbons, Medals and Awards. Photographed, prepared, and designed three editions of a digital library used by media outlets and publishers around the world, by Jeff Poissant, RGD of Evolving Media & Design Inc. Worked with Major André Levesque and Project Officer Carl Gauthier at the time.
DND National Defence, The Directorate of Honours and Recognition, Ribbons, Medals and Awards. Photographed, prepared, and designed three editions of a digital library used by media outlets and publishers around the world, by Jeff Poissant, RGD of Evolving Media & Design Inc. Worked with Major André Levesque and Project Officer Carl Gauthier at the time.
DND National Defence, The Directorate of Honours and Recognition, Ribbons, Medals and Awards. Photographed, prepared, and designed three editions of a digital library used by media outlets and publishers around the world, by Jeff Poissant, RGD of Evolving Media & Design Inc. Worked with Major André Levesque and Project Officer Carl Gauthier at the time.
Collaboration is the key to success

Sacred Trust

Worked under direct commission from the Department of National Defence. Every medal was unpacked wearing white photographic gloves, authenticated (eliminating costume copies), and inspected alongside DND historians to confirm correct ribbons and condition, and provenance before photography began.
Photography

Master Photography

Jeff Poissant personally photographed over 70 % of the pieces (front and back) in-studio under controlled museum-grade lighting. For geographically distant or ultra-sensitive items, we coordinated with unit photographers across Canada and the Official Photographer to the Governor General when required.
Writing and editing promotional text

Digital Restoration

Every image was perfected in Adobe Photoshop: medals repaired, missing ribbons recreated from scratch, incorrect colour sequences corrected, backgrounds removed on separate layers with precise clipping paths – all saved as fully layered .PSD masters for perfect compatibility with every publishing platform, past, present, and future.
 
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Everlasting Legacy

Delivered the final third edition on CD/DVD with custom-designed catalogues listing every piece in official order of precedence, plus web-optimized JPEGs for the Canadian Honours Chart. To this day, publishers, documentary makers, and ceremony planners around the world rely on these drag-and-drop, colour-accurate images that keep Canada’s military heritage vividly alive.
 
National Defence – Directorate of Honours and Recognition
Official Digital Library of Canadian Orders, Decorations and Medals
(2002 · 2005 · 2008)

The Story Behind the Project

Some opportunities truly come once in a lifetime. In 2002, Jeff Poissant of Evolving Media & Design Inc. was commissioned by the Department of National Defence’s Directorate of Honours and Recognition to create the world’s first comprehensive, high-resolution digital library of every Order, Decoration, and Medal awarded to Canadian soldiers for valour, peacekeeping, and combat service across three centuries.
 
We were entrusted with the second (2005) and third (2008) editions, each one building on the last. Holding these pieces in our studio – some the only surviving examples in existence – was a humbling reminder of the courage they represent. It was, and remains, one of the greatest honours of our company’s history.
somalia-medal-300
DND National Defence, The Directorate of Honours and Recognition, Ribbons, Medals and Awards. Photographed, prepared, and designed three editions of a digital library used by media outlets and publishers around the world, by Jeff Poissant, RGD of Evolving Media & Design Inc. Worked with Major André Levesque and Project Officer Carl Gauthier at the time.

A small sample of the catalogue is provided in PDF format. The file is 13 MB, secured, so you can not copy, edit or print the catalogue. It is for your viewing enjoyment only!

Download a sample PDF

The finished digital library is freely available to historians, publishers, writers, designers, and media outlets worldwide. Every image is press-ready and colour-perfect right out of the folder – simply drag and drop into InDesign, QuarkXPress, or any layout program and it’s ready to go. No additional correction needed.

Where necessary, we went far beyond basic photography: damaged medals were meticulously repaired pixel by pixel, missing ribbons were digitally recreated by hand, reversed or incorrect ribbons were fixed (yellow-red-blue instead of blue-red-yellow, for example), and every detail was verified against official records.

For a small number of the rarest pieces we were not permitted to handle directly – one was photographed only by the Official Photographer to the Governor General of Canada, while others in Vancouver, Newfoundland, and elsewhere were captured by trusted unit photographers and seamlessly integrated into the master collection.

Photo Credits:

The following people were instrumental in photographing the military medals used within this digital library from the years 2003 to 2007.

Jeffery Poissant, RGD > Evolving Media & Design Inc.
Fred Cattroll > Cattroll Photo Associates

Cpl. A.Collins > DND CF Photo Unit, NRC Ottawa
Cpl. G. Hambleton > DND CFJIC Production Ottawa
Cpl. JC Beaulne > DND CF Photo Unit, NRC Ottawa
Pte M. Arsenault > DND CF Photo Unit, NRC Ottawa
Cp| H. Vanayan > ADM(HR-Mil) DHH

John Evans > NAC
David Ashe > NAC
MCpl. Issa Paré > GG Ottawa

13 MOM Medal Front

13 MOM Medal Back

Evolving Media had to take each file, open it in Adobe Photoshop and meticulously remove the background, leaving the Order, Decoration and Medal on its own layer in Photoshop. A keyline was added, or working path, around each item to ensure a transparent background when placed into older Quark Xpress publications.

Order, Decoration and Medal
Adobe Photoshop file with layers intact.

Backwards compatibility was very important to ensure the longevity of the files. Adobe Photoshop was selected as the master file format (.PSD) with layers intact, since Photoshop, to this day, is the Industry standard.