Aylward’s Designs spreading ‘positivitee’

By Mark Squibb/June 30, 2022

Mother and son graphic designers Kay and David Aylward are proud to announce that a series of T-shirts sold by national women’s clothing store Cleo to raise awareness for breast cancer will bear designs created by the dynamic duo.

The clothing store was looking to work with a breast cancer survivor to craft a series of designs for a line of ‘positivitees’ that portrayed different aspects of the fight against breast cancer. For every shirt sold, Cleo has pledged to donate $1 to the Breast Cancer Society of Canada.

Kay, owner of Aylward’s Design in Witless Bay and herself a breast cancer survivor, heard about the opportunity through a contact at the Newfoundland and Labrador chapter of the Breast Cancer Society, and Aylward’s Designs was commissioned by the chain almost a year ago to undertake the design work for the t-shirts.

She said she was proud to work with her son, who is also an artist, on a project that carries so much meaning for the both of them.

“The family connection made it a special project,” said Kay. “David has quite a talent on the design end of it. From the breast cancer point of view, to be able to do something that may give back some money to the Breast Cancer Society, that’s always a plus.”

A number of family members, David added, have been diagnosed with different forms of cancer over the years.

“Just knowing that you can do a little bit to help prevent that from happening in the future is nice,” said David.

Cleo provided the duo with an image board for inspiration, which the pair used as a launching point for their own creativity.

“Mother would come to me and say, ‘It would be nice if we could incorporate more of the outdoors,’ or ‘It would be nice if we could incorporate family,’ so we started looking through pictures that we had, like ones that she took when she was kayaking or with the grandkids, and we started sketching things from there,” said David. “Sometimes you start to see inspiration in everyday things that you don’t realize are inspiring. And that’s what a lot of the designs came down to. We gave them about 12 designs in total, and they picked the four that we liked the best.”

The designs include a pair of boxing gloves, two family members holding hands, a particularly resilient tree growing in a harsh environment, and a silhouette of Kay and her granddaughter Sadie kayaking into the sunset.

“The one of the two kayakers is of myself and my granddaughter,” said Kay “And that holds a special spot for me, because she was so excited to go paddling with me.”

Kay is herself an active rower and dragon boat racer.

Shirts can be purchased online or at the Cleo store at the Village Mall in St. John’s.

“They’ve told us they’ve had people coming in (buying them) hand over fist saying, ‘We know the artists’ or ‘We’re related to them,’” joked David. “Sometimes you forget how big your family is until Cleo gets stormed by a hundred people saying they’re related to you.”