Dynamic Graphics & Design

For a long time Dynamic Graphics & Design and Camrose felt closely connected. It’s where the studio built its roots, relationships and reputation. Camrose is still a community I care deeply about and I’m proud of the work I’ve done there. I also still have some amazing Camrose clients who continue to be an important part of the business.

More opportunities started coming from outside Camrose and working with businesses across Alberta felt like a natural extension of what the studio was already doing. The work still starts the same way. Listen to the client, understand the business and figure out what actually makes sense. The distance changed but the way I work didn’t.

Growing across Alberta isn’t about replacing the connection I have with Camrose. It’s about building on those roots and giving the studio room to work with more businesses, industries and communities. I’m proud of where DG&D started and I’m excited about where it can go next.

High Velocity Equipment Training College was one of those client relationships that grew along with the business. From 2011 to 2023 the work expanded from individual design projects into brand development, website design, educational materials, training resources and ongoing graphic design support.

As the college added programs and its day-to-day work became more complicated the materials had started developing in different directions. Student handbooks, training manuals, class information, recruitment pieces and the website all needed to feel connected. Some of that work was marketing but a lot of it was used by instructors, office staff and students to make everyday communication easier.

High Velocity also wasn’t a brand that needed to be quiet or overly polished. It operated in a busy competitive industry where information needed to feel bold, direct and easy to understand. The website was reorganized so prospective students could quickly understand the programs, requirements and next steps while reusable templates helped the college create new materials without starting over each time.

The college closed in 2023 when ownership moved on to new ventures but the work is still a good example of what a long-term design relationship can become. Design wasn’t just making individual pieces look better. It became a system that helped the organization communicate and operate as it grew. You can see the full case study here: https://dynamicgraphicsanddesign.ca/high-velocity-equipment-training-college/

Some websites seem to be written for people who already know the company. The service names are vague, the opening message says almost nothing and the useful information is buried three pages deep. The owner understands it because they already know what everything means.

Part of the problem is that businesses are often too close to their own information. Internal terms and industry language feel obvious when you use them every day. Then the writing gets polished until a simple explanation becomes a paragraph of broad promises that could belong to almost any company. It might sound more professional but the visitor still doesn’t know whether they’re in the right place.

A visitor doesn’t have all of that background. They shouldn’t need a guided tour just to learn what the business does, whether it can help them and what they should do next. Good website design can still have depth, personality and interesting ideas. But the basic point needs to make sense on the first pass.

I didn’t always set good limits around revisions. If a client wanted another version, another colour or a completely different direction I’d keep going because I thought that was what good service looked like. I wanted the client to be happy and saying yes felt easier than explaining why another round might not help. The project would get longer but the logo, website or design didn’t always get better.

After enough versions the original goal can start to disappear. Instead of asking whether the design works for the business everyone starts comparing small details or choosing based on what feels safest. More options can make the decision harder especially when nobody is sure what problem the next revision is supposed to fix.

Setting boundaries didn’t make me less helpful. It made me more honest about what the project included and why we were making changes. If something genuinely isn’t working we should fix it. But every revision should move the work closer to the goal not become a way to avoid making a decision.

For a long time, business growth seemed to mean the same thing for everyone. Hire more people. Add more services. Chase bigger accounts. If a studio wasn’t getting bigger it sometimes felt like people assumed it was standing still. I understand why some people want that kind of growth but it isn’t what I want for DG&D.

It's true that sometimes a bigger agency can take on more work and offer things a smaller studio can’t. But what I don’t want is for a client to explain their business to one person, have that information passed through several others and never really speak to the person doing the work. I like hearing directly from the business owner. I like staying involved in the branding, website design and graphic design and knowing why each decision was made.

Staying smaller doesn’t mean I have to do every part of every project alone. I can work with other people when a project needs it without trying to build a large team around me. It does mean I can’t take every project and some businesses will need a bigger agency than I can offer. I’m okay with that. I’d rather run a smaller studio I care about than grow DG&D into something I never wanted to run.

It’s Batman Day and Batman has been part of my life since I saw Tim Burton’s 1989 movie. I collected as many of the toys as I could get my hands on and my interest in the character never went away.

What has kept me interested isn’t the gadgets, the costume or how many people he can beat in a fight. It’s his humanity. Batman is tired. He gets hurt. He carries the weight of everything that has happened to him and he’s still just a man trying to fight impossible odds. No matter how heavy that load gets he keeps going.

Batman Begins comes back to a simple line that has always stuck with me: “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.” To me that idea says more about Batman than any fight scene ever could.

There’s another moment in Identity Crisis after Tim Drake’s father is murdered. Batman pulls Tim close and the caption simply says, “Batman and Robin. Orphans.” Moments like that remind you that Batman understands what these kids have lost. Behind all the darkness he has a soft spot for children and a need to protect the childhood he never got to keep.

I’ve found something to enjoy in almost every version of Batman. My unpopular opinion is that I usually like him less when the stories lean too far into the grittiness or madness. Frank Miller wrote Year One which is one of my favourite Batman stories but I really dislike All Star Batman and Robin. I don’t particularly like The Dark Knight Returns either despite how highly regarded it is, and Absolute Batman isn’t doing much for me.

Batman doesn’t become more interesting to me just because a story makes him darker. The version I keep coming back to is tired, hurt and very human but he gets back up and keeps going anyway.

came into the project excited to move the business and brand forward. Their competitors weren’t doing much to modernize how they looked online and Brad and Scott saw a chance to stand out. The existing logo and colour palette were staying, so the job was to build something stronger around an identity people already knew.

Early in the website design I started moving away from making everything too clean. It looked polished but it was also starting to feel a little too sterile. Battle River is a family-run trades business with a down-to-earth personality. Making it look like a large faceless company would have missed the point.

The same thing happened with the first social media graphics. Much of the final design was already there but the posts didn’t feel like the people behind the business. We made the wording more casual and turned the posts into short animations with music. They still looked professional but they had more life in them.

The website had a practical job too. Every page was built to help people find the service they needed quickly and make booking the clear next step. Booking forms appeared near the top of the service pages with clear reminders throughout the site.

Modern design doesn’t always mean making everything quieter, cleaner and more corporate. Sometimes it means making a business easier to use while letting more of its real personality come through.

You can read more about our work with Battle River Plumbing and Heating at https://dynamicgraphicsanddesign.ca/battle-river-plumbing-heating/

Early in my career I thought a quick yes made me helpful. I’d agree to a project before I really understood the goal. Or the message. Or what content existed. I didn’t want to slow things down with too many questions or make the job sound more complicated than it needed to be or put too much on the client. The problem was that those questions always showed up later when the work had already started.

I also learned that what a client asks for and what they actually need aren’t always the same thing. Someone might ask for a brochure. Or a logo or website without being completely sure what problem it needs to solve. If I start designing before I understand that I can produce something that looks good and still doesn’t do the job.

Now I ask more before I agree to anything. I want to understand who the project is for. I want to know what it needs to accomplish and what the client actually needs from me. It isn’t about making the process difficult. I still like saying yes but good service isn’t about agreeing the fastest. A few minutes of honest conversation can prevent weeks of fixing the wrong problem.

Apparently it’s National Video Games Day which gives me an excuse to talk about something I’ve loved for most of my life. I’ve been playing video games since my parents surprised me and brought home my first NES but Lufia and the Fortress of Doom was the first game that completely pulled me in. I got lost in its world and story and it’s still one of my favourite games. The soundtrack is not only ingrained in my mind but my family's too.

Then Final Fantasy VI came along although I knew it as Final Fantasy III on the SNES. It was the first game that showed me games could have deep stories, memorable characters and emotional moments that stayed with you after the game was over. I loved it then and it’s still my favourite video game of all time.

Gaming also gave me something important when I was a quiet kid who didn’t always feel like I fit in. It gave me somewhere to escape for a while but it also gave me a way to connect with other kids when we got together to play. We didn’t need much of a plan beyond turning on the console and figuring out whose turn it was.

These days gaming is still one of my favourite ways to relax. After sitting at a desk all day I usually avoid PC games and head for my spot on the couch with the controller charging dock beside me. Right now I’m playing through Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight and Nier: Automata usually early in the morning or after work.

I’m glad adults playing video games isn’t viewed the same way it was 10 or 15 years ago. But I could do without all the noise that came with gaming becoming bigger online. People often decide whether a game is good, bad or somehow a personal insult before it’s even released. I miss renting a game because the cover looked cool or the description sounded interesting. You played it, decided whether you liked it and moved on with your life. Sometimes we could still just play something and see what we think before the internet tells us how we’re supposed to feel about it.

Writers have used the em dash for years because it can create a pause or change the rhythm of a sentence. It can add a thought without breaking the flow completely. It's a tool. A common piece of proper punctuation.

Now people see an em dash and immediately assume a machine wrote the words. Copywriters, social media managers, website writers and novelists are removing it because they’re worried a detector, client or random person online will accuse them of using AI. We’ve reached a point where human writers are being asked to dumb down their writing to prove they’re human.

Honestly I think that’s ridiculous. We're already facing a massive dumbing down of our language and a writer shouldn’t have to dumb down a sentence to avoid the dreaded "AI detection". AI didn’t invent the em dash and it shouldn’t get to own it.

That doesn’t mean we should always use it. If the same punctuation keeps appearing every few lines, the writing probably needs another edit. But we should judge writing by whether it’s clear, honest and worth reading, not by one mark on the page. I say let writers write. The em dash can stay.