Milestones
20 Years of Rolling Up Our Sleeves
Connect with Abraham L. on LinkedIn
Author Abraham and Jey L.. May 14, 2026
We started the whole thing on a desk made of plywood like a couple of 20-somethings who didn’t know any better
No investors. No launch plan. Just a twenty-five-year-old designer named Abraham, and his student wife Jey, fresh out of OCAD, and this stubborn idea that good creative work mattered as much as the bookkeeping and the spreadsheets and all that other serious adult nonsense.
The plan was simple, really. Get close to the clients. Not just logos and pretty pictures. Real partnership. Roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, solve actual problems together. A few early clients thought it was brilliant. We picked up a major labour union, a big haircare brand, and a bunch of Canadian companies and start-ups who were willing to bet on a couple of tired kids with more ideas than sleep.
From there it all got a bit ridiculous, in the best possible way.
We helped a Canadian pet food company grow across North America, Europe, and East Asia. We shot photographs that ended up in the Canadian Houses of Parliament. We built campaigns, packaging, events, films, websites, trade show booths, and more late-night, tea-and-buscuit-fuelled disasters than I care to count. Somehow that wobbly plywood desk turned into an actual international studio.
These days the work has wandered off in all sorts of strange and lovely directions.
We opened an office in Manila in 2008, back when working across time zones still felt like sorcery. Then our new partner and creative director George spearheaded the London office in 2019, so we could keep the creative conversation going on both sides of the ocean without everything falling apart at 3 a.m.
These days the work has wandered off in all sorts of strange and lovely directions. We’re partnered with the Ridley Eye Foundation, turning marketing budgets into eye surgeries and life-changing healthcare up in the Himalayas. We’ve helped build London Data Week with the Mayor’s Office and the Alan Turing Institute. Captured events with the Prime Minister and filmed carpool karaoke’s with former England football captains. We’ve taken pictures in deserts, snowstorms, factories, tiny mountain villages, and a few places that definitely weren’t on our radars.
We’ve built room sets on wheels, squeezed 21-foot RVs into studios, designed clothes, produced events, shot campaigns in multiple countries, and hand-built all manner of things like a team of over-caffeinated Genies. We’ve solved client problems at the absolute last minute more times than I’d like to admit.
Just people making things, solving problems, and trying to leave the brands a little stronger and more interesting than they found them.
And through all of it, the same daft belief has stuck around… creativity works best when it’s practical, collaborative, and actually human. Not the buzzword version. Not the fluffy, “disruptive” nonsense. Just people making things, solving problems, and trying to leave the brands a little stronger and more interesting than they found them.
The next twenty years feel pretty hard to predict. Tools are changing, platforms are splintering, AI is doing its clever little dance. But here’s the thing that still feels true: people don’t really change. They still go for originality, craft, clear thinking, and stories that feel like someone actually gave a damn. They still want brands with a voice and ideas with texture.
So that’s where we’re headed. Keep the high-level thinking and the hands-on making under the same roof. Make work that feels more thoughtful and more human in a world that’s getting flatter and louder by the day. Help our clients not just keep up with culture, but quietly slip something decent into it.
Thankfully we finally upgraded from the plywood desk. Gosh, twenty years in and it still feels like we’re just getting started.
