HOW DESIGN CAN PROPEL YOUR GROWTH
What’s the key to growing your customer base, your sales, your revenue, and your team?
WELL, YOUR MOM WAS RIGHT: JUST BE YOURSELF.
When your business has a strong brand and a compelling way of expressing it visually, new clients show up. Good branding is about more than making things look pretty. It’s about sharing the truly loveable personality at the heart of your company, and magnetically attracting the right people to you.
This is where we love to play. We are “personality specialists” with business acumen that allows us to really be in service. We get to know and understand your company. And because we dive in deep, we can help your future clients to get it too. Not only that, but we are experts at refreshing your branding then, creating the right sales-driving tools that you need to get results. Cool right?
Our Promise
We stand in integrity and this is our promise to you: we will always show up authentically to deliver our best work. That means course correcting if we slip, practicing true accountability, and treating everyone with respect, fairness, and kindness.
Our Culture
We’re a fun-loving group of business experts, graphic and web designers who have been working together in historic Fort Langley for over two decades. We love breaking up the day with dog walks in the neighborhood, chair yoga and meditations, celebrating wins and birthdays. We make the most of every day, even when things go sideways. We’re really proud of the no-BS, gossip-free, supportive environment we’ve created for ourselves which truly makes this a great place to work.
We’re a fun-loving group of designers and business experts who have been working together in historic Fort Langley for over fifteen years now. We love breaking up the day with walks in the neighborhood and cuddles with our office dogs. We make the most of every day, even when things go sideways. We’re really proud of the no-BS, gossip-free, supportive environment we’ve created for ourselves.
AT FLYING HORSE, MAKING A LIVING FEELS LIKE REALLY LIVING.
How We Roll
PRESIDENT & CEO
CHRISTIE
It’s been a life-long passion of mine to create transformation, make something better, enhance the way something looks and draw attention (preferably the good kind). As a child this was through art, dreaming big dreams and imagining what could be. Now as a business owner it looks like a conversation, downloading the ideas of clients, listening to their wants, needs and understanding their vision.
If you hadn’t already guessed, horses are also a big part of my life, and the barn is where you’ll find me outside of the office. Creating a business that I love has always been grounded in living the equestrian dream and my love for horses fuels my drive to succeed in my career. Because of this I have created a schedule and work environment that fosters bringing your dog to work, an earlier start and finish to allow for more freedom after our work day and no drama. When I set out to build a business it wasn’t just about the clients it was also about the team and creating an environment that they wanted to come back to every day. After working in too many toxic environments it was a priority to ensure I never allowed for that kind of negativity in my studio and I have stuck by that.
We have the choice to create whatever we want for our lives and I am grateful for all that entrepreneurship has given me. Flying Horse Design Studio is everything I always wanted it to be and is ever evolving. I look forward to all the adventures to come, the people we get to meet and the team we get to grow. Keep connected with my team and I along the way, adventures are best with friends!
SENIOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
AMY
I grew up with my hands in paint and my head in the clouds. Creativity is something that came naturally to me and I can’t help but thinking in colours and images. I started with painting giant circles on paper that were layers of colours so thick that it literally melted through the pages creating holes (no, seriously, my mom saved them!) and today I’m designing websites and other visuals. My first design class was in high school, learning the basics of photoshop, and I continued learning other design programs throughout high school; I even dabbled in video animation, although it wasn’t my passion. From there I went into Marketing in University, creating a better base to understand the end goals of design, and after that, of course, I took a graphic design program at UFV.
I have been working at Flying horse since 2016 and have grown my skills exceptionally, both learning from Christie along with self-teaching. Flying Horse has been a great environment for growth and working in Fort Langley couldn’t be a nicer place to be located; who can beat all of these coffee shops!?
Outside of work I enjoy thrift shopping (I mean it’s just another way of being creative!), taking my dog Dannie for lots of hikes & adventures, reading, and hopefully soon enough, back to traveling!
SENIOR
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
EMILY
On Maternity Leave
My younger self would be dumbfounded by the number of colours, mixing, layering and outside of the box thinking that I now bring to the table. I was meticulous, organizing my colouring books, only entrusting them to those that could stay inside the lines and colour a giraffe yellow, not purple!
From roots as an illustrator in Montreal, I hungered to explore. So, when I got the chance to move across Canada, I just had to do it. When I got to BC I enrolled at UFV where graphic design became my passion. In 2018 I was awarded the Salazar award for print media, and I graduated in 2020 receiving the Emerging Artist award from the Abbotsford art council shortly thereafter.
I can honestly say I love bringing people’s ideas to life in my work here at FHDS. The amazing support I get from Christie and Amy allows me the opportunity to bring those little pieces of each client that makes them special, and show it to the world.
When I am not working, I love to dance and sing to my heart’s content, and I am working on putting together an at-home screen printing studio. When I am not being artsy, I love a cup of coffee and some board games with my friends.
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
HANNAH
I still have my Grade Five career project on graphic design. It was the first time I learned that graphic design could actually be a career, and from that point on, I knew I had found a way to turn something I loved into a career. I’ve always been drawn to the visual arts, and while the medium has changed over the years, my love for creating never really did.
I went on to pursue Graphic and Digital Design at UFV, where I only fell further in love with design. I discovered my love for colourful, typographic, and illustration-based work and was awarded an Honourable Mention for Logo Design in the 2023 RGD Student Awards. Today, I love bringing ideas to life through design and still enjoy incorporating physical and tactile mediums into my creative process, often sketching ideas on paper before bringing them into the digital world. I’m lucky to do that alongside a team at FHDS that gives me the opportunity to keep learning and trying new things.
When I’m not designing, I’m probably reading. I’m a massive bookworm and a self-proclaimed “book dragon,” especially when it comes to special editions. When I’m not adding to my ever-growing collection, I love camping along the Oregon Coast, baking something I probably didn’t need to make, or spending time with my golden retriever, Briar (although I often call him Monster).
DIRECTORS OF
GREETINGS (DOG)
DANNIE & KENNY
Dannie and Kenny are Formosan Mountain Dogs that came all the way from Taiwan in the fall of 2019. They love warning us of incoming intruders and battling each other while we’re deep in concentration on our work. The highlight of Dannie’s day is grabbing her stuffed hedgehog from excitement when her other best friend, Fender, shows up for work! While Kenny’s highlight is going for walkies at lunchtime or the field during the Summer.