Brand + Website Design in Ottawa
You have an idea of what this could be. Let’s make the brand, website and everything around it feel even better than you pictured.
I was trying to count how many Ottawa businesses I've worked with over the years and somewhere around twenty I stopped counting.
There are coffee shops and dentists, dance studios, gyms, a jiu jitsu studio, shops, spas, health clinics, a piano school, a nonprofit, a real estate development and more than a few businesses that don't fit neatly into any category at all.
Some needed a brand identity. Some needed a custom Squarespace or Shopify website. Some needed a space. And more than a few started as one of those things and turned into all three.
I work with businesses all over Canada and the U.S., but Ottawa is home. And there's something very satisfying about driving through your own city and seeing pieces of your work out in the wild.
Brand Identity · Squarespace Websites · Shopify Websites · Print · Signage · Retail + Interior Design
Walking into a business I've helped design in Ottawa - nothing beats that feeling!
Walking into a business I've helped design in Ottawa - nothing beats that feeling!
OTTAWA BRANDS, WEBSITES & A FEW SPACES ALONG THE WAY
There's a very specific kind of pressure that comes with designing something you know you're going to have to see again.
(I mean this mostly in a good way.)
I've been designing brands and websites in Ottawa for more than a decade. I've worked with businesses before they had names, with established businesses that had completely outgrown what they started with, and with founders who came back years later with an entirely new idea (my favourite kind of pivots!).
I've designed things people walk past. Places people eat in. Websites my friends unknowingly send me. Brands I see while driving my kids around Ottawa.
And while most of my work now happens over Zoom with clients spread across Canada and the U.S., I still really love getting to make things here.
The good stuff rarely fits in one box
Some of my favourite projects are the ones that refuse to stay neatly inside one box.
A brand becomes a website. A website leads to signage. A shop needs an interior. A founder comes back with an entirely new business and somehow we're doing it all over again.
Working locally means I sometimes get to be part of more of those pieces, which is probably why so many of my Ottawa projects have grown well beyond where they started.
Before we decide what platform you need or what anything should look like, we figure out where you're going.
Sometimes that's Squarespace. Sometimes it's Shopify. Sometimes it's brand identity, print, signage and a physical space too.
The point isn't to add more things for the sake of it. It's to make sure the things you do need feel connected.
Lume Club
My work with Lume Club started with brand identity and naming, next came the physical space, designing the boutique interior, Squarespace website, and signage. Now we’re bringing that experience online with a custom Shopify store designed to connect Lume Club’s retail, events and community under one digital roof.
It’s exactly the kind of project I love: not treating the interior, brand and website as separate pieces, but thinking about how the entire experience works together.
Boutique Interior Design · Brand Identity · Squarespace Website · Signage · Shopify Website Design
When the brand has a front door
Before I was designing websites, I was an interior designer.
And apparently I never really learned how to stay in my lane.
Because once we start talking about the brand, I inevitably start thinking about the sign. The menu. The packaging. The wall behind the cash. Basically: what happens when the brand leaves the screen?
692 Coffee + Bar is one of my favourite examples.
Four friends came to me with an idea for a coffee shop in Manotick. There wasn’t a brand yet. There wasn’t a website. There wasn’t a coffee shop.
So I designed them.
The brand identity, original website and interior were designed together - one experience, from screen to storefront.
692 Coffee and bar
Years later, 692 is still there on Manotick Main Street.
The website isn’t mine anymore and the brand has naturally evolved, but people are still sitting inside a space I carted my two year old son to, with tile samples in hand.
And yes, that is still very cool to me. *Photography by Amy Zambonin
Brand Identity · Website Design · Coffee Shop Interior Design
I don’t really have a type
At least not when it comes to industry.
I’ve designed for dentists and jewellery designers. Health clinics and coffee shops. A piano school, a jiu jitsu studio, a dance studio, nonprofits, coaches, shops, spas and real estate.
What I do have a type for is a business that wants to stand out in their industry.
A founder who cares deeply about what they’re building. A business that’s growing or changing. Something that doesn’t need to look like everybody else in its category.
That’s usually where things get interesting.
THE RECOLLECTIVE
The Recollective came to me as PreLoved Ottawa: an established local business with a loyal community that had outgrown where it started.
We renamed it, created a new brand identity and built a custom Shopify website around where the business was going next.
Years later, we’re working together again as The Recollective enters another chapter. Photography by Alexa Mazzarello.
Brand Identity · Shopify Website Design · Print Collateral
From dance studios to media consultants, to coaches + everything in between.
From dance studios to media consultants, to coaches + everything in between.
DanceRoots
An Ottawa dance studio where competition, community and a whole lot of personality come together - with a website designed to feel every bit as energetic as the people inside it.
Website Design · Digital Collateral
Kindha Gorman
Brand identity and a custom Squarespace website for an Ottawa communications company specializing in media training, communications and business writing. Photography by Amanda Thirkill.
Brand Identity · Squarespace Website Design
From nonprofits to e-commerce brands who call Ottawa home
From nonprofits to e-commerce brands who call Ottawa home
Happy Roots Foundation
An Ottawa nonprofit working to change the conversation around infant and early childhood mental health, with a Squarespace website designed to make its resources, programs and growing body of work easier to understand and explore.
Squarespace Website Design · Digital Strategy
Hailey Jane
An Ottawa-based fine jewellery brand with a custom Shopify website designed to bring Hailey Jane's bold, playful approach to jewellery into an equally personality-filled digital shoppe. Photography by Studio Je T’aime
Brand Refresh · Shopify Website Design · E-Commerce · Digital Strategy
And then there are all the others
At some point while putting this page together I realized just how lucky I am to have so much of my work scattered around Ottawa.
Lume Club · 692 Coffee + Bar · The Recollective · Happy Roots Foundation · The Emmy · Kindha
Lume Club · 692 Coffee + Bar · The Recollective · Happy Roots Foundation · The Emmy · Kindha
North Therapeutic Coaching · Third Line Health + Fitness · Third Line Apothecary · Paige Watts
North Therapeutic Coaching · Third Line Health + Fitness · Third Line Apothecary · Paige Watts
Amanda Thirkill · Dance Roots · Manotick Health + Wellness · All Smiles Ottawa · Dr. Large Dentistry
Amanda Thirkill · Dance Roots · Manotick Health + Wellness · All Smiles Ottawa · Dr. Large Dentistry
Nation River Health Clinic · Helmcrest Wooden Legs · So Jiu Jitsu · Marie-Florence Musa · Blush + Rose Beauty Bar · Wendy Spenst · Erica Fox · More Than Music Piano
Nation River Health Clinic · Helmcrest Wooden Legs · So Jiu Jitsu · Marie-Florence Musa · Blush + Rose Beauty Bar · Wendy Spenst · Erica Fox · More Than Music Piano
Ottawa · Manotick · North Gower · Osgoode + a few places in between.
A FEW THINGS YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING
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Yes. Ash Izsak Studio is based in Ottawa, Ontario, and I’ve been designing brands, websites and spaces for local businesses for more than a decade.
My work can be found across Ottawa, Manotick, Osgoode, North Gower and the surrounding area - in shops, studios, clinics, restaurants and on more signs than my children are probably interested in hearing me point out.
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When it makes sense, absolutely.
Most of the design process can happen very efficiently over Google Meet, but being local gives us the option to meet, visit your business, walk through a retail space or stand in front of a wall discussing exactly where a sign should go. Some things are simply easier when we can look at them together.
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I’ve worked with Ottawa boutiques, coffee shops, health clinics, dentists, dance studios, fitness businesses, nonprofits, consultants, beauty brands, restaurants, real estate projects and businesses that do not fit tidily into any one category.
I’m less concerned with finding one perfect industry than I am with working with people who care deeply about what they’re building, and are ready for the outside of the business to catch up with what is happening inside it.
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Yes. For select Ottawa businesses, I can bring the brand into the physical space through retail interior design, signage, wayfinding, packaging and printed materials.
This is one of the parts of my work I love most. The brand stops being something that lives exclusively on a screen and becomes something people can walk into, touch, notice from the street and remember later.
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Yes. I design custom Shopify websites for e-commerce businesses and custom Squarespace websites for service-based businesses, portfolios and organizations.
The platform recommendation depends on what the website actually needs to do. The goal is to choose the system that supports the business properly and then make it feel nothing like an out-of-the-box template.
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All the time.
Ottawa is home, but I work with businesses across Canada, the United States and beyond. The process is designed to work beautifully from a distance, so you do not need to be local to work with me - or even in the same time zone.
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You absolutely don’t have to. But when your business has a physical presence here, local context can be incredibly useful.
I grew up here. I understand the communities, the pace of the city and the difference between designing for a business in downtown Ottawa and one opening on Manotick Main Street.
And if your project includes a shop, office, restaurant, signage or another physical space, being able to show up in person is a fairly significant advantage.
Local when it matters. Big-picture always.
You don’t have to work with a designer in Ottawa.
And I don’t only work with businesses here.
But there is something special about being able to meet for coffee. To walk through a space together. To understand the neighbourhood your business is opening in or the community you’re trying to reach.
You get the local connection, with the perspective that comes from designing for businesses across Canada, the U.S. and beyond.
And whether we’re sitting across a table or a Google Meet screen, the approach is the same: figure out where you’re going, then make the whole thing help you get there.
LET’S MAKE SOMETHING OTTAWA NOTICES
Starting something? Changing something? Built a business that has completely outgrown the brand or website you started with?
I’d love to hear about it.