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harwoodmedia, Calgary design agency, home
About harwood media

A small studio in Calgary that answers the phone.

Four people, one office off 11th Avenue, and a deliberate decision to stay small enough that the person who scopes your project is the person who works on it.

01Our story

We started because of a voicemail nobody returned.

Before harwood existed, our founder spent eleven years on the client side, in-house at a Calgary company that hired three different agencies in five years. Every one of them was technically capable. Every one of them eventually went quiet.

The pattern was always the same. A confident kickoff, a few weeks of momentum, then a slow fade into unanswered emails and invoices that did not match anything discussed. The work usually arrived. Nobody could ever explain what it had cost or why.

harwood media started in 2019 with a narrow idea: the work should be good, and you should never have to wonder what is happening. That is why there is a written update every Friday, why prices are fixed before anything starts, and why every account we touch is created in the client’s name.

Seven years on we are four people. We have turned down more work than we have taken, and we have kept clients who came to us in the first year. Both of those feel like the same achievement.

A working desk with cameras, printed sketches and open laptops laid out mid-project.
Founded
2019
Team
4
Based in
YYC
02What we hold to

Four rules we have lost work over.

These are not aspirations on a wall. Each one has cost us a project at some point, which is the only real test of whether a value means anything.

  • 01

    Say the difficult thing early

    A deadline slipping is not an emergency if you hear about it in week two. It is an emergency if you hear about it the day before launch. We would rather have the awkward conversation while it is still small.

  • 02

    Explain, do not impress

    If a report needs a glossary, it is a bad report. Everything we send is written so that the person paying for it can read it once and know what to do next.

  • 03

    Build it so we are not needed

    Every project ends with training and documentation. Our best outcome is a client who has not emailed us in six months because nothing has needed fixing.

  • 04

    Turn down the wrong work

    We say no to projects where we are not the right studio, and we say so quickly rather than quoting high and hoping. Usually we can point you at someone better suited.

03The team

Four people, and you will meet all of them.

There is no account manager layer here. The person who runs your discovery session writes your scope, and the person who designs your site is the one you speak to about it.

  • Founder & Strategy Lead

    Discovery, scoping and the awkward questions

    Runs every discovery session and writes every scope. Spent eleven years in-house on the client side before starting harwood, which is why the plan you get is written for a business owner rather than a marketing department.

    • Discovery sessions
    • Written scopes and fixed pricing
    • Your Friday update

  • Design Director

    Interface design, brand systems and photography direction

    Responsible for how everything looks and how it holds together across a hundred pages. Directs the photography on location, because a real photograph of your team beats a stock image of somebody else's every time.

    • Design systems
    • Page and component design
    • Photography direction

  • Lead Developer

    Build quality, performance and accessibility

    Builds the sites by hand and sets the performance budget before design begins. Tests with a keyboard and a screen reader on every project, not as an afterthought when someone complains.

    • Front-end build
    • Performance and accessibility
    • Training and handover

  • Advertising Manager

    Campaign management, tracking and monthly reporting

    Runs the Google and Meta accounts and writes the monthly report that goes with them. Would rather tell you a campaign is not working in month one than let it quietly drain a budget until the quarterly review.

    • Campaign builds and optimisation
    • Conversion tracking
    • Monthly written reporting
04In the community

Calgary is not a service area to us.

We live here. Our clients are businesses we walk past. That changes how carefully you work, and it is the main reason we have never tried to become a national agency.

A small independent coffee shop storefront on a quiet street, the kind of local business we work with.

  • Pro bono work for local non-profits

    We take on two non-profit projects a year at no cost. They get the same discovery session, the same fixed scope and the same Friday updates as any paying client.

  • Free website clinics

    A monthly open session at a Calgary coworking space where any local business owner can bring their site and get an honest hour of feedback. No pitch, no follow-up email unless you ask for one.

  • Mentoring at local programmes

    Our team mentors students in design and development programmes at SAIT and Bow Valley College, reviewing portfolios and sitting on final project panels.

  • We hire and buy locally

    Photographers, copywriters, illustrators and print suppliers all come from within the city. When a project needs a specialist we do not already have, we look in Calgary first.

If you run a Calgary non-profit or a community organisation and the website is holding you back, email hello@harwoodmedia.ca and tell us what you are trying to do. We take on two of these a year and we choose them in January.

Work with us

Come and see whether we are a fit.

The first conversation is ninety minutes and costs nothing. You will leave with a written plan and a fixed price, whether or not you decide to go ahead with us.

Get a quoteSee the work