Connecting Studio Culture & Design Quality by Jessica Leong & Tristan Marantos

I'm the creative director at Frontier, a design and strategy studio in Toronto, and have worked in design since 2014. At Frontier, I work closely with our design team to guide our work, elevate the things that we're most excited about, and ensure we're offering something to our clients that pushes them towards someplace new. I am also the creative lead of Live Magazine, a studio-run traveling editorial project, and support our weekly digital publication, Frontier Magazine, with art direction whenever needed (which is to say, almost never, because the people who run it are awesome). In addition to directing much of our creative output, I lead our hiring process, and as such, have a fair amount of experience reviewing portfolios and interviewing designers. While our studio does a variety of things, I'm most proficient with visual identity and strategy work. I really enjoy design research, getting to learn about a new client, and helping them tie together the interesting threads that make them who they are. Our studio's philosophy is based on the idea that stories are the most foundational tool for how humans understand the world, and so I guess my approach to design builds heavily on that belief. Aside from this, I'm experienced with web design, motion design, and wayfinding work, which we also produce at our studio. Outside of Frontier, I have taught graphic design at OCAD U, and prior, I worked at Bruce Mau Design. In another life, I worked as a production manager for a live concert promoter for eight years.

We design big stories. Big stories are brave, imaginative, and guiding. They help you stand out, discover new creative territory, and generate meaningful action. 

Frontier is a design office that believes in the expansive potential of storytelling to help people get somewhere new. We design the strategies, brand identities, and experiences that make big stories real. 

For a decade, people have come to us because we’re experts at drawing together diverse perspectives into something unified and resonant. Generating ideas, building consensus, setting direction: we accelerate this work by listening closely and bringing to bear new tools and methods of understanding and shaping what’s next. We draw from diverse realms—like contemporary art, purpose design, playful speculation, and radical technologies—to help organizations and their people understand the edges and make progress that matters. 

This pluralistic approach to purposeful branding leads to genuinely inspiring amd strategic stories that we turn into momentum-building brand identities, exhibitions, websites, campaigns, books, and videos. 

In addition to design services for partners, our commitment to big stories runs through studio-initiated projects. These include Frontier Magazine, an online publication about new and newly relevant ideas in the arts, technology, and the built environment; Projectory, an experiential learning platform that trains organizations on building future resilience; and Live Magazine, a traveling editorial project.