Design de Plume
Meggan Van Harten, RGD, and Jennifer Taback, RGD, are Co-CEOs of Design de Plume (DDP), an Indigenous and women-owned creative agency that creates accessible and inclusive design solutions. Working across Turtle Island (Canada and the U.S.), Design de Plume harnesses the transformative power of design to empower communities and weaves Indigenous wisdom and women-led innovation into every project.
As they explain, “When we originally started the business together in 2009, we wanted to use our gifts of design and have good jobs within a structure that offered more autonomy. DDP has really evolved since then and we’ve moved from simply solving problems to trying to anticipate how changes will affect our work more proactively. We’re trying to look ahead and see how we can incorporate Indigenous perspectives in innovative ways.”
However, growing DDP into the impressive creative agency it is today hasn’t been easy. “As we grew, we became very aware of the challenges that come with being diverse young women in business. Opportunities for us weren’t the same as other businesses who had similar training and experience. We had great services to offer but our local pool of potential clients didn’t see the value we were bringing to the table. They only saw young women and thought we were inexperienced.”
To overcome this, Meggan and Jennifer talked about rebranding their business to sound more like the businesses around them. As a part of this process, they removed their pictures from requests for proposal and their website and changed their logo to one that looked less “soft.”
“It looked great but it didn’t sound or feel like us. So we had a choice, either continue to play the same game by doing things just like everyone else, or stay true to ourselves, take a big risk, and think bigger than we were at the time. We immediately threw out all the branding work that didn’t feel like us, embraced our core values, carried them into every project, and said no to projects that didn’t fit that vision.”
That decision turned out to be one of the most pivotal moments of growth for DDP, and is what enabled Meggan and Jennifer to find a circle of clients whose values align with theirs. “We’ve grown into a creative agency that has a reputation for creating big impact. We’re proud of the good we’ve done in the world by challenging harmful biases in design and creating inclusive and accessible design solutions that reach people where they are at.”