The Design HQ Team
Design HQ was established in 1989 by principals Kelly Brooks and Ian McSorley. Our permananent, full-time staff (Kate Nisbet!) is complemented by a team of affiliates and contractors that are so great to work with, we even invite them to parties. This means we ramp up quickly for large projects, give you the best talent — and keep it lean.

Win-win! Here's a snapshot of our team…

Kelly Brooks, Principal, Designer & Art Director

Kelly has worked as a graphic designer since 1981, when she completed her BFA in visual communications design at the University of Alberta. She began her design career at the architectural firm of Bell, Spotowski where she designed and produced their corporate communications and presentations. She left Bell, Spotowski in 1982 and moved to Victoria where she worked for the Ministry of Lands, Parks & Housing designing and illustrating public information material including brochures, posters and signage.

Kelly moved to Vancouver in 1985 and joined McSorley & Fudge as a senior designer. Kelly and Ian established their current firm Design HQ in 1989.

Kelly’s design work has been recognized with numerous awards of excellence, including Judges Choice; best of category and best of show. From 2001 through 2006, Kelly worked on a number of contracts as Art Director with Go Direct Marketing (now RMG Connect), where she designed DM print collateral for TELUS, VanCity, and Johnson and Johnson (LifeScan).

Through 2006-08, Kelly designed and art directed DM at Cossette Communications/Blitz for Allstream and Manitoba Telecom — one of which achieved a response rate over 26%!

Recently Kelly has designed DM for the University of British Columbia. Her alumni fund raiser achieved a remarkable 31% increase in revenues over the previous year's efforts and won a 2009 Bronze for Direct Mail Advertising for Fund Raising in an international competition organized by CASE (Council for the Support and Advancement of Education). Ongoing work for UBC has won 2010 Silver and Bronze CASE awards and 2011 Gold and Silver CASE awards.

Ian McSorley, Principal, Designer & Creative Director

Ian completed his BFA, VA with a major in drawing and painting at the University of Victoria in 1977. Ian’s first commercial projects included architectural renderings for developers and architects such as Arthur Erickson and technical illustrations for product developers such as Phil Nuytten (International Hard Suits), MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) and Mobile Data International (MDI). The scope of this work expanded to include graphic design and marketing communications.

Ian is a logo design and branding specialist. Ian’s work has been recognized with numerous awards for design excellence – particularly for the development of corporate and product identities. More importantly, the long-term clients he works with have been recognized with awards for design and marketing excellence – the ultimate accolade.

During his 10 year working relationship with Gemcom Software International, he designed their corporate identity; corporate communications; annual reports; all product packaging, documentation and sales collateral; signage and exhibit systems. During this period, Gemcom received the BC Export Excellence Award for excellence in marketing innovation as well as the Canadian Export Development Award of Excellence.

Ian has given seminars across Western Canada as part of a product launch program for software developers.

His product design skills have garnered an EMA award of excellence for consumer electronics.

Ian held an executive office with the Graphic Designers of Canada for 3 consecutive years. He has served on the Board of Directors and chaired and co-chaired the marketing committee of the Commercial Drive Business Society from 2000 to 2013.

Kate Nisbet, Design and production

Kate articled with Design HQ during the summer of 2003 as the career prep component of her design program in Ontario. She graduated top of her class in 2004 and moved to Vancouver for a full time position at Design HQ in August of the same year.

Kate has produced numerous publications in multiple languages for Biocontrol (a bulletin on Ecological Pest Management); international newsletters, a corporate profile, and capability brochures for SRK Consulting; and a comprehensive information kit and project case studies for the Canadian Wind Energy Association. Kate is proficient at image processing and content management for our WordPress and Drupal sites. She handles the majority of our training and preparation of procedure guides for these Content Management Systems. She did all of the image work, including animations; all site content entry, linking and shopping cart configuration for an e-commerce site with over 340 products and more than 600 pages of content. She is also responsible for all of our Flash production.