Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Danielle Kristmanson: You Are Where You

She says she’s a radical living in a moderate’s body. “I get all these wild ideas,” confides Danielle Kristmanson, creative director at Origin Design + Communications. “And I really get inspired by the possibilities in those ideas.
1505alta
Danielle Kristmanson

She says she’s a radical living in a moderate’s body. “I get all these wild ideas,” confides Danielle Kristmanson, creative director at Origin Design + Communications. “And I really get inspired by the possibilities in those ideas.” She pauses for a moment. Sighs. “But most times my body won’t allow me to go there.” And then she laughs – with not even a hint of self-consciousness or self-doubt. “And that’s turned out to be one of my biggest strengths,” she says.

The founder and co-owner of what has become, arguably, the Canadian snowsport industry’s premiere boutique design and branding firm, Kristmanson is a typical 21st century Whistler warrior woman, with a hubby, two young kids and a full-time job – yet with a sense of engaged fun in life that is truly impressive.

“I love people who challenge the status quo,” she explains. “I have a huge amount of respect for people who can think independently and come up with new ideas – no matter how radical.” Another pause. “But my role is different.”

Different how? “In a way, I look at myself as somebody capable of making those really ‘out there’ ideas more palatable to the mainstream,” she explains. “I’m definitely attracted to life on the edge. But I’m much more comfortable being on the inside, moderating – modifying those ideas – so that people who aren’t necessarily living that lifestyle can get it too.”

Considering Origin’s success in recent years, that method certainly seems to work. “We decided to take a vertically-focused approach to our business,” she says. “And that too has been a great strength for us. We know snow culture. And we know snowsports. And people in the industry realize that.”

Another quick burst of laughter. ‘We have something to say,” she adds. “And people are listening. We’re considered experts now. And there aren’t that many people out there who have our kind of expertise…”

With heavyweight resort clients ranging from Whistler-Blackcomb and Whistler Tourism locally to Jay Peak and Mont Saint-Sauveur back east — and with snowsport brands like Salomon, Kombi, Nikita, Liquid Boardwear and Recco Avalanche Rescue Systems on board for good measure — there is no question that the little-Whistler-design-firm-that-could has come a long way.

So how did she do it? How did Kristmanson parlay a one-person graphic design firm into the current marketing darling of the snowsport universe?

“Our corporate slogan at Origin is: ‘You are where you live,’” she explains. And she admits that the slogan sometimes gets misinterpreted as: ‘We’re from Whistler. We get it. We’re cool.’ But that’s not what it’s about at all, she says.

“We believe that a person is defined by where they feel most alive. Where are they when they are most happy? That’s the key. And we try to apply that philosophy in everything that we do.”

She looks at me to make sure I’m still following. Frowns a little.

“Do you know what I mean?” she asks. “With every client we work with, we do our best to understand where they ‘live’ and how that makes them who they are. Whether we’re working with them on a branding exercise, a full-scale marketing campaign or a grassroots event, we try to reflect that reality in everything we create for them.”

She continues: “Some time ago, we realized that graphic design was a means to an end. Although it is a challenge to visually communicate good marketing ideas, it is a bigger, more rewarding challenge to be asked to “think” for your clients. The clients we work with today aren’t coming to us and saying, “we need a brochure or a website.” They’re saying, ‘we have a business challenge. Can you help us come up with a solution that will get this product to market successfully?’”

Another pause. “Big ideas are only half the equation,” she tells me. “The other half is insight. If you’re going to make a positive difference on your client’s business, you have to ‘get it’. You have to get where they’re coming from, but you also have to get the market that they’re targeting. By creating this super-vertical niche for ourselves, I think we can maximize our insight potential. And that’s increasingly important in today’s marketplace.”

But wait a minute. Let’s back up even further. How the heck did a prairie girl end up at Whistler in the first place?

To start with, she’s not exactly a prairie girl. “My dad was in the RCMP,” she says. “So we moved all over the place. Yukon. Northwest Territories. You name it, we lived there.” But Calgary, she agrees, is where she spent a lot of her youth. “That’s where we really got into skiing too. You know, the Rockies and all that.”

The interesting thing about prairie people, she says, is that “they’re a pretty tough breed. Hard work is a way of life for them. And that philosophy kind of stuck with me.”

Indeed. Newly married and just a few years out of university, Kristmanson was at loose ends in 1991 when she saw an ad in a Vancouver paper for a Whistler-based design job. “My husband was playing basketball for Canada, so he was living with the team in Victoria or Toronto – I can’t remember,” she says. “So I was pretty much free to live wherever I wanted to live.”

Besides, the Whistler posting appealed to her sense of adventure.

The job was with the Whistler Resort Association (now Tourism Whistler). And what Danielle remembers best about her interview there was the walking tour of the village she got with her putative boss, Barrett Fisher and then-president Al Raine. “I got the full backstage pass to Whistler on that tour,” she says. “To listen to their commentary during that walk was fascinating!”

She took the job. But by 1993, she was ready to strike out on her own. “Soon after I moved here I realized that there were all sorts of opportunities flying by,” she explains. “It’s what Whistler is all about. If you’re open to adventure and not afraid of hard work, a lot can happen.”

And happen it did. “I started Origin in my spare room,” she says. “And back then, the company was considered strictly a design firm. But I got a contract with Whistler Mountain right away. And then I started doing work for Blackcomb. Suddenly I needed to hire an additional staff person. And then another. And another.”

It was the merger between the two mountains, she says, that really got things going for Origin. “I have to give a lot of credit to Whistler-Blackcomb and Tourism Whistler for our early success,” she says.

Still, she’s quick to point out that it wasn’t until Origin landed some out-of-province clients that she was truly valued back home. “Intrawest had just acquired this chain of rental/retail stores in Colorado. And Sandy Black, who was responsible for this new acquisition, contacted me and said. ‘We want to rebrand these stores. We need help from people who truly understand snowsports. Are you interested?’ I told him we were.”

It was an opportunity, she says, to apply all the experience she’d picked up at Whistler and test it in another location. More importantly, she realized for the first time just how powerful a leverage tool the Whistler name really was.

“I remember some of our early meetings in Colorado. People would say: ‘Wow — a design firm from Whistler. You guys must really know what you’re talking about.’” She smiles. “That gave us confidence.”

It was just the beginning. For soon after, David Perry also got in touch with her. The former VP of marketing at Whistler-Blackcomb was going through a rebranding exercise of his own with his new employer, Colorado Ski Country USA. Would Origin be interested in getting involved?

“That raised a lot of eyebrows,” says Danielle with just a hint of the canary-eating cat. “People started looking at us in a different way. In fact, that job marked our move from design services into marketing and branding.”

Danielle has never had to look back. Still, it’s been an exciting ride. “It’s funny,” she says. “When we got the Colorado contracts, people in the office were excited – but life went on. Two years later, when we landed both the Tourism Whistler and Whistler-Blackcomb creative contracts everyone in our office went crazy. To have that kind of celebration over landing two accounts that we’d been servicing for the last seven years – it was amazing. But it also made me realize just how important those two accounts were to our self-image. It was – and remains – the cornerstone of our business.”

Will that ever change? “Hopefully not in the short term,” she says. “We still have a lot of work to do here.”