You've seen examples of her work all over town. On restaurant menus, Intrawest and Playground real estate campaigns, Whistler Blackcomb ads. She does big events too. Kokanee Crankworx, the upcoming jazz festival, Vancouver's National Award For Non-Fiction - they all benefit from her light-handed artistic touch.
She insists she has no favourites - "they're all great to work with," she says - but admits to a bit of "parental" pride in the now-iconic bike festival. "It's been seven years now," says Brand Central Design's Susan Butler. "It's my pride and joy - something I look forward to every summer." She pauses for a breath. "It's a big job. But the control freak in me loves that I'm responsible for everything from the brand story, the art, the website, and right down to the way the medals are designed."
She laughs. "You know," she says finally. "It's almost become part of who I am. I can't help it." She laughs again. Shrugs, almost apologetically. "I take my work very personally," she explains. "I know this may sound naive, but I really care about my clients."
And her clients have responded in kind. But that doesn't make it easy. Now based in Squamish - and the mum of a very active, outgoing two-year-old boy - the 10-year Whistler resident admits it's no small trick to manage both motherhood and a highly demanding career as a roving art director.
"The problem for me," she says, "is that everything has to be perfect. My expectations for myself are way too high." A long sigh. "And motherhood, as I'm learning, is about everything but perfection."
Sea to Sky country is certainly a long way from North Bay and the wild shores of Lake Nipissing where Butler grew up. But living in Squamish, she says, is not all that different to the life she led as a young girl in Northern Ontario. "I grew up in a really outdoorsy family," says the forty-something snowboarder. "You know, hunting and fishing and skiing and hiking. So you see, I've kind of come full circle." She laughs. "Venison on the table, salmon in the freezer, fresh berries in the fridge..."
She's not sure how to put the next thought diplomatically. "I loved living at Whistler," she says. "I wouldn't trade the decade I spent there for anything in the world. To have access to all that terrain - to be able to snowboard daily on some of the best slopes in the world - it was a unique experience. But Whistler never really became home for me." She lets a couple of beats pass. "Squamish - now that's a different story."
Mountains and ocean, alpine and aquatic - for a gal raised in the outdoors, settling down in Squamish certainly makes sense. Still, it was her love of sliding on snow that made it all happen.
"My dad used to take me skiing at our local hill - the Laurentian Ski Club. I must have been three or four when I started," she says. By the time she and her friends were teenagers, the ski hill had become the equivalent of an outdoor community centre. "On Saturday mornings, our parents would drop us off at the hill and we'd spend the whole day there!"
The Laurentian hill was (and still is) tiny. But nobody cared. "When you're a kid," says Butler, "you don't realize how small your ski area is. But the fact that it was small, well... it meant it was safe. And the best part? We were free and independent little beings for a brief moment on those cherished Saturdays."
Ski racing was a big sport in North Bay in those years and slowly but surely Butler got drawn into the game. "It must have been in my DNA," she jokes. "But seriously - being outside in winter, sliding down the hill, having fun with my friends - it was a very attractive environment for me."
Like all young snoweaters, her on-hill adventures were legion. "Riding the Laurentian T-bar as a ten-year-old was always fun," she says. "We were so light and the lift was so powerful that it would sometimes lift us right off the ground and spin us completely around!"
In those days, skiing was more about community than consumerism. "I still remember proudly sewing my membership badges on my ski jacket. A new one every year! You know," she says, "it was all about belonging for us. Being part of the gang."
Butler ski raced all the way to university. "But once I got to Waterloo, the work load got pretty tough so I had to quit racing." Still, it wasn't like she was ready to drop out of skiing entirely. "Most winter weekends we made ski pilgrimages - to Collingwood and Ellicottville in New York State. Heck, we even went down to Vermont from time-to-time." She laughs. "No place was too far for us ski pilgrims."
Academic studies agreed with the young woman. After completing her undergraduate degree, Butler went on to finish a Masters degree in English. "Waterloo University has this great co-op work program," she explains. "And I got to do a work term with a local ad agency who then hired me on for a year right out of school."
She says she learned a lot there. "They were wonderful to me. But it was such hard work. I mean, this was a very conventional ad agency where every billable minute was accounted for and rivalry among employees was fierce. It really made me realize what the 'real' world was all about..."
It also convinced her to search out other alternatives. By the winter of 1994, she was ready for a change. "I was just getting into snowboarding," she recounts, "and Whistler was definitely the aspirational place. It was the resort you built up to if you were a serious rider." She smiles. "Like, you know, you weren't 'really' a snowboarder till you'd ridden Whistler."
A long pause. She flashes another smile. "What I didn't count on," she admits, "was getting stuck here." But that too, she says, is due to her upbringing. "Because I grew up in such an outdoor-focused family," she says, "the Whistler lifestyle really appealed to me. I mean, when you already have it in your blood, you're always searching for it..."
As with most big-mountain rookies, her first season involved a very steep learning curve. "I came out to Whistler with a tiny trick snowboard," she says with a self-mocking grin. "Good enough for time in the snowpark or for the short hills of Ontario. But totally unsuited to Whistler conditions." More laughter. "It was really wild to ride this flimsy board while trying to keep up with all these rippers in my newfound posse." She laughs. "Try riding 20 cm of powder in Khyber on a 147cm twin tip..."
But she got better with time. "Riding the kind of mountains we have here - and the conditions we ride in - that really takes a leap of faith when you start out. You have to have faith in your friends, faith in being able to handle those tough forest lines or the deep wet snow - faith even, in your own abilities when you're hitting the scary places. Those first few years, I learned so-o-o-o much."
It was a done deal by the end of the first winter. She was hooked. "So the challenge for me was - how do I finance this dream? On a whim, she applied for a job with the Whistler Question . "They had a posting for a reporter," says Butler. "And seeing that I'd majored in English..."
But her putative employers decided she'd be more productive as an ad designer than as a writer. "So that's what they decided to train me for," she says. And grins. "I didn't know the first thing about ad layout. It was like jumping into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. But it didn't seem at the time like there was a lot of pressure on me. It was just a case of learning on the job."
She admits there wasn't a lot of room for asking questions or learning slowly though. "But my bosses were amazing," she says. "Pepper Sterling and Frances Coulis were the best teachers. We laughed a lot..."
Next Week: Susan launches an in-house design studio at Blackcomb Mountain, starts her own business, moves to Squamish, meets a local logger and begets a child .
