Dave Penny

Meet Dave

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Hiring for a brand usually means one of two compromises. An agency, which is slow and priced for someone else's budget. Or a few freelancers who each own one piece, which leaves you managing the seams and hoping it all comes out looking like one brand.

I take the whole thing. Identity, website, photography, film, print, social, and the campaign behind it. I build most of it myself and I own all of it, which is the part that matters: nothing gets lost between the decision and the asset, because the same person is responsible for both.

I am not a one man band about it. There is a small team in house with me, and I bring in the best subcontractors I know when a job needs something outside what we do best. You still get one point of contact, and one person accountable, which is me.

Honestly, this is the work I like most. There is something about a founder who is genuinely excellent at what they do, whose brand has not caught up to them yet. Closing that gap is satisfying in a way a one off edit never is.

Recent work has mostly been consumer brands, either building an identity from nothing or fixing one that never quite fit. A countertop fabricator losing contracts on presentation. A marine restoration company with no brand and no content. A rum and RTD line that needed labels, print, in-venue material, and a campaign.

The unusual part is that I shoot the product too. For the rum line I shot the cans in my own studio, including a water tank for the splash frames, then used AI tools to extend that single session into a full set of campaign variations. One shoot, a season of assets.

Before all this I spent years in broadcast television, from live studio work up to creative director, producing national shows and commercials, plus content for the Rogers Centre jumbotron. I hosted a nationally syndicated show, which is why I am comfortable directing founders who have never been in front of a camera.

One practical note. I am Canadian, based in Ontario, which is usually good news for American clients. Your dollar goes about forty percent further up here, I am on Eastern time so we share a working day, and I am close enough to be on site in a day if a shoot needs me in the room. Creative work is a service, not a shipment, so there is no customs or tariff in the middle of it. And when a project needs physical print, I produce it through fulfilment partners local to your market, so the file crosses the border instead of the pallet.

Remote-first, and I still love a shoot day, so I travel.