Design has been part of Sid Lee's DNA since its founding in 1993. More than three decades later, the agency has expanded into advertising, media, architecture, digital, PR and experiential, but its original discipline remains central to how it approaches creative problems.

That philosophy helped Sid Lee earn Bronze in Design Agency of the Year in 2026, as the agency continues to position its multidisciplinary capabilities around a shared creative foundation.

When Johan Vakidis returned to Canada in 2024 to become CCO and president of Sid Lee North America, revisiting that heritage became an early priority. After 21 years in Shanghai, where he worked across technology, design and advertising, including leadership roles at AKQA, R/GA, Disney and Publicis Groupe, Vakidis saw an opportunity to make Sid Lee's longstanding approach more explicit.

“We are an agency on paper and we compete with many agencies,” says Vakidis. “But if you go deep down into the soul of who we are, we’re still a bunch of pirates and misfits who love design. It’s key to everything we do today.”

Rather than treating design as a finishing layer, Sid Lee brings different disciplines into the creative process from the beginning. That can mean pairing an executive creative director with a design director on an advertising brief or approaching a communications challenge through an object, identity or physical experience.

The agency's recent work illustrates that thinking. For TIFF: The Market, Sid Lee transformed the festival's familiar dot into a projector, creating a kinetic identity that connects a new industry marketplace to its parent brand. For Quebec's Ministère de l'Emploi et de la Solidarité sociale, it designed a 40-pound vest to make the burden of poverty prejudice tangible, with 94% of young respondents reporting greater awareness of the issue. And for the Gilles Villeneuve brand, it turned the racing legend's helmet into a contemporary identity system, launched during the Montreal Grand Prix.

Each project uses design not simply to communicate an idea, but to give it form.

“I love walking into a presentation and opening on that slide that says born of design,” says Vakidis. “I always find it interesting when you get a design director or an ECD who’s selling stories.”