Essential Designs

Essential Designs builds bespoke software, web applications and mobile apps from offices in Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. The Vancouver head office leads projects, and the studio covers everything from first concept to deployment and app store approval. It reports eighteen years in the trade and now uses AI tools within its development work.

What Essential Designs offers

• Mobile applications — native iPhone and iPad apps in Swift, older Objective-C projects, native Android builds and React Native.
• Web applications — data-driven web systems, either new builds or modern rebuilds of older software.
• Business platforms — custom systems that store and track the data a company needs, including backends for existing apps.
• UI/UX design — wireframes and full graphic design agreed before any coding starts.
• Software support — ongoing maintenance after launch.

Who it works with

The studio works with companies, public bodies and non-profits. Case studies include a safety web application for Teck Resources, an overdose response app for Lifeguard, an app modernisation for Emerson Electric, a vendor database for government buyers called Good Roads, and platforms for My Trade Shop and Growmotely.

Key facts

• Based in: Vancouver, with offices in Calgary and Toronto
• Experience: eighteen years building software and apps
• Process: five sequential steps with client sign-off at each stage, a dedicated senior developer per project and a four-stage testing routine