I make websites for organizations look and feel as important, clear, and compelling as their work actually is.
Through web design, development, and content strategy, I help organizations clarify what they do, reach their intended communities, and turn attention into meaningful involvement.
Rob Butz
Saskatoon-based web designer, developer, and strategist
Websites that help organizations be understood, trusted, and involved in.
I design and build digital spaces for advocacy, publishing, arts, and community organizations that are easy for their operators to use.
My web work spans advocacy groups, publications, arts organizations, and community-based projects. Whether the goal is credibility, readability, fundraising, publishing, or participation, I build sites that make it easier for people to understand what an organization does and know how to engage with it.
The Grind is an independent, donation-supported print and online magazine amplifying progressive reporting and art about Toronto’s workers, movements, and cultural life, at a time when most alt-weeklies have migrated fully to digital.
Run as a nonprofit with no corporate backer, it combines original reporting and art with curated, progressive journalism from across Canada, focusing on labour, social justice, and underreported city stories. In 2026 it operates as a limited-run print “street paper,” dropping new issues roughly every other month while maintaining an online archive of issues and feature articles. Its visual identity—fluorescent, poster-like, and rooted in street-level distribution at TTC stations, indie bookshops, and community spaces—underscores its mission to be a bold, accessible voice for workers and marginalized communities in Toronto.
Parkland Institute is an Alberta-wide, non-partisan research centre housed in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta, focused on economic, social, cultural, and political issues from a Canadian political economy perspective. Its mandate is to examine power and wealth, public policy, and democratic life in Alberta and Canada, and to share that research broadly through reports, media interventions, and public programming, including an annual fall conference that has run since the late 1990s.
Because Parkland often functions as a critical voice in a province dominated by conservative governments, it needs a public-facing presence that communicates rigour and objectivity even when its findings are politically contentious.
I partnered with Parkland to redesign and extend their web infrastructure on NationBuilder in a way that foregrounds trust, clarity, and stability rather than flash. The core site redesign uses a conservative, low-motion front-end that lets the research and commentary lead, avoiding the kind of high-animation treatment that might undercut the institute’s credibility as a serious research body. Within NationBuilder’s constraints, I pushed the Liquid templating layer as far as possible to create fully custom themes, rather than leaning on default political-campaign patterns that didn’t fit an academic research centre.
Root Sky Theatre Company is an Indigenous and Métis–focused company that traditionally concentrates on writing plays about Indigenous experience, reconciliation, and political history. In 2023–24 they took a major step: producing one of their own works (Owl Calling) themselves, which they hadn’t done for about a decade.
Starting with a very small public footprint for RootSky, I turned their existing web presence into a production-ready platform, integrate nonprofit-friendly ticketing, and coordinate parallel digital marketing channels that helped make Owl Calling a success and paved the way for their next Canada Council–supported production, Rattle, opening June 3–7, 2026 at the Asper Centre for Theatre and Film in Winnipeg. Owl Calling graphic by Brandon Ehinger (ehinger.ca)
The Stand Community Organizing Centre began life as a co-working and meeting space for activists, artists and community groups next door to Saskatchewan's independent bookstore, Turning the Tide.
During the pandemic, meeting space became less relevant, so we found other means of networking and projects to keep us relevant. One of those is maintaining a curated community activist calendar for Saskatoon, for which I wrote code to customize and easily export to Mailchimp campaigns for fast production of the newsletter.
Turning the Tide, Saskatoon's only independent, single-location bookstore, came to me to do a rebuild of their website on the BookManager platform: content management software for independent bookstores that is tied into the book distribution, warehousing and ordering system in North America. Until 2023, I assisted with adding new features and book lists to the website, running mailing campaigns in Mailchimp, and promoting them in a popular Instagram feed (@ttt.books).
Turning the Tide’s website and social feeds are currently maintained (and taken to another level) by Nikki Barrington, my business partner in Moonjoule.
Great brand design, social feeds, and ad campaigns.
I've been 'that person' in the group who makes a group's flyer, logo, poster, or ad for as long as I've been involved in community organizations.
Let's work together.
Looking for a developer, designer or strategist to take your project to the next level? Get in touch and let's discuss what you want to do!
If you're having any issues with this form, please don't hesitate to send me a regular email.
