About Flying Dog Creative
Flying Dog Creative helps nonprofits and small businesses solve content, communications, and design problems. We help you tell your story online and connect with supporters and customers.
We help you put together and execute branding, marketing, email newsletters, and action campaigns.
We help you find the right words and create fresh, original content for websites, blogs, and emails.
We take the pain out of web projects and work with you to design, redesign, and build websites that look good on any device or screen.
About Matt Pusateri
As a director of marketing, art director, digital strategist, designer, and writer, I have helped people tell stories and communicate ideas for more than two decades. I’ve helped hundreds of clients take complex ideas and messages and make them more clear, focused, and effective.
I have managed and consulted with teams in various organizations, facilitating meetings and improving internal communication. I’ve bridged gaps between editorial, policy, marketing, and web development teams; strengthened relationships between in-house creative teams and consultants; and helped editors, researchers, writers, and designers collaborate to make better content. I’ve put together collaborative and cohesive creative teams at multiple organizations.
In addition to 20+ years professional experience in design and digital strategy, I have two MA degrees — one in communications, one in writing — which help me work with clients to write, edit, and improve their content.
I work locally with clients in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, but also have a wide range of clients in Washington, D.C., New York, Massachusetts, and across the U.S.
Why “Flying Dog”?
Years ago, I had a dog named Abbie. She was a great companion, but not always the easiest dog. She was jumpy, anxious, and terrified of kids. She dove head first into muddy patches and never really learned to heel. She barked at pizza deliverymen and lunged at mail carriers.
But Abbie loved to catch Frisbees. She could leap into the sky to catch a disc with an Olympian’s grace. Abbie was at her best when she left her feet and took to the air, a real-world gravity-defying Krypto with spots. When she hung there in the air, taunting gravity, she seemed most happy. A busload of Japanese tourists once watched her snag Frisbees on the snow-covered lawn of the U.S. Capitol and gave her a huge ovation of applause after one acrobatic, twisting, impossible catch.
When I whipped a Frisbee into the air in her direction, she’d scramble after it and watch its arc. She usually made her leap just before the disc floated to its apex, trying to time the grab for the perfect aesthetic moment. I taught her to catch, but not that drive for perfection. That was hers.
Abbie has been gone ten years now. But when I think about her, and those thousands of leaps into the air, I remember that instinct to do something great. When it comes to work, life, and everything in between, it’s a lesson I try to remember: always extend yourself, strive to do the best you can, and don’t get too stuck to the ground.