designswarm thoughts

A few days ago I read about the launch of Vinisimo and suddenly realised I knew who the graphic designer was… I’ve been waiting for a photo and some images from her for a while, but I think this one will do :)

Thank you Marie-Claude for speaking with me, could you describe yourself and your work briefly?

I am an independent graphic designer with interests mostly in conceptual work, typography and our responsibility on the environment. I do web and printed work for my own clients and for some other small graphic design studios. I spent half a year working in a small studio in Rotterdam back in 2006.

How long have you been working professionally in Montreal ?

I started in 1996 building web sites. Since then, I went back to university to obtain a Graphic Design degree at UQAM. I almost always worked as an independent.

Do you consider design to be well understood in Montreal?

It always depends who you are talking to. But I would say that, in general, people are not really aware of what design is, especially in my field of graphic design. When I say that I am a graphic designer, people think that I am a DTP and that I know very well how to use Photoshop or they think I am an artist. Design is in part technical but is mostly about thinking, functionality and concept, and that is what people don’t get. It’s also something that surrounds us so much everyday that we don’t even see it anymore.

In your opinion, what key designers/business are shaping the design scene in Montreal?

To my opinion those businesses/designers have strong remarkable presence in Montréal:

- Orange Tango
- Sid Lee
- Paprika
- Stéphane Huot
- Annie Lachapelle
- Alexandre Renzo
- Frédéric Metz (has a very good presence and speaks about design in the medias)

What is missing from the Montreal design scene?

We need more implication from everyone and more get togethers. We need to transmit what design is to the public and make it more accessible. I also think that we need to raise our standards and educate our clients instead of doing what they ask of us.

What would you say is the hardest thing about working in design in Montreal?

The general visual culture is not very high. Design and art are not well understood. Conceptual work is very rare.

What would you say is the best thing about working in design in Montreal?

There is a nice community of designers. It’s easy to know who does what. It’s also a city where there is a lot going on in different fields.

Where do the opportunities lie for the future of design in Montreal?

I think it lies in education and in raising our standards to meet those of cities like Amsterdam, London, Berlin, Zürich. It would be great if some of our universities would offer a Master degree in Graphic Design to form more “thinking” people.

If you had the choice to work somewhere else, where would it be?

I would work again in Rotterdam, Netherlands because this city is very alive culturally and there is a lot going on over there in graphic design, industrial design and architecture. I would also like to work in Amsterdam or Berlin.

(I’m completing this series even after having left the country as some of my interviewees have been fairly busy. There are 2 more left and the last one is the best, so i hope you’ll bear with me :) )

I had the pleasure of speaking with Marie-Eve Bélanger who is one of the 4 members of 24karrots a film and design collective working in Montreal.

1. Could you describe yourself and 24Karrot‘s work briefly?

24karrots is a design and video (and everything in between) collective we started exactly a year ago. Vanda and I are mostly design oriented, whereas the boys (Dan and Bobby) are the filmakers of the group. But we all overlap as some point, as our academic paths are quite similar. As for myself, well, I’m mostly a web designer these days (although i like to think i can do it all ;) ). I have worked, in collaboration with Vanda, on fashion projects like the I Love Kyoto shirts and multiple print projects. I also have my own line of work which is web oriented.

2. How long have you been working professionally in Montreal ?
It’s been almost three years now. I got offered a position at an agency while finishing design school 2 years ago after which i got hauled over to 24karrots.

3. Do you have any event or anecdote that is representative of your experience working in Montreal?
Too many – walking on Côtes-des-Neiges, everyday to get to our studio is an adventure in itself.

4. Do you consider design to be well understood in Montreal?
No, not really… Well, there’s a specific, mainstream almost mass-produced design that seems to be well-accepted and loved. I’m talking here about all those nifty bars or boutique-hotels designed to appeal to a certain very specific clientele. Same thing in graphic design. Agencies get all the love. People are still awkward towards low-fi, well-produced, manmade design.

5. In your opinion, what key designers/business are shaping the design scene in Montreal?
I personnally like the grassroot feel of RITA. I would say the works of smaller companies like FEED, atelier Chinotto or even freelancers like Christian Bélanger or Luce Beaulieu are truly pushing the montreal design scene further than any bigger agencies. Their values, craftmanship and rigourous approach to design is what montreal looks like.

6. What is missing from the Montreal design scene?
We need: more craftsmen, more typographers, more international design conferences, more ethical/eco graphic designers, more letterpresses, more independant designers, more perspective, more interaction between designers of any fields

7. What would you say is the hardest thing about working in design in Montreal?
A. Educating clients about good design.
B. Competing with bigger forces than us. Agencies, clients and design-focused media outlets.
C. Being in Montreal: we sometimes see our city as this marvelous multicultural meting pot whereas, i think, we are one of the most self-centered group of designers on the planet.

8. What would you say is the best thing about working in design in Montreal?
A. The tightly knit web community. The cooperation and collaboration between independant designers
B. The vernacular design in our everyday lives that is specific to montreal: metro, architecture, old neon signs, côtes-des-neiges in general.
C. The 5 à 7′s ;)

9. Where do the opportunities lie for the future of design in Montreal?
Designers and businesses need to move out of the plateau and in to Côtes-des-Neiges, NDG, Hochelaga and such. Humbling, inspiring and cheaper ;)
We need to acknowlege the work of smaller businesses and ethical designers. Both in the media and in our everyday lives.

10. If you had the choice to work somewhere else, where would it be?
Berlin, Kiev, Brno, NYC

Lovely map of the Montreal web scene, which shows there’s tons happening on that level.

via Montreal Tech Watch. Thanks Heri! (I bitched about the first map being based on the London Underground and he was kind enough to make another one , hurrah! )

When you live in Montreal, one of the things that permeates all levels of society, and even design in my opinion, is the linguistic landscape. For those of you that have never had the pleasure of visiting this great country, Canada is legally a bilingual country: french and english are the 2 official languages. All politicians must speak it and you’ll find they’ll do most public speeches in both languages. Signage is in both languages due to the infamous Charter of French Languages and you are served in stores in both languages (if not more) as well.

This made me examine the issue of design and it’s definition in Quebec with it’s version of french (because let’s be honest, it’s far from being the same as the french spoken in France).

On a basic level, design is a word that in english is used as a noun and a verb. “I design an object” “or this is a design object” but in Québecois, you can use it as a qualifying adjective. You can often hear someone say “c’est design” or “it’s design” and this poses a huge conceptual challenge.

Regardless of where it came from, “c’est design” is more often than not used to say that something is aesthetically pleasing, well designed, beautiful, etc. So using the word design in a more complex context of methodology, approach, process, in québécois sounds almost alien to most people. When saying “design et mode” one will end up understanding “beauty and fashion”. This is an interesting challenge for french speaking designers in Montreal, as the public understanding of design will always instinctively mean “people who make pretty things” a situation most designers aboard can say they usually manage to escape. This also means that architects hate being referred to as designers in Montreal and have made their field seem completely unrelated or more justly, cousin-like to the design activity.

A future design scene in Montreal will definitely have to work hard to communicate the value of design using a more extended vocabulary while still staying on message.

1. How did you come to create Foumalade and could you describe the type of work you do?

Foumalade is basically four people realizing that the combination of their talents yielded unexpected and interesting things, and then trying to figure out how to make a living off of that. We’re a fairly multidisciplinary bunch, with our core strengths laying in cinema, photography, animation and graphic design. So any work that includes some combination of those is probably within our sphere of interest. The more it blurs the lines between disciplines, the merrier.

As a nonprofit organization, we have a specific mission to help out the artistic community. We decided early on that we wanted to work with artists because we felt that they understood creativity and respected our work. But, more importantly, and this is where we’ll probably sound like raging idealists, we want art to live; we want it to be as rebellious, as weird, as independant, as spontaneous, and as free as it deserves to be. We feel that a lot of what’s happening on a broader scale – socially and politically, for instance – asphyxiates, rather than liberates, art. So we want to work against that, in our own little way.

2. How long have you been working professionally in Montreal ?

Foumalade itself is very young – we haven’t celebrated our first birthday yet. Before that, the four of us had been working together informally since around 2004.

3. Do you have any event or anecdote that is representative of your experience working in Montreal?

We can’t think of anything relevant to our work, but we do have an anecdote : Grospet, our mascot cat, once escaped from his home to our studio ten blocks down, amid traffic. We interpret that as a clear sign that he really likes what we do here.

4. Your work is fairly multi-disciplinary which I somewhat rare. Do you consider your work to be well understood in Montreal?

It’s certainly appreciated, but perhaps not so well understood. The diversity of our work makes it harder to pin down; even we are reluctant to categorize it squarely, because we’re willing to embark on any project that stimulates us creatively, no matter the specific disciplines or media it involves.

5. In your opinion, what key designers have shaped the creative scene
in Montreal?

Norman McLaren, Roadsworth, and Michel Brault come to mind. They’re not strictly speaking designers, but they definitely inspired us in some way, and they have certainly influenced Montreal’s creative scene.

6. What is missing from the Montreal creativity scene in your opinion?

Creatively speaking, we think it’s in pretty good health. What’s largely missing is social and political consciousness. A lot of creatives fail to grasp (or refuse to acknowledge) the broader ramifications of their work, and that’s unfortunate.

7. What would you say is the hardest thing about working in the creative industries in Montreal?

As a young and little known studio, one key challenge is finding paid work with people we want to work with. We’ve collaborated with a lot of artists on really interesting projects, but we often end up working a lot for very little money – which we’re happy to do, and you could argue that it’s part of our mission, but unfortunately we can’t live on that. We wish it were easier for artists to finance their projects.

8. What would you say is the best thing about working in the creative industries in Montreal?

There are a lot of inspiring things happening in various creative fields, especially on the indie scene. All sorts of people end up in Montreal and that creates an incredibly rich and diverse creative environment. It’s very stimulating to work here.

9. Where do the opportunities lie for the future of creativity in Montreal?

Hopefully, outside the reach of corporate interest. Sadly, creativity is largely sold to corporations and used as a trojan horse into consumers’ minds. We hope the creative space finds new ways to expand outside the market-driven creative industry.

10. If you had the choice to work somewhere else, where would it be?

Underwater would be pretty awesome.

Check out their work…

Design hides in academia as well in Montreal and it seems it’s also doomed to be under-represented there as well.

It was my great pleasure to have a chat TODAY with Katia-Luce Mayer, responsible for the management of theMatériauthèque of the Faculty of Environmental design of the University of Montreal since 1998. An initial idea of Michel Gariépy and Colin Davidon, 2 former teachers at the Faculty, Katia was brought in to shape what has become a one of it’s kind collection of material samples and catalogues for every discipline of design in academia.

The Matériauthèque was meant to become a centre of reference that would enable students from all design departments (there are 5 in the building alone, or more than 1000 students) to have access and consult up-to-date materials information that would make their research and projects more accurate and close to what is available on the market.

In the past 8 years she has managed to grow the collection from 50 mostly out-of-date samples (one of them fated back to 1982) to an impressive yearly-updated collection of 3 to 4 000 material samples (something that could rival the elite and expensive Material Connexion from all over canada and the US as well as 500 catalogues for the companies that cannot deliver samples. European samples are rare as companies very rarely make samples available but it sometimes happens. Katia once received, to her great delight, some samples from Austria.

Well lit and airy, with a view on Cote-Ste-Catherine, this lovely space also serves as a display for some of the industrial design student projects and you can easily spend and afternoon flipping through samples in drawers and have a look at some of the chairs designed by 1st year students. Students and professionals from all over the world have visited the library throughout the years and talked to Katia about extending this model abroad. The library was also mentioned in an italian design magazine. No other university in Montreal offers a materials library of this size.

Due to budget ronstraints however, Katia’s position has been removed and the library’s “raison d’etre” is being discussed internally. The sample loans, I’m told, will be self-regulated by the students but will no longer be updated. A shame.

So if I were you, I’d hurry up and go and see this before all the samples get forgotten on student desks…

I met Boris Anthony very briefly at Xtech in Paris last month and was thrilled to learn that he lived and worked in Montreal. Aged 32, he’s a self-defined “Web technology and design specialist, hyper-connector”.

On top of that, he was also in part responsible for organising Montreal’s very own Pecha Kucha. I thought he would be the perfect candidate for the “Looking for design” project and asked him a few questions about his views of the world of design in Montreal.

How long have you been working professionally in the world of design in Montreal?
11 years (all on my own, except for a 3 year corporate position in Laval. You need to experience hell in order to avoid it ;)

If you’ve worked a lot abroad, what triggered that decision (versus staying in Montreal)?
Variety, different perspectives from different cultures, travel, more activity

Is design well understood in Montreal?
The overwhelming sense I get here is that design is pigeonholed as Graphic/Multimedia/Web Design, Interior Design/Urbanism/Architecture and Product Design. These are all applications of design, and are all certainly worthy of recognition, but the underlying raison d’être, the soul of design appears to me sort of lost. Isn’t design solving a problem or finding a solution? Why do we concentrate purely on design for immediate, established commercial exploitation? Where is the forward thinking development of ways to live in and with the future? Which is here now, as you know.

What keywords come to mind when you think about design in Montreal?
“Can you do my website/party flyer/kitchen?!?!”

What is missing from the Montreal design scene?
Perspective and vision. We all need to stop, take a step back, look around, listen and learn.
Part of that is also, I think there is a lack of broader awareness. I am constantly shocked to find people are totally ignorant of what others around them are doing, especially across fields.

What would you say is the hardest thing about working in design in Montreal?
Getting out of Montreal. This place is just so comfortable and laid back, it can all too easily soften one’s ambitions and drive.

What would you say is the best thing about working in design in Montreal?
See above. ;)

Where do the opportunities lie for the future of design in Montreal?
“Asia. It changes everything.”

If you had the choice to work somewhere else where would it be?
Tokyo, Shanghai, Bangkok.

I wandered into downtown yesterday, in the bitter cold (it was around 13 degrees celcius, I haven’t felt that since my dutch winter many months ago) and bumped into what appeared to be the beginning of a week-long celebration of “fashion and design”. Another use of the word design. Interesting, i thought.

As I walked along McGill College avenue (which had been closed off for the event), they were still setting things up. A huge fashion stage took most of the space. A few over-tanned youngsters were giving out free Gillette razors, American express had a corporate booth, makeup stations were giving free makeup advice, massages, etc.

Scattered around the site Sid Lee a wellknown marketing agency in town, and communications partner of designmontreal, had attempted to get the point across that Montreal had been awarded the UNESCO city of design status for 2007.

Tall monolith-like boxes acted as billboards to explain this. The first one attempted to deconstruct the design of famous architectural landscapes in Montreal. Describing a step by step design process of the Olympic stadium (a structure better known for it’s failures, notably it’s dysfunctional roof) and Habitat 67 to name just 2.

The next one caught my eye as I had seen the design online. Bright large stickers covered the entire surface of the billboard with “le design c’est…” (design is…) and left the rest to the public. So far the public’s reaction was “design is the new esperanto”, “design is ugly”, “design is nothing”, etc.. In the middle of the monolith though there was an unfolded pizza box, with “the pizza will arrive cold” drawn on it and a written short story of a pizza delivery boy and his fight through traffic among a beautiful city he has learnt to ignore.

This was somewhat of a strange mixture. It wanted to be an attempt at user-generated /public opinion content but with the guerilla-style advertising pizza box taped in the middle it was hard to tell what we were supposed to look at or if we should even participate. As I wrote about last week, in light of the AIGA talk, it’s always good to set some rules if you want people to get involved. Otherwise, well, that’s what you get. Crapucopia.

Esperanto indeed, a language which everyone should talk and understand, but noone really does.

I had dinner last night with a good friend of mine, Valérie Sangin, a photographer who specialises in creative portraits and of course we had to catch up and I got her to share some of her experience, working in Montreal.

Things weren’t that peachy. Talented to bits, and very creative, she has been freelancing for the past few years, working as a wedding photographer during summer times to pay the bills. A bitter sweet experience studying at Concordia university made her realise she wasn’t interested in photography in the world of art. “There were no criteria you could operate on. Things are so subjective, it completely depended on the mood of the tutor to determine if she would like the work or not”.

After her studies, she opened a studio with some friends from school which was quite successful. She appeared in a movie. She organised the photoshoots for “A makeover story”-type of television show for a well-known Quebec TV channel. But nothing would ever come out of it. When she met professionals in the TV industry, they already had their own photographers. There is no space for new professionals in the city. The community is small and stays small with it’s own superstars and idols. As she pointed out, when there’s only 50 people who do the same thing, there’s only competition for the few jobs around, no sense of camaraderie.

She’s now back to freelancing on her own and finds the environment difficult. “I hate having to fight for the right to do what I want to do” she cries out, “it doesn’t make sense to spend 90% of my time trying to find work that will take me a few hours to actually do. A photoshoot isn’t that long after all”.

We also spoke about former friends and colleagues, noting that most of them now have completely changed career paths, working in jobs completely unrelated to design. “People just give up” she told me.

She remains ambitious and optimistic though. When I asked her where she sees herself in 5 years, she answered “I’d like to be a creative portrait photographer for celebrities. Like Annie Leibovitz, but I want total control over the photoshoot”.