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.