Branding & Creative Company in Montreal

Bilingual obligation sets the floor on a Montreal brand project: a scoped bilingual brand identity project at Montreal rates, a full brand system (identity plus component library, Bill 96-compliant packaging templates, motion, sound, and digital implementation), or enterprise rebrands at Sid Lee, Ubisoft, Bombardier, or Cirque du Soleil scale. Scope drivers include bilingual strategy, positioning, primary mark, supporting marks, typography, colour, and a basic brand bible in EN and FR. Montreal rates are slightly below Toronto and Vancouver and well below New York and Paris, while the talent pool is genuinely competitive with all three. We give fixed-fee proposals instead of open T and M.

Bill 96 (Loi sur la langue officielle et commune du Quebec, le francais), in force since 2022 with full effect by June 2025, strengthens the Charter of the French Language. For brand and packaging, French must be predominantly displayed (typically at least equivalent prominence, and on packaging the French version must be at least as prominent as any other language). Public signage, posters, and commercial advertising visible from outside premises must give French markedly greater visibility than any other language. Recognized trademarks retain some protection but generic descriptors around the mark must be French. Our brand systems ship with Bill 96-aligned packaging templates, signage rules, and digital guidance, and we coordinate with Quebec trademark counsel when mark registration strategy is part of scope. Final legal review sits with your counsel.

Quebec Law 25 (formerly Bill 64) modernized Quebec’s private-sector privacy law with consent, data subject rights, breach notification, privacy by default, and significant administrative monetary penalties (up to the greater of CAD $25M or 4 percent of worldwide revenue). The Commission d’acces a l’information (CAI) has been actively enforcing since the 2023 and 2024 effective dates. For brand and marketing systems we ship consent-first analytics (Plausible, Fathom, or GA4 with a CAI-aware consent management platform), Canadian region hosting (AWS ca-central-1, GCP northamerica-northeast1 in Montreal, Azure Canada Central in Toronto or Canada East in Quebec City), and documented retention. The brand bible includes a Law 25-aligned privacy and consent framework.

Yes. Our team includes native French-Canadian speakers handling copy, voice and tone, and creative direction in French, and we treat French as a first language on Quebec engagements rather than a translation layer applied to English. Joual, register, regionalisms, and the difference between Quebec French and France French all matter on local brand work. Where the client prefers, French is the working language for the engagement, with English deliverables produced in parallel. For federally regulated clients subject to the Official Languages Act we ship both languages with equal craft, instead of a discount English-to-French pass. Final linguistic review sits with the client’s linguistic lead or external langagier where one is engaged.

Yes. Ubisoft Montreal, Behaviour Interactive, Eidos-Montreal, and a deep bench of mid-tier and indie studios drive a real Montreal demand for studio brand identity, IP brand systems, spinoff merchandise, and event brand work (MIGS, GamePlay Space, Montreal Indie Game Festival). We ship brand work that can extend across game UI, packaging, marketing, merch, and live events, and coordinate with the studio’s internal art direction so brand and game art stay coherent without one overriding the other. NDAs and confidentiality protocols around unreleased IP are handled up front. Final creative authorship sits with the studio.

Cirque du Soleil built one of the most distinctive global entertainment brands of the last forty years out of Saint-Michel. We are not Cirque’s in-house team, but we have shipped brand work for entertainment, live events, and IP licensing clients where the bar is set by Cirque, Just for Laughs (also Montreal), and Evenko. Our systems cover master brand and show-level brand architecture, multilingual marketing for international tours, merchandise brand standards, and digital brand systems for streaming and on-demand. Bill 96 considerations apply to Quebec performances and signage, and federal Official Languages Act considerations apply where federal funding or federal venues are in scope.

Canada’s proposed Artificial Intelligence and Data Act (AIDA) under Bill C-27 classifies AI systems by impact and imposes transparency, oversight, and incident reporting obligations on high-impact systems. Most generative AI use in brand design (moodboards, ideation, asset variation, copy drafts in EN and FR) sits below the high-impact threshold but still triggers transparency expectations from Quebec consumers, copyright considerations around training data, and Bill 96 considerations on French-language AI output quality. Our generative AI workflows document which tools were used, what was AI-assisted versus human-authored, and have a native French-Canadian reviewer in the loop on every FR output. The brand bible includes a generative AI usage policy in EN and FR.

A typical bilingual Montreal brand identity project runs twelve to eighteen weeks from kickoff to launch (slightly longer than a single-language equivalent because of the bilingual design, copy, and review cycles). Week 1 to 3 is discovery, research, and bilingual positioning. Week 4 to 8 is identity design through to a locked mark tested in EN and FR. Week 9 to 14 is system build with Bill 96-aligned packaging and signage templates. Week 15 to 18 is rollout, brand bible in both languages, and internal training. Full brand systems at Cirque, Ubisoft, or Bombardier scale obviously run longer. Public sector engagements add procurement timelines and CAI-aligned privacy review. We give milestone-based fixed fees instead of open T and M.