Future forward: Baillat Studio’s brand for CLC 2023 echoes the labour union convention’s ambitions

Held every three years, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) Convention serves as a platform for Canada’s unions to come together and celebrate the achievements of the labour movement while also strategizing for a better future for all workers. The 30th edition of the CLC Convention took place in May 2023 at the Palais de Congrès in Montréal, led by the theme of ‘Canada's Unions: Lifting Everyone Up.’

To visually represent the theme, Montreal-based Baillat Studio adopted a simple yet impactful graphic approach, characterised by vibrant colours, bold typography, and dynamic compositions that captures attention across all outputs. The use of building blocks as the main graphic element symbolises progress and lifting, accompanied by arrows that direct the viewer’s gaze upwards, signifying a bright future for Canada’s unions in the years ahead. The clean lines and minimalist, geometric design elements allow the contrasting colours and bold typography to take centre stage. 

“Our goal for this project,” the studio tells us, “was to propose a very contemporary design system that elevated the standards of what this client was used to, while remaining an efficient tool of communication for them, especially as the audience for this event is very diverse. Therefore, the typographic approach was motivated by a desire to mix a very refined visual identity with optimal accessibility.” A geometric sans serif, Funktional Grotesk by Typografische Systeme, proved the perfect choice, sharing the geometric qualities of the brand while maintaining legibility across applications of all scales. Additionally, it contributes a sense of playfulness and modernity to the overall aesthetic, while also helping communicate the copy in a visually appealing and memorable way.

As one of the leading design elements, creating a suitable colour palette was crucial for the convention, which was divided into six themes. The challenge was to develop a broad enough range of colours that could be paired differently for each theme. Baillat Studio devised a palette of seven colours, allowing each theme to have its primary and secondary colour combinations, adding a luminous vibrancy to the chromatic output.

Baillat Studio