Uprising: Pascale Alie-Crête No Longer Lives in the Comfort Zone

For Pascale Alie-Crête, the path into the industry might not have been an obvious one, but the success of the up-and-coming graphic designer is proving the decision right. Having recently won gold for LG2’s ‘Solidarity Sparkles’ at the ADCC awards, things are quickly starting to heat up, and the future is bright for the artist. 

However, what did it take to get here? How did the ‘black sheep’ of a sports-loving family with minimal exposure to creative culture (apart from music) find her way? According to Pascale, the answer lay within an eagerness to find her own interests and gain independence while pursuing those passions. 

“My family spent every weekend and vacation playing sports, but that was never quite my element,” she recalls. “On the other hand, I learned to sew when I was young, and it’s been a passion for me since. Basically, I was a big fan of anything that required an extreme level of meticulousness.”

In many ways then, it comes as little surprise that for Pascale, a huge interest point for her would end up being fashion - something, she notes, which has had the biggest cultural impact on her, even to this day. As she puts it, “It's always had an influence on what I create because it's an industry that's constantly evolving and pushing us out of our comfort zone.”

So, you take a young, bright, independent woman with a love of fashion and passion for scrupulous craft, and ask her what she wants to study in university… What do you get? As the graphic designer notes, the decision to start studying design post high school really didn’t take that long to figure out. 

“I started with a college programme before earning my Bachelor's degree at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM),” she says. “My studies were formative for me, because that's when I really fell in love with design. It's a profession with a wide range of potential avenues, and training at UQÀM helps you define yourself as a creative person to better explore these.”

Crucial in this adventure would be Pascale discovering her talent for illustration - something which she’d never suspected before - as well as a strong penchant for typography, publishing and branding, all of which, she notes, are interests that she still practices and explores daily.

This is especially impressive, given the adventurous path Pascale took to getting the job she has today. Going from a short internship in a small studio to one of the city’s biggest agencies, Sid Lee, before deciding to strike out on her own, these opportunities proved vital, allowing her to apply learnings and, importantly, get a good understanding of the job market. 

“I wanted to move on to what really interested me, so in my case, it was vital to have had the chance to work in different places and discover all sorts of processes,” she says. “Freelancing comes with its share of challenges, but if you're up to it, I highly recommend it as a way to start your career.”

Of the lessons learned in this period, Pascale notes that chief among these was the value of self-confidence. While she notes that she fortunately discovered this fairly early on in her career, it’s essential for success in an industry where you’re judged daily on your ideas, and need to know how to sell them well. 

To this end, this concept is well-represented in her first-ever piece of industry work, which came during her aforementioned Sid Lee stint. Specifically, Pascale was tasked with working on the new can designs for Poppers, an alcoholic beverage which, she notes, is iconic across the province. 

“Despite being fresh out of university, I was given the mandate to redo all the cans,” she remembers. “However, while I ended up leaving before the end of the assignment (because the project had been put on hold, with no clear date as to when that would end), to my surprise, when it finally hit the shelves, it was pretty much exactly what I'd done before I left!”

And, after a stint of freelancing and a certain LG2 hiring later, that just about brings us to the present day. However, it would be a missed opportunity to not discuss the award-winning ‘Solidarity Sparkles’ campaign, which Pascale adds, changed her career. 

Created to celebrate the 20th anniversary of La Tablée des Chefs, a Quebec organisation that fights food insecurity, she explains that the brief was to design one “very special” label for the occasion. “However, we decided to go beyond the brief and design 20 that we illustrated and titled to tell two decades of La Tablée's story,” Pascale continues. “I consider this project to be particularly special because it's the first project in my career to be so widely recognised in Quebec, Canada and internationally. Not only is it special to know that what you create resonates with so many people who do the same job as I do, but it's even more special when the project in question serves to highlight such a worthy cause.”

This desire to go above and beyond seems to be a common trend in this creative’s work. Even when tasked with great creative challenges, she finds a way to not only push through, but come out the other side with flying colours - something evidenced in her recent work for the Francos de Montréal festival’s new platform. As one of the biggest events for Francophone music, not only was there a lot of pressure riding on that, but it was the first time she’d been asked to work on a design that had to live on a temporary installation on site, meaning a close collaboration with the agency’s architecture team was required. 

“Normally, our reality as designers is to create things that last,” she says. “So, it was a challenge to shift this mentality and create a platform that applies to pieces that are temporary and have to be assembled and dismantled year after year.”

In many ways, this embodies a unique point in Pascale’s ethos, where her greatest source of industry passion comes face to face with one of the most difficult aspects she faces on a regular basis. 

Specifically, as someone who loves designing identities that people can relate to and recognise themselves in (as well as giving second winds to brands that sometimes seriously need it), the graphic designer’s desire to create is only ever challenged by what she feels is the constant need to innovate. “The reality is that it's getting harder and harder to be original these days, since it constantly seems as if everything has already been done,” she laments. “However, this challenge is always worthwhile.”

In spite of this fact, the dilemma proves a two-sided coin to her, as it directly fuels what she considers to be the most exciting part of both the job, and the industry as a whole: consistent evolution. Seeing how the business is ever changing, with developing technologies, fresh trends and better tools, she feels that while the need for creative adaptation is challenging, it’s equally exciting, as it creates an environment where “nothing is redundant and one is constantly learning new things”… although that can have some downsides as well.

“What can be frustrating is that not everyone evolves at the same pace, and sometimes you have to deal with clients who take fewer risks or don’t dare try new things,” she adds. "To put it simply, staying in your comfort zone isn't always the best solution.”

And, the same can be applied to agencies as well, which Pascale believes are in dire need of embracing change, taking on a more interdisciplinary approach to projects. As she explains, “Our industry brings together so many different areas of expertise that make brands shine in a thousand and one ways. Whether it's a brand, digital, advertising, experiential or other mandate, I think we need to collaborate better and more often to create good 360 projects that are coherent from A to Z.”

Yet, with all that said and done, there’s far more to Pascale than just opinions on the industry and projects in her name. Outside of work, she leads a rich life in Montreal - the city she loves deeply and has always lived in. 

It’s there that she embraces a habit which has done her much good: spending hours unwinding in thrift stores, looking for gems. “It’s a perfect pairing for my passions for sewing and embroidery, which are also side hustles that make me feel 100% in my element,” she says. 

More than that however, even in a city where the winters are long and hard, there’s a sense of homeliness that comes with being around like-minded people, which Montreal offers in spades. For Pascale, living there allows her to be among her kind, nestled into a community full of talented and inspiring people - specifically designers - who remind her of her motivations, both in work and life. 

“At the end of the day, it’s all about creating,” she finishes. “As obvious an answer as that may be, I'm the kind of designer who likes to get her hands dirty. I love design not only for the result, but also for the process, and I look forward to continuing carrying that out, in life and work, day after day.”