practice
artlequin is a senior creative agency founded in Montreal in 2021 by Frédéric Vicaire, senior creative director, international speaker and Canadian reference in creative AI, with 30 years of practice. Branding, visual identity, creative direction, immersive experiences, sound universes : we cover the full creative spectrum for agencies, studios, businesses and cultural institutions, across Quebec and throughout Canada.
Our mandates have helped animation studios, cultural institutions, launching brands and overloaded agencies to frame fast and produce right.
↳ In September 2025, Quebec's Ministry of Economy and Innovation (MEIE) consulted artlequin on creative AI issues — a recognition of an approach that operates outside industry norms.
↳ artlequin also produces original music: lyrics, compositions and vocal direction, as a direct extension of our narrative research. Listen to the label at music.artlequin.ca →
Craftspeople, not vendors. Strategy before production.
Concrete results over empty aesthetic promises.
You arrive with an idea, a rough draft — or nothing at all.
We start from there.
Whatever the state of the project. What matters is what you want to achieve. We frame it, build it, make it visible.
Come with a vague idea or a clear direction. We structure it, create the visual universe, produce what convinces.
We work with you and your agent to build a visibility strategy true to your image — not a template, a presence built on who you actually are.
Your kitchen is an art form. We're here to stage it, unlock the added value your work deserves, and make it visible to people who don't know you yet.
We can make a project desirable before the first stone is laid. Immersive visualization technologies that few agencies master — and that change how a buyer imagines themselves inside.
We can invent it with you — script it, prototype it visually, make it credible — without you having to build it first to convince anyone.
That's often the most interesting kind. Tell us what you have in mind.
Every agency uses AI.
We're the only ones who give it a unique creative direction.
Vit isn't what we sell : it's the proof of what we know how to do.
images
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We are a creative agency first. Like every agency, we use AI. The difference : we trained our own. Vit is our creative AI model, trained on our practice alone, without ever injecting anyone else's intellectual property. To our knowledge, no other model like it exists : no other agency has trained its own this way. Not because the technology is out of reach, it is available to everyone, but because it takes 5 years of relentless work and 30 years of creative culture to transmit.
Contrary to what people imagine, a graphic AI is not competent at the push of a button. It is only as competent as the time its author has spent training it. The same technologies (Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion), left as they are, produce a generic aesthetic made of millions of strangers' images, because almost no one takes the time to train them. We did the opposite : years spent training ours on our own practice alone, until it stopped returning other people's images and became the mirror of our own eye.
Vit produces only what we have given it : our eye, our sensibility, our visual culture built over 30 years. Vit is the echo of what we were before it. It represents us. It does not represent itself.
When we show this work to large agencies, they try to replicate it. They cannot. Ethics by design.
Vit: wisdom, in Norwegian.
Vit is proprietary through its training,
not through its code.
Let us put it plainly, without jargon. We are not developers and we have never claimed to be : we did not write the code of an image engine. That is not where the value sits. What makes Vit unique is what we taught it : our knowledge, our images, our choices, our refusals. That is what belongs to us, and it is the only thing that decides what comes out on screen.
An image engine is available to everyone. It starts out neutral, and it stays neutral for anyone who teaches it nothing. We passed on 30 years of practice : talking to it, showing it, correcting, starting over, explaining why this image is right and why the next one is not. Training an AI is like training a junior art director, except the training never stops. We have been doing it for more than five years, every single day.
So the difference does not sit in the technology, it sits in the knowledge we passed on and in the time it took to pass it on. An AI is worth exactly what it has been taught. Without teaching, it returns the average of millions of strangers' images. With it, it returns an eye, ours. And five years of teaching cannot be caught up at the push of a button.
It is not our lines of code that make Vit. It is our knowledge.
Our creative services
- Senior creative direction Project, event, conference, pitch : from vision to delivery.
- Identity & visual universes Brand image, premium moodboards, graphic consistency, event unification.
- Scenography & immersive experiences Real or virtual sets, stage backdrops, hybrid and immersive experiences.
- Visual content & motion Projection visuals, motion design, title sequences, montage.
- Pitch & visual storytelling Pitch decks, investor presentations, intent renders, visual prototypes.
Agencies, studios & organizations
- Creative agencies
- Production studios
- Growing businesses
- Cultural institutions
- Cities & public spaces
From listening to delivery
1
Listen
Discover your challenges, audit your needs.
2
Ideation
Define your concepts and key messages.
3
Planning
Set up the timeline and deliverables.
4
Execution
Create content, immersive experience or installations — then deliver.
What our clients say
"We had a pitch due in 5 days. artlequin framed the creative direction in one day and produced the visuals in two. The client signed."— Mathieu R., Creative Director, animation studio
"We didn't really know yet what we wanted to say. After 30 minutes with artlequin, we had a clear angle and three visual directions."— Karim T., Founder, craft beverage brand
artlequin in 150 seconds
Creative direction, branding, proprietary AI. The agency in action.
Frequently asked questions
- What's the difference between artlequin and a large creative agency ?
- A large agency bills for its structure. At artlequin, you pay for the work : a senior creative director directly on your project — no intermediary, no junior doing the work. Comparable results, significantly lower fees.
- Do you work only in Montreal ?
- We are based in Greater Montreal but work with clients across Quebec and Canada. The majority of our mandates are done remotely, in full remote.
- How does your pricing work ?
- Three formulas depending on your need : a monthly retainer for recurring needs, a single mandate for a specific project, or a 2-week payroll if you need a dedicated creative director. See formulas and pricing →
- Do you do creative direction for events ?
- Yes — it's one of our core territories. Event creative direction, scenography, event visual identity, projection visuals, stage backdrops, hybrid or immersive experiences. We step in at every stage, from concept to content delivery.
- Can you create a pitch deck or investor presentation ?
- Yes. Pitch decks, partner or investor presentations, intent renders : we transform an idea or project into a presentation that convinces. Senior creative direction on the project, deliverable and defensible results.
Ready ?
Challenge accepted !