A fictional designer of very real experiences

Florent ‘Flo’ Aniorté said he felt this pull of sorts one random day in the Plateau: “Some supernatural force came over me,” he recalls. He walked into Café Bravo, not knowing why, and locked eyes with Camille Béland, who was behind the bar in the middle of what she calls her ‘barista phase’ at the time.

This meet cute is the origin story of a working relationship that would go on to shape the distinctively weird, tactile, and story-first design work of the joint practice André Brown. Think mad science like velveted gay bars that don’t exist or off-kilter rebrands that no one asked for, as well as actual hospitality projects that blur the lines between branding, world-building, and emotional resonance. And none of their work, or the pair of designers behind it all, is interested in fitting in.

“André Brown represents this third person… this fictional man that’s a union of both our brains,” says Flo. “He’s very clean, in the norm, but he’s always going to give you something you don’t expect.” 

Camille adds: “Who’s André Brown? What is he doing? Nobody knows. Is he a man? A girl? We don’t know.”

Every time there are rules, the job is to break them

Originally a conceptual vessel for creative experimentation, André Brown eventually spawned B!Lab, a more commercially focused spinoff aimed at branding for bars and restaurants.

But even B!Lab isn’t a traditional agency. It was born out of necessity—“Oh shit, how do we make money? Fuck. We have to fucking pay our rent,” Camille says—but it quickly became its own design ecosystem. “It’s not to create a visual identity,” she elaborates. “It’s to create an experience.”

That difference between design as image versus design as feeling is where they operate best. Flo, a design school grad with a background in grid mastery and composition, brings structure. Camille, who never studied design formally, brings chaos, texture, and a love for the raw and the ugly. 

“I love what’s ugly,” she says plainly. “And every time there are rules, the job is to break them.”

Camille draws inspiration from what she calls “white trash in a way, what is raw, what is ugly”—the overlooked or unserious, recontextualized. She cites observing street characters, blue BIC pens, and kitsch. She never went to design school, and considers that a strength.

“I’m still an amateur in everything I do,” she says. “And it gives me so much freedom.”

That amateurism is intentional. Strategic, even. “It’s a bit like staying a child,” says Flo. “Shielded from the rigidity of schooling.”

Their work lives in that tension: messy but balanced, instinctive but anchored, story-driven but technically sound. “Even though we like messy shit that doesn’t make any sense—mixing colors that don’t make sense or fonts that don’t make sense—there’s still a grid visible in the background,” Flo says. “It’s pleasing to the eye even though it’s messy.”

That push-pull dynamic in their work is also how Flo and Camille describe their working relationship. “She really takes me out of my comfort zone,” says Flo. “She pushes me to say yes… to say fuck it, ‘je m’en calisse.’” 

In return, Camille says he brings her discipline. Structure. It’s a yin-yang arrangement they both lean into.

Coherent visual worlds

Their dream is to design the entire experience: not just the logo or the interior, but the feeling, the story, the ephemerality.

“We love branding. We love experience,” says Camille. “But putting ourselves in a single category, whether that’s hospitality or graphic design? It’s too restrictive.”

Instead, Camille and Flo have opted for immersive work: A recent branding pitch for the restaurant Rendez-Vous was structured not around logo options, but around the narrative arc of a date night: getting ready, the anticipation, the movement of two feet walking. Only once the client was emotionally situated did they reveal the visual design. The result: buy-in, trust, and a coherent visual world.

Then there’s how Limousine—the restaurant project from Laurent Dagenais and Ivy Studio—offered a glimpse of what they want more of: early involvement, multidisciplinary input, and interior branding that doesn’t feel like an afterthought. “We made a beautiful deck with a bunch of ideas for decoration,” Flo says. “We want the branding to mix, to be symbiotic with the inside.”

They don’t see Montreal as the end goal. “We don’t necessarily want to stay in Montreal,” says Camille, but their work here isn’t done.

“It’s the house. It’s the playground,” she says. “You can try anything here.”

Part of the work, they’ve learned, is figuring out how far to push—then finding the story that brings people with them.

And if Montreal isn’t always ready for what they’re offering, they’re okay with that. But when asked where they see themselves headed, the answer is bigger than branding.

So what is André Brown, then? A man? A lab? A lens?

Maybe all of the above. Or maybe just the answer to a very Montreal question: What happens when a city known for design finally gets a little messy on purpose?