A long-lasting collaboration : effigies for Carnaval de Québec
Bonhomme in our shop
We collabore with Carnaval de Québec for its effigy.
The effigy is the mandatory pass to access carnival’s activities. By purchasing it, you receive a booklet of discount for some activities in Quebec City.
More than a pass, the effigy has also became an undisputed collector object over the years. We’re proud to be part of this project.
Through the years
At the beginning, the effigy was hand-painted by anyone within our county willing to.
1989
The expertise of pad printing replaced the original production mode: pad printing was done on 3D effigies.
1992
We became a worker cooperative, Promo Plastik. The sense of belonging with the Carnaval de Québec effigy project, we became responsible for this part.
2016
Since 2016, digital printing on clear pieces has become established.
2023 effigies, a surprise box project
The digital printing continues… with an innovation! The pieces were entirely made in Quebec from recycled sugar shacks tubing. A real surprise box of unexpectations happens. As usual, this project makes us grow with it!
Still understanding the needs
Even if we have an history with the Carnaval de Québec, we still do submissions. This occurs in a lot of discussions to be sure we understand the new needs of the project: this year the committee wanted some recycled materials. The way of presenting our collaboration through the years with all our comments based on our expertise made us still win the bid: the committee still give us his fully confidence to realize the effigy.
A surprise at the airport
While our general director was waiting for her plane to go to NATCON22, she saw the effigies’ collection in the airport. Wasn’t it funny? Even Quebec airport has its own collection of all carnival effigies!
(PS: do you think Bonhomme lost his luggage? 😉)
Testing!
When we receive the first pieces, we need to do some samples to be sure the color was accurate. Also, we did different tests on how much layer we need to print because the committee want the design to appear in both sides. The tests were also done to see the readability of the embossed text behind the pieces. With this new material, it’s important to know in which one the effigy is done.
We send our samples to Quebec where the carnival committee comes back as fast as possible to give us their approval: we were ready to produce their thousands of effigies!
The perfume
When we received the box full of pieces, a subtle odor occurs. After smelling it closer, we realized that was a sugar shack odor. Normal, the pieces are made from their tubing!
That perfume was what people mostly were talking about during the production.
Photo de Claude Laprise sur Unsplash
Material get stuck
A new material often comes with some surprises. It was not an exception for this one. Even if we expected irregularities from recycled material, we didn’t think we will need to overcome a big obstacle about that during the production. The recycled sugar shacks tubing granules came in a much larger size than what we had saw, and it kinda stuck in the mold machinery.
We had some discussions with the molder to assure an homogeneity between the pieces.
The white “panink”
Remember, we said the pieces had an odor when coming out of the mold. This sugar shack odor just worked up an appetite for the pieces: it was greedier than expected on white ink.
And then, we learned while ordering that the selected ink was going to be out of stock. Deception! We had selected it specifically after all our tests. And going through a little bit of panic!
Fortunately, we have received the new one before we run out. This gives us the opportunity to produce the effigies without any interruption.
An effigy that looks awesome and still give us the sense of belonging to the carnival.
