Monique Gamache has closed Matter Studio, the Calgary design agency she founded in 2020, to join the full service agency C&B Advertising as design director.

“I started Matter during COVID and we were a small team of four people, specifically working in design,” Gamache (pictured above) says. “We were floundering in terms of production, accounts and strategy, and everything I wanted was at C&B.”

With the entire Matter team joining C&B, Gamache says the team is looking forward to the additional support, camaraderie and collaboration that will come with joining the larger organization.

With the move, Gamache brings over clients such as Anthem Properties, art gallery Contemporary Calgary and chair manufacturer Allseating.

Prior to Matter, Gamache was a partner and design director at the now-defunct Wax Partnership, and a designer at Parallel.

Gamache has helped put unlikely brands on the design map, such as the Calgary Society for Persons with Disabilities for the design of its annual report. Her work has been recognized by the One Show and the Type Directors Club, and her accolades include a Cannes Silver Lion and D&AD Black Pencil. She has served as a judge for Design Strategy Agency of the Year in 2023, and in previous years she’s served as a judge for Cannes Lions, D&AD and the One Show.

“Her skill set complements the team in terms of what we’re doing, but will also elevate the work in terms of craft and quality,” says Leigh Blakely, managing director at C&B.

“We’ve been able to offer Monique’s clients her ability to continue the great work and quality of creative. We can offer adding in having the production and other creative resources for other channels, in terms of radio, TV, video, and more robust channels because we are a full service agency.”

In the past year, Gamache and C&B became familiar with each other as they collaborated on work for brands such as Theatre Calgary, University District Calgary, Brookfield Properties and bottled water company North Water. Since joining C&B, Gamache has weighed in on work for Banff and Lake Louise Tourism, and for Calgary Stampede projects. Other C&B clients include Travel Alberta and Calgary Co-Op.

C&B also recently added Jarrod Banadyga (pictured right) as creative director. Banadyga returned to Calgary after a decade as creative director for The Public House, an agency in Ireland. Prior to working in Ireland, Banadyga was based in Vancouver, working as a freelance copywriter, associate creative director for Dare Vancouver and senior copywriter for DDB Canada. He served as a judge for The One Show in 2022, and has worked with brands such as Jameson, Toyota, Canadian Tourism Commission, Sport Chek, BC Hydro and Western Canada Lottery Corporation.

“Having Jarrod provide more guidance on a day-to-day basis across all of our clients allows us to take on more work and helps bring in more bench strength to our leadership team,” says Blakely.

She adds that to better serve clients, along with the diversity of needs, the agency needed to bring in more bandwidth for creative leadership and thought.

Banadyga and Gamache are filling new positions, bringing the agency’s number of staff to 28 and bolstering a leadership team that includes C&B founders Blakely and Phil Copithorne, who also serves as creative director, along with strategy director Shayne McBride.