About Urbania

Urbania

Urbania is a Montreal-based French-language quarterly magazine and media group known for its bold design, unconventional tone and provocative covers. Founded in 2003 by Philippe Lamarre and Vianney Tremblay, it has spent two decades chronicling Quebec society through long-form journalism, photography and illustration — with a mission to tell the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Now a multi-platform media group with operations in France, it celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2023 with a commemorative book published by Cardinal Éditions.

Overview

Urbania is the enfants terribles of Quebec magazines: a quarterly that treats serious subjects with visual daring and editorial irreverence. Its covers have become cultural events in themselves — the 15th-anniversary issue depicting commentator Richard Martineau as a martyr, an issue showing Justin Trudeau and others crucified, another dressing former premier Jean Charest in cheddar. The provocation is never gratuitous, the magazine's defenders argue: it is the visual expression of an editorial philosophy that refuses the polite conventions of Quebec public discourse.

The magazine's stated mission is to feature ordinary people doing extraordinary things — long-form portraits, reported narratives and photo essays that find the remarkable in the everyday. That human-centred journalism, combined with the magazine's distinctive art direction, has made Urbania one of the most recognizable brands in Quebec media and a regular winner of design honours, including recognition from Applied Arts.

History

Urbania was founded in 2003 by Philippe Lamarre and Vianney Tremblay, emerging from Toxa — the design agency the pair had established in 2000. The magazine was conceived as a laboratory: a place where journalism, design, photography and illustration could collide without the constraints of conventional publishing. Lamarre, the driving creative force, brought a background that would earn him the Phyllis Lambert Grant in 2008 and the title of Producer of the Year at the New Media Awards in 2010.

In 2015, Toxa and Urbania merged, consolidating the design agency and the magazine into a single media group. The merger formalized what had long been true in practice: Urbania was as much a design studio as a publisher, and its commercial creative work funded its journalism. In September 2020, the group launched in France under the direction of Florent Peiffer — taking the Urbania formula to the French market. In 2023, the magazine celebrated its 20th anniversary with a commemorative book published by Cardinal Éditions, tracing the media group's history — a milestone for a project whose founders have said they never imagined it would last more than a decade. The original impulse, they have explained, was simply to explore new avenues and have fun; what it became was one of Quebec's most distinctive media institutions.

The deeper origin story is a Saint-Laurent Boulevard story. Around the turn of the 2000s, Lamarre returned to Montreal after formative experiences elsewhere — including studies in art and design in Vancouver — determined to build something in Quebec, in French. He opened a creative studio near Concordia University, doing client work in logos, brochures, posters and websites — stimulating projects, but ones where the studio controlled the container, not the content. In 2003 the studio moved to Boulevard Saint-Laurent, Montreal's multiethnic and multilingual bastion, and the effervescence of the street inspired the next step: gathering a band of creators around a shared project, a magazine in the image of that singular street. Each edition would be a collection of viewpoints gathered around a theme, presenting a current panorama of the society in which they lived. They named it URBANIA — for the heart of the city whose bustling urban life they wanted to explore and narrate. The first edition appeared in June 2003; half-jokingly, its founders described their business positioning as a hybrid between the Que sais-je pocket reference books and the Journal de Montréal.

In its early years the magazine served as a portfolio for the two graphic designers, still "underground" but produced with evident delight — promoted by Lamarre himself at the Boulevard Saint-Laurent sidewalk sale in 2006, and a few years later launching themed issues to crowds of 400 to 600 at Montreal's Hôtel Place d'Armes. Lamarre became the first laureate of the Phyllis Lambert Grant from Design Montréal and has presided over the Société des designers graphiques du Québec. The Toxa agency, meanwhile, produced the web series "Montréal en 12 lieux" and "Québec en 12 lieux," broadcast on TV5, uncovering the hidden face of the city and the province with the same absurdist curiosity and graphic sensibility as the magazine. What began as a calling card became a multi-platform brand — print, web, television — and, in the words of one early admirer, a fine proof of local design talent.

The group's own description of its voice is untranslatable attitude rendered as editorial policy: sharp but not mocking, funny but not frivolous, authentic but not ordinary — made in Montreal since 2003, addressed to a community of curious people hungry for intelligent, irreverent, high-spirited media. Its mission, in the formulation it has used for its anniversary celebrations: to make the ordinary extraordinary.

Content

Urbania's quarterly issues are built around long-form journalism: reported narratives, in-depth portraits, photo essays and illustrated features on Quebec society, culture, politics and the human condition. The magazine's sections have evolved over the years, but the constant is the combination of serious reporting with playful, provocative presentation — the belief that a story about social issues can also be a visual and literary pleasure.

The covers remain the brand's signature: concept-driven, often controversial, always designed to stop the reader. Inside, the magazine gives photographers, illustrators and writers unusual freedom, producing issues that read as much as art objects as journalism. The French edition, launched in 2020, applies the same formula to French subjects and sensibilities.

Coverage & Audience

Urbania is published in Montreal and distributed in Quebec, with its French operation extending its reach to France since 2020. Its audience is the culturally engaged francophone reader — young urban professionals, creatives, students and the intellectually curious — who value the magazine's combination of substance and style. The quarterly rhythm and the collectible quality of its design give it a readership that keeps issues rather than discarding them, and its anniversary book confirmed its status as a cultural institution rather than a disposable periodical.

Ownership

Urbania is published by the Urbania media group, formed by the 2015 merger of the Urbania magazine and the Toxa design agency, both co-founded by Philippe Lamarre and Vianney Tremblay. Lamarre remains the group's guiding creative figure, and he has also served publicly on Quebec media policy — co-chairing the working group on the future of audiovisual in Quebec.

The group's creative leadership extends beyond Lamarre: Raphaëlle Huysmans, with the company since 2008, became a partner and vice-president in 2015, overseeing Urbania's original production, content agency and media activities. She has also served as chair of the MUTEK music and digital-creation festival's board, and received the Vincent-Gabriele emerging-talent award from Quebec's media-production association. The French operation, launched in September 2020, is directed by Florent Peiffer.

Digital Presence

Urbania.ca is the magazine's digital home: current-issue highlights, web-exclusive journalism, video and the magazine's distinctive visual universe extended online. The brand's social channels carry its provocative covers and visual storytelling to audiences beyond print buyers, and the French edition maintains its own digital presence. The quarterly print magazine remains the flagship — the collectible object at the heart of the brand — but the website, social feeds and the group's broader media activities make Urbania a multi-platform operation: part magazine, part design studio, part cultural provocateur.