A brand identity shaped in Chambéry, from shopfront to phone screen

Which brands do we design for Chambéry businesses?

New identities as well as updates: logo and its variations, palette, typefaces, short guidelines and templates. The scope depends on the materials the brand has to carry in its first year.

Chambéry–Grand Lac économie, the body that runs the area’s business parks, highlights five key sectors: smart energy, digital, outdoor-health-wellbeing, food production and mountain engineering. Each one comes with its own surfaces. A food producer thinks in labels, cartons and supermarket shelves; an engineering firm in technical reports and trade-fair stands; a health practice in door plaques, prescriptions and online appointment booking.

So we list those surfaces before the first sketch, then design the ones that come up most often first. The full method, from brief to roll-out, follows the steps set out further down this page.

• Creation: a checked name, logo, symbol, palette, typefaces
• Update: keep what your customers recognise, fix what gets in the way of reading
• Guidelines and templates: posts, quotes, presentation, email signature
• Brand family: one logo per business line as the group grows

How does a shop in the old town keep its character?

By drawing a name that holds up in plain lettering on a protected façade, and saving colour and boldness for the places that allow it: the window, the bag, the website, social media.

The French Ministry of Culture lists a site patrimonial remarquable (a protected heritage area) in Chambéry, dating back to 1969. Inside such an area, any work that changes the outside of a building needs a permit subject to the approval of the architecte des bâtiments de France, the state heritage architect, who may attach conditions to it. A shopfront rebuilt around a busy logo in relief and bright colours is unlikely to get through as it stands.

For a shop or restaurant in these streets, we plan from day one a version of the name that can be painted or cut out cleanly in a single colour, alongside the richer version kept for screens. The heritage architect can review a draft proposal, so it is wise to show them the façade before ordering the sign. If you also want to sell online without drawing trade away from the shop, our online store service picks up the same identity.

What does a Savoie Technolac start-up need from its identity?

To look credible to a manufacturer or an investor before it has any track record. At the start, a clean base is enough: a name that works outside the lab, a legible logo and a presentation template.

Between La Motte-Servolex and Le Bourget-du-Lac, the technology park brings together 240 innovative companies, according to Chambéry–Grand Lac économie, about half of them in energy and 60 with an international reach, plus an incubator supporting 60 start-ups. A young company there sits next to INES, the national solar energy institute, and the Université Savoie Mont Blanc: its image has to bear comparison without borrowing its neighbours' codes.

We set aside the stylised solar panel and the green lightning bolt the whole sector uses, and look for what belongs only to the process or the product. The investor deck and the sheet for buyers then share the same diagrams and the same typeface. The questions to settle before this work are covered in a journal article on launching a start-up at Savoie Technolac, so far in French only.

Should a mountain brand change its look between winter and summer?

No: the mark stays the same, while the images, secondary colours and messages follow the season. A brand that reinvents itself every season loses the people who met it the winter before.

The Chambéry Montagnes tourist office covers the Chambéry valley, the heart of the Bauges, Challes-les-Eaux, Aillons-Margériaz, La Féclaz and Le Revard. Alpine skiing, cross-country skiing and biathlon sell when it snows; mountain biking, the bike park and hiking once it stops. An instructor, an equipment hire firm or a holiday cottage changes its offer twice a year, not its identity.

So we prepare a palette with two registers, photo rules for snow as well as grass, and a logo that stays legible embroidered on a technical jacket, printed on a race bib or stuck on a bike number board. The same system feeds the website and social media; for the images, our partner video crews shoot in both seasons, as described on our corporate video in Chambéry page.

What does our branding work in Chambéry show?

Two opposite cases: a family of five brands for the Corsiva group, and a visual world built around an existing logo for Joke MP4.

For the Corsiva group, we organised five business lines under one name: Location, Prime, OS, Conciergerie and Mariages. Each has its own logo, the family shares the root name and the writing rules, and the concierge and wedding lines were given a voice of their own, because they speak to audiences with nothing in common. The reasoning behind that choice is told in the Corsiva group’s brand architecture.

For Joke MP4, the official logo already existed and was not redrawn. Around it we built a brand board: warm blacks and bone tones lifted by a single red, the colour of the recording light, separate typefaces for headings, body text and timecodes, and an editing-suite world of viewfinder corners and timelines, carried right through to the mobile version of the website.

How does a branding project run when we are neighbours?

In stages signed off in writing, with workshops at your premises whenever the materials need to be seen for real: kick-off, choice of direction, print or embroidery tests.

When the identity is preparing an opening, we follow it straight on with a brand launch; the website that applies it is described on our website design in Chambéry page.

• Kick-off workshop: customers, promise, the competitors your customers compare you with
• Research: a board of the sector’s codes, to follow or to break
• Directions: two or three distinct routes, shown on your real materials
• Variations: logo versions, palette, typefaces, graphic elements
• Guidelines and templates: a short document, templates inside your tools
• Roll-out: list of materials, switch-over date, source files handed over