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LaBoîte designs the visual identity of Lyon businesses: consultancies and service firms, biotech and medtech companies, designers, restaurants and shops. We start by analysing the competitors your customers compare you with, then deliver the logo, palette, typefaces, guidelines and templates. The work moves forward from Chambéry, with workshops in Lyon at the stages that matter.
ONLYLYON Invest, the metropolitan area’s investment promotion agency, highlights eight key sectors, from health and life sciences to textiles, by way of food production, energy and sustainable construction. Add a lively tradition of trade and gastronomy, and almost every Lyon business is compared with neighbours who already take care of their image.
There, an identity is less about pleasing than about being recognised among the others. Here is how we run a branding project for a business in the metropolis; our communication and web agency for Lyon page describes the rest of what we do.
Why start with a competitor board in Lyon?
Because looking alike is the first risk in such a crowded market. The board shows which codes to keep so you are understood, and which to drop so you are noticed.
We gather the logos, colours, typefaces and posts of the businesses your customers look at alongside you: the firms in your specialism, the restaurants on your street, the brands on your shelf. Then we sort them into families. What almost always emerges is a crowded territory, midnight blue and widely spaced capitals for consultancies, slate and chalk for bistros, and a territory that is still free.
This work comes before any design direction and ties in with positioning: if the offer looks like the neighbours', the identity alone will not be enough, as our article on how to sell your offer explains. In that case we run it with our Consulting team, as part of offer strategy.
What identity suits a firm at Part-Dieu or Confluence?
A restrained identity that is never anonymous, designed first for meeting materials: the presentation, the brochure, the commercial proposal, the LinkedIn page.
ONLYLYON Invest describes Part-Dieu as the second-largest business district in France, and Confluence as a former industrial zone turned eco-district. Regional headquarters, consultancies and service firms there sell trust to other companies. Their brand is read mostly on a meeting-room screen and in a PDF passed on to a leadership team.
That is the work we did for AG Impact Partners, a strategy consultancy for telecoms and media: a restrained, editorial art direction, a sales presentation in screen format, an A4 brochure telling the same story, and templates for producing the next versions without starting from scratch. These materials fall under our print and brand materials offer.
How should a Gerland biotech or medtech present itself?
Through precision: careful diagrams, real photos, an exact tone, and one visual foundation for investors, doctors and manufacturers alike.
The Lyonbiopôle competitiveness cluster, accredited since 2005 and based on avenue Tony Garnier in the 7th arrondissement, has 251 active members, 196 of them small and medium-sized firms, according to the French Ministry of the Economy. A young health company there is compared with many other projects, often at the same congress.
We work with its regulatory team: no claim about a health product goes out without their approval. The clichés to avoid and the advertising rules for medical devices are covered in a journal article on biotech and medtech branding in Lyon, for now in French only. We add one practical point: a version of the brand designed for documents co-signed with a hospital or a laboratory, where your logo sits beside theirs without getting lost.
Restaurant, bouchon, designer: how do you carry a Lyon brand on objects?
By designing for the menu, the label, the bag and the window as much as for the screen, and by leaving room for the trade’s labels and heritage without blending into them.
Restaurants joining the Les Bouchons Lyonnais association, the guardians of Lyon’s traditional eateries, set up in November 2012 at the initiative of the CCI Lyon Métropole chamber of commerce in partnership with ONLYLYON Tourisme et Congrès, undergo an audit by an independent firm covering the food served, the welcome, the interior and the exterior. Their identity therefore lives alongside a collective brand and an expected décor. We draw the name so it stays legible next to those signs, without aping the checked tablecloth.
As for designers, the tourist office points out that the Croix-Rousse is where the story of Lyon’s silk workers began, and that it now hosts young creators, on slopes listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A stole or a notebook also sells through a swing tag, tissue paper or a stamp: we design these pieces at the same time as the logo. Choosing the shop that follows is covered in our comparison of a brochure site, an online store or an app, and writing the concept before the name in a journal article on opening a venue in Lyon, so far in French only.
And for a Lyon brand that sells internationally?
The guidelines plan for two languages from the outset: tagline, templates, brochures and posts exist in French and in English, under the same rules.
Our projects for The Club and CoinMentor show this approach: a bilingual brochure, a partnership deck and posts for one, a website, brochures and the CoinPro offer presentation for the other. Their logos and 3D were created by Four Plus Studio; our role was to make these identities live on every piece, dark and premium for The Club, educational for CoinMentor.
That is often what a brand exporting from Lyon lacks: a good logo, but English documents patched together outside the guidelines. Allowing for the text lengths of both languages in the templates avoids these second-hand versions.
How does a Lyon branding project run from Chambéry?
Remotely for research, design and variations, and in Lyon for the kick-off workshop, the presentation of directions and print tests when they count.
Directions are presented in context, never on their own: on a commercial proposal, a congress poster, a restaurant menu, a story. One person makes the decision on your side. The guidelines, templates and source files are handed over at the end, with a written transfer of rights.
If the identity comes with the creation of a company, we follow a three-month launch calendar; the website that applies it is described on website design in Lyon, and the images on corporate video in Lyon, shot by our partner video crews.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an agency located in Lyon for my branding?
Not necessarily: what counts is the method, knowledge of your competitors and a clear quote. We come to Lyon for the workshops and handle the rest remotely, with a single point of contact.
Can we redo the logo without changing the name?
Yes, that is the most common case for an established business. We keep what your customers recognise and fix whatever makes you look like your neighbours.
Can an identity use the lion, Fourvière or the riverbanks?
Nothing forbids it as such, but these references are widely used and put you close to many other businesses. We keep them for brands whose Lyon roots are the main selling point.
Do you deliver templates for PowerPoint or Canva?
Yes, in the tools your team really uses, so that presentations, posts and quotes follow the guidelines without effort.
Updated · LaBoîte, Chambéry, Savoie
