Responses by Graphéine
Background: The ambition of the brand République Grolée-Carnot is to bring together Lyon, France’s three main shopping streets under the same banner, and to make it an essential destination. Cosmopolitan, urban and dynamic, with more than a hundred shops, these streets create a real district with magnificent architecture, where it is pleasant to go out, stroll and share.
Reasoning: By proposing to unite these streets within a global brand, we imagined a flexible identity system, enabling each street to express its personality—blue for the street (rue) de la République, and red for its young sisters, Grolée and Carnot streets. Everything is linked by the symbol of the lion in a black block, an eponymous animal and emblem of the city. The result is an effervescent brand, which plays with the codes of the French Republic in a contemporary way.
Challenges: Uniting and federating are the key words of this project. For this reason, rue de la République, the city’s essential and historic artery, must give some space to the newly renovated rue Grolée and rue Carnot. We have designed a flexible system where everyone can exist without shading each other, where things are composed and recomposed according to needs and desires. Everything is always in motion, organic and flexible, like this district.
Favorite details: Our agency is Lyon-based, and working for the main public street of the city was motivating. We are happy to have imagined a brand identity as a “Lego box,” where ingredients come together in a thousand and one ways, as the image of this district. The grid structures the playground. The color is limited and plays with its contrasts. The words are bold and the tone is enthusiastic. The typography is condensed and expressive. The image is human and poetic. The patterns are joyful and effervescent. The whole contrasts deliberately with the Haussmann minerality and classicism of this district.
Visual influences: Our project uses the blue, white and red colors of the French Republic. This color combination came about naturally in the project, whereas in France, these are colors few people assume to use, despite the very effective interplay of contrasts. It was a question of reinventing this blue, white and red imagery and of appropriating the codes of the Republic that belongs to all.
Time constraints: The client Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) was very attentive about the coherence between the strategic positioning work and the design work, which is perfectly in line with our methodology. The project lasted about six months; the client took the time necessary to make choices, while keeping a good pace, which allowed us to not lose the creative energy allocated to the project.
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