A B-Side BY Armin

FIA-NET

FIA-NET provides e-commerce solutions for websites in France and its logo is an assurance that a shopping transaction is secure. A new identity has been created by Lyon- and Paris-based Graphéine. A lengthy post (in French) explaining the redesign here. The new brand architecture can be seen below (or after the jump).

The B-Side BY cole

Vétérinaire de la Côte Fleurie

Clinique Vétérinaire de la Côte Fleurie, France’s largest veterinary clinic specializing in equine care, has recently had an identity makeover courtesy of Deux Point Duex. Some very nice images here.

Opinion BY Armin

Smile, you are on the Yellow Pages

PagesJaunes (Yellow Pages) is, as you may have guessed, the Yellow Pages business directory in France. Owned by PagesJaunes Groupe, one of the largest advertising placement and managing companies in the world representing over 770,000 advertisers, PagesJaunes boasts 1 million printed directories across the country, 78 million hits per month on its website, and 4 million downloads of its mobile application. So: Big. Earlier this month PagesJaunes introduced a new identity designed by Publicis Royalties. Press release for our French readers here.

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Opinion BY Rietje Gieskes

Aster-isk Identitus

Aster, one of the oldest shoe brands in France, has been delivering high quality children’s footwear since 1913. Their shoes feature a unique die-cut of an Aster (Diplopappus) flower, a shape recently upgraded to brand icon status. The redesign, led by Bayaderes, includes a refined color palette and a playful script.

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Opinion BY Clinton Duncan

Eurostar Sculpts New Logo

Launched in 1994 Eurostar was, until recently a tri-nation collaboration between Britain, Belgium and France, aimed at moving people quickly on trains, often at speeds up to 300 kilometers per hour, and in a tunnel 120 meters under the surface of the freezing cold English channel. Yep, we’re using metrics for this review people. With a re-structuring of corporate management, and consolidation to one entity based in London, Eurostar sought to rebrand and engaged the services of SomeOne. You can see a video summary of the brand at SomeOne’s project page here.

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A B-Side BY Armin

Hatier

Established in 1880, Hatier is a publishing company specializing in school textbooks. They are part of publishing giant Hachette. The new logo, designed by Brandimage, “projects the brand into the future by reaffirming its values of accessibility, dynamism and innovation.”

Thanks to Shawn Schrader for the tip.

Opinion BY Armin

Walibi Rocks

First opened to the public in 1975 in Wavre, Belgium (near Brussels) by Eddy Meeùs, Walibi is a family of amusement parks with locations in the original Wavrens, two in France, one in Holland, and a water park counterpary in Belgium as well, called Aqualibi. The name comes from a combination of three towns: Wavre, Limal, and Bièrges — the kangaroo character reportedly came after Meeùs’ son noticed that a wallaby looked like a kangaroo. The parks were purchased by Six Flags in 1998, then sold to British investment company Palamon Capital Partners in 2004, then to Compagnie des Alpes in 2006, who own a wide range of amusement parks across Europe. Earlier this year, Walibi unveiled a complete new look and Walibi-themed universe in collaboration with multiple specialists in animation, marketing, merchandising, and more. The identity was designed by FigTree in Paris. The site NewsParcs has the complete story in detail.

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Opinion BY Rietje Gieskes

Retuled

The TUL, Transport Urbain Lavallois, is a network of buses based in the Laval community in France. The network consists of 54 buses that travel 21,000,000 kilometers, (that’s 13,048,795 miles for you metric-phobes) every year, and in the process transports an average of 7 million passengers. Their new colorful identity designed by Royalties Agency launched earlier this year.

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Opinion BY Armin

Bretagne’s Stripes

Bretagne (Brittany in English) is a region in the nortwhest of France. While I have never been to Bretagne, the region holds a special place in my heart as it is the fictional home to Asterix’s village which resided right on the coast of a peninsula sticking out at the northwest of the northwest of France. But Asterix doesn’t pay the region’s bills and it doesn’t attract tourists or businesses, so the Agence économique de Bretagne has just launched a new identity to represent the region and has launched two separate sites with slightly different moods and information, one for tourism and one for businesses. The identity was designed by Lyon-based Communiquez (who were here last week for their design of La Manche — in case you are wondering, they didn’t submit work to be featured, they just happened to be the design firm of two separate identities that caught my attention).

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Opinion BY Armin

Rave at La Manche

La Manche is a Department of France located in Normandy, at the northern end of the country, perhaps best known for being home to the preternaturally picturesque Mont Saint-Michel, accessible from the Cotentin peninsula through a natural bridge that is covered and uncovered as the tide raises and lowers. The Conseil général de La Manche is rebranding La Manche — and to a certain degree also the larger region of Normandy — as not just an Old World Charm kind of place but a forward looking destination with a new identity designed by Lyon-based Communiquez. A PDF in French with the explained system can be found here — our French readers might prefer it over my butchered interpretations.

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Opinion BY Armin

Technically, This is Very Colorful

If you like your movies and television shows in color, you owe such modern-day pleasures to Technicolor, the company that created the eponymous color film processes in the early 1920s and gave movies like The Wizard of Oz the ability to show a yellow brick road, where before there would have only been a gray one. Long associated with Hollywood, the name/term/idea of Technicolor went from having the kind of service-specific equity that Google now has in search engines or Kleenex in facial tissues; this past decade however, Technicolor seemed to have gone astray. It was bought by French tech company Thomson in 2001 and the Technicolor name became a simple subsidiary. In a 180-degree-turn-of-events, this past January, Thomson announced that it would change its corporate name to Technicolor and give it back the consumer-facing reign. Today, Technicolor is a machine of technological proportions, providing services in animation, digital effects, production, post-production, and more. Both Thomson and Technicolor have adopted a new logo, designed by Technicolor’s Marketing Branding team with advertising agency Gyro:HSR.

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Opinion BY Armin

The French get their B-Ball On

Established in 1932, the Fédération Française de Basket-Ball (FFBB for short, and French Basketball Federation in English) is the governing body of basketball in France, overseeing more than 4,000 clubs across the country as well as managing the French national team. With a 16-year-old logo in use, the FFBB unveiled a new identity last week designed by Lille- and Paris-based agency Graphèmes who, as I understand, beat out another six agencies through a competition, although there are no details about what said competition entailed — hopefully it was a free throw competition that didn’t involve free logos.

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INTL. REVIEW BY PAUL VICKERS POSTED BY Brand New

Moulin Rouge does the Typographic Cancan

As French as the Eiffel Tower or Champagne, the Moulin Rouge Cabaret is an integral part of the history and culture of France and has been on the sightseeing trail of visitors since it was founded in 1889, in the Pigalle red light district, close to Montmartre, Paris. Birthplace of the famous Cancan dance, the red Windmill on its roof is a landmark on the city’s horizon and an iconic symbol of cabaret and nightlife worldwide. Long associated with the avant-garde and leading artists, with some of its early posters designed by none other than Toulouse-Lautrec, the Moulin Rouge has a long design heritage but was in dire need of an overhaul, having drifted into a popular, mass market experience with a cheap and tacky product image. The 120th anniversary of the Moulin Rouge is the occasion to roll out a new brand identity that pays homage to the legend and communicates the magic with a resolutely contemporary brand. Four agencies competed in the in the design pitch, proposing over 40 different proposals, according to this interview with the eventual winners, Paris-based agency John Brightman.

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