A BIG IDEA FOR A SMALL BUSINESS

New brand identity for French bakery La Talemelerie pays tribute to modern craft.

La Talemelerie is a collection of eight bakeries in the Rhône-Alpes region of France, a country where bread is king. The objective of our redesign was to address a key misperception — because there is more than one bakery, clients tended to think the brand was a chain, and therefore more industrial than artisanal. The reality is the opposite, as all the breads and pastries are handmade with only the finest quality ingredients.

The cause of misperception was two-fold:
1. Nobody understood the name.
2. The previous identity was sending the wrong signals — the opposite of craft codes.

So, we defined one clear objective to the redesign: to explain the name to express the craft.

The name is a rare and precious one, derived from Old French which was used in the Middle Ages. La Talemelerie means bakery, created by juxtaposing two words from handcrafting movements: kneading and mixing. With the name, a story was born: La Talemelerie’s raison d’être is to perpetuate today the handcrafting actions from the past, bringing quality bread’s tradition to life.

To reestablish the truth, the story became the identity on some key applications, such as their shopping bag. We recommended that they move from the original bright orange to an earthier terracotta color to keep the heat and convey the craft. On all paper bags, photographs of actions of handmaking the bread were printed in a brown sepia color.

The guidelines ensure the consistency and power of the new emblem that proudly commits the in-house teams to their mission of serving tradition.