In 2024, studio vu-huu won a competition to develop a brand strategy and visual identity for Quartier Cité du Design in Saint-Étienne, France.

As part of Saint-Étienne, a UNESCO Creative City of Design, the aim was to establish the neighbourhood as a leading tourist and cultural destination. The site brings together various stakeholders offering a rich, multidisciplinary range of activities that need to be identified as part of the site, while retaining their own identity. The creative work involved designing a typeface for the identification system, including logos, pictograms and the graphic system.

The new graphic identity draws inspiration from the design process, in which an idea is first translated into a freehand sketch before materialising. The resulting typeface, BVH Stef, expresses the aesthetics of the line, spontaneity, diversity, and the dynamics of the gesture. There are two versions of the typeface: a text version and a display version. The display version places greater emphasis on the fluidity of the hand-drawn stroke. Each character has several expressive variations, evoking handwriting, like so many personal scripts.

To reflect what the Cité du Design has to offer, a large set of pictograms has been created that share a visual harmony consistent with the typography.

client

• Cité du design

graphic design

• studio vu-huu

type design

• Toan Vu-Huu
• Jimmy Le Guennec

font production

• Alexandre Bassi

pictogram design

• Jimmy Le Guennec