Mon Bel Abricot: a logo for an artisan brand

Context

Mon Bel Abricot (“my beautiful apricot”) is an artisan brand that puts authenticity and craftsmanship at the heart of its identity. In a market where artisan products compete on promises of naturalness, the brand needed a logo that would not simply declare its craft but show it. The identity had to breathe warmth, handmade work and attention to every detail.

Issues identified

Visual authenticity: creating an identity that communicates the artisan character without falling back on the generic codes of the segment
Warmth and closeness: conveying a warm feeling through the logo, the opposite of cold corporate identities
Versatility: allowing use across varied media, from the product label to digital

Creative approach

The creative direction naturally steered the project towards illustration, drawing on hand-drawing skills acquired at the Beaux-Arts, the French fine art school.

1. Illustration work

The fruit, the apricot, was the obvious starting point. The illustration work set out to capture:

• The roundness and generosity of the fruit in an organic, living line
• A hand-drawn style, deliberately imperfect, that evokes the artisan’s gesture
• A level of detail rich enough to create visual interest without harming legibility when scaled down

2. Typographic pairing

The typeface was chosen to extend the handwritten character of the illustration:

• A typeface with soft letterforms, suggesting handwriting
• A balance between legibility and personality
• A harmonious fit with the illustration, so that the two form an inseparable whole

3. Colour palette

The colours were selected from a warm, natural range drawn directly from the fruit and its surroundings: oranges, ochres and soft greens that anchor the brand in a coherent sensory world.

Results

• A logo-illustration that is immediately warm and memorable
• An identity that stands apart from the minimalist approaches dominating the artisan sector
• A visual system that carries from the label to the web without losing its character

Impact

The Mon Bel Abricot logo demonstrates the value that genuine illustration work adds when building a brand identity. Where a standard vector pictogram would have produced yet another interchangeable artisan identity, drawing brings a singularity and a warmth that geometry alone cannot offer.