Café Saint Julien
Case study: Café Saint Julien branding by Phoenix Lotus Valley
Skills
Branding
Content type
Industry
Food
Date
February 2020
Turning a historic Breton restaurant into a trendy new spot with an offbeat tone.
The brief
The project: transform a historic Breton restaurant into a trendy, offbeat venue while keeping a recognizable, versatile visual identity. The goal is to build and strengthen the restaurant's new brand by creating a distinctive visual identity that works across media such as business cards, menus, placemats and signage. For inspiration, we turned to old recipe books, drawing on illustrations reminiscent of traditional engraving techniques.
A culinary rebirth and a creative strategy for Café Saint-Julien
As part of this transformation, Sébastien, the restaurant's passionate and demanding founder, wants to breathe new life into his establishment after a difficult period. His team, which is like a family, is driven by a strong desire to bring his concept to life. So the restaurant La Marée becomes Café Saint-Julien, with attention to every detail: from the vintage-chic atmosphere and offbeat signage to menus printed on vinyl records and embroidered aprons.
Beyond design alone, our agency provides strategic support, advising Sébastien and his family in their bold challenge of starting from scratch and winning over new customers with new dishes. The gamble paid off from opening day, with a significant increase in covers at lunch and dinner. We are continuing our collaboration by setting up an online ordering platform so Café Saint-Julien can keep delighting food lovers passing through Muzillac.
Why signage matters
For signage, our approach focuses on three essentials: be visible from afar, be recognizable, be explicit. To spread the brand in an original, useful way, we took a fresh angle and created a vintage-style postcard. Instead of designing a brochure that might end up ignored, we created a promotional object that is both beautiful and functional, letting the brand get noticed while serving a real purpose.
