Brand expression for a Berlin bicycle manufacturer

A small-batch frame builder in Kreuzberg, in business since 2009, taking a brand that had been mostly a wordmark and a shop sign into something that could hold a flagship store, a quarterly journal, and an export presence.

The brief

The founder had built a credible-enough brand to grow into a four-person workshop, then a six-person, and was at the edge of taking the next jump — a small flagship store, an online journal, German and English customer-facing copy. He didn’t want to grow into a brand-system that hid the workshop. The brief was to expand the brand’s expression without erasing what was already loved.

The approach

We kept the founder’s hand-drawn mark and rebuilt everything else around it. A typographic system (display, body, technical) that read as an extension of the existing wordmark rather than a replacement. An editorial system for the journal that handled long German sentences and shorter English copy at the same comfort. Packaging and signage that could be made in the same workshop on the same machines — the brand had to be physically buildable by the people who built the bikes.

Deliverables

Brand expression guidelines. Typographic system. Editorial templates for the quarterly journal (DE/EN). Flagship store signage and interior graphics. Packaging system for shipped frames. Workshop-buildable production manual.