Pain Levain
A sourdough bakery with a forty-year-old starter. The identity is stamped, never printed, and changes a little every morning.
Discipline
Identity, menus & signage
Location
Ghent, Belgium
Year
2024
Services
Identity · Menus · Signage · Packaging
Notes on the work
Brief, approach and outcome — in the client’s words and ours.
The brief
They came to us with a building, a handful of photographs and a feeling they could not yet name. The brief fitted on one page, and we kept it that way: make something honest enough to last a decade and quiet enough to be lived with every day.
The approach
We spent the first weeks on site, reading the place before drawing anything. The letterforms, the palette and the paper were all taken from what was already there — plaster, linen, the colour of the afternoon — so that the identity feels found rather than applied.
The outcome
A system that bends without breaking: one letterform, two colours, a handful of rules and a tone of voice that the team now writes in without us. The best compliment we have received is that guests assume it has always looked this way.
The stamp wears down with use, so the brand ages with the bakery.
Vellum Studio
Est. MMXII
Made slowly, read closely.
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Setting the type
Vellum Studio
Est. MMXII
Made slowly, read closely.
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Setting the type