CCN Caen

Centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie

Visual identity, branding and website

Secteur

Arts & culture

2015

In 2015, Alban Richard took over as Dir­ect­or of Caen’s Nation­al Cho­reo­graph­ic Centre* in Nor­mandy and called upon Murmure to fully redesign the site’s image.

Awards

  • Awwwards — Honorable mention
  • CSS Design Awards — Special Kudos
  • 48e club des DA — Shortlist

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Identity

A vis­ion of con­tem­por­ary cho­reo­graphy, one in a state of con­stant evol­u­tion, research and exper­i­ment­a­tion. We designed a black and white visu­al iden­tity to high­light the graph­ic strength that accom­pan­ies the tear­ing process. 

Illustration of the project CCN Caen

A strong, singular visual identity, one which is resolutely graphic and calls out to the viewer

The agency has developed a reworked graph­ic solu­tion based on a sleek logo­type and graph­ic concept which has been designed as a strong state­ment: the tear­ing pro­cess. Ran­dom, manu­al, it high­lights the very essence of sub­stance and the body, paper, by devel­op­ing unique materials. 

When it came to the main typography, we wanted a typography that was meaningful and full of history. 

We turned to the Bluu Next font by Vel­vetyne, a French open source foundry, which fully falls with­in the scope of the Cho­reo­graph­ic Centre’s pro­ject. Its highly sin­gu­lar, graph­ic and exper­i­ment­al design enabled us to use it as a genu­ine piece of graph­ic composition.

Illustration of the project CCN Caen

Alphabet

We cus­tom­ised the Bluu Next font by incor­por­at­ing, onto each let­ter, a ran­domly torn shape which provided the typo­graphy with the required exper­i­ment­al aspect.

Using the chromatic strength of the black and white contrast, the agency wished to highlight tears

Black print­ing reveals the paper’s intern­al tex­ture. Ran­dom, each mater­i­al is unique depend­ing on the move­ment that is car­ried out. All print vari­ations have been designed to high­light the tear through the min­im­al­ism of their composition.

Business card

Busi­ness cards have been made in a slightly wider format so that a stand­ard format may be obtained after the tear­ing process.

Header

To design headed papers, we worked, as we did on all print vari­ations, on double-sided con­trasts. We also used the leg­al notice as a graph­ic ele­ment that forms an integ­ral part of the composition.

Programme

The annu­al pro­gramme is res­ol­utely min­im­al­ist, entirely black and fea­tur­ing the sea­son as its sole inform­a­tion. Once it has been torn, it dis­closes the graph­ic uni­verse. The pur­pose of the com­pos­i­tion was to design a piece of art which would work whatever the type of tear and move­ment per­formed. Inside, the pro­gramme high­lights the rela­tion between the typo­graph­ic inter­play and photographs.

The website is aligned with the visual identity, featuring a resolutely minimalist approach that highlights the iconography and a play on typography.

Major con­cep­tion work was car­ried out by the agency and the CCN team aim­ing to improve brows­ing and the under­stand­ing of the pro­ject though an eleg­ant and under­stated inter­face. The web­site had to be prac­tic­al for the pub­lic and pro­fes­sion­als whilst remain­ing an every­day tool that is easy to man­age for the intern­al team. We developed a cus­tom-designed web­site based on a Word­Press CMS, entirely man­age­able and scal­able. A dynam­ic, two-level ver­tic­al menu helps make the website’s dense tree struc­ture more legible. The cal­en­dar is fully automated.

Illustration of the project CCN Caen

Responsive

The web­site obvi­ously adapts itself to all types of devices, of the mobile vari­ety to desktop com­puters, for an optim­al brows­ing experience.The dynam­ic ver­tic­al menu retains its func­tion and anim­ated effect on all devices, pre­vent­ing Inter­net users from get­ting lost depend­ing on whichever device they are using.

Credits

Art Direction
Julien Alirol
Paul Ressencourt

Front-end Development
Guillaume Morisseau

Graphic Design
Guillaume Brindon

Project Management
Damien Bullet

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