Les Balades Vertes.
A visual system for the three parks of Clichy, a commune on the northern edge of Paris — one language shared across three green spaces that walkers cross every day.
Les Balades Vertes started as a question that came back on every walk through Clichy — a commune on the northern edge of Paris. The three parks of the neighbourhood each have a character, and no shared voice, and anyone passing from one to the next reads them as unrelated. The brief, posed and answered as my Master's thesis: give these three urban parks one visual language, without erasing what makes them different.
The system is a wordmark, a sun and a leaf glyph — a compact set of marks built to be read at walking pace. A deep forest green carries the identity across signage, printed guides and the uniforms worn by the people who keep the lawns. The frames are corten steel — the same patina as the surrounding soil at the end of summer.
The yellow disc on every sign is not only a graphic. It is a solar luminaire — a thin circular lamp with a photovoltaic surface, charging through the day and lighting the panel at blue hour. The park is never fully off, and the identity glows softly after dusk.
A quiet shift in the brand's logic: what reads as sun by day reads as moon by night. The signage reports itself.
One language, three parks.— The brief, Master's thesis
A city's parks are read with the feet first and the eye second. The identity is designed to be seen in motion — on a sign passed at walking pace, on a glove at work, on a card slipped into a jacket pocket. Nothing on it asks to be looked at twice.
Master's thesis at ESDESIGN Barcelona. Published here as a case study in environmental graphics.
- Design & art direction
- Alicia Gálvez
- Illustration
- Alicia Gálvez
- Context
- Master's thesis — ESDESIGN Barcelona
- Scope
- Identity · Signage · Print
- Year
- 2021
