French coding bootcamp, Le Wagon, has just unveiled a new branding that we have been working on lately. We helped the team to work out the coherence they needed to bring to Le Wagon’s identity, in order to help it continue to grow. 🚀
First of all, what is Le Wagon? What values does it represent?
Each of our branding processes starts by thinking about the client themselves. Who are they? This necessitates a certain investment of time and energy from both parties. Le Wagon is a coding school, teaching creative and entrepreneurially minded people to code their own tech products through an intensive 9-week bootcamp. Le Wagon’s goal is to give their students the autonomy to develop their own product from scratch.
“Why the name “Le Wagon?”, I hear you ask… 🤔
Well, the people behind Le Wagon feel strongly that higher-education degree courses are failing to equip students with new tech skills. We even have an idiom in French to describe this lack of learning. 🤭 It roughly translates as:
“The higher education train is one wagon too short.”
So something is missing from this very particular wagon, taking its passengers on a journey to their destination. And that something is Le Wagon’s bootcamp. Plus, you may have noticed that BS words like “hack”, “code”, “tech” or “app” don’t appear anywhere. Coding is not an end in itself, but a tool. 🔧
Let’s take a closer look at the idea of a “bootcamp”. This word is very charged, conveying images of adventures and the idea of a journey — a journey into tech. The passengers can pitch up their tents in this rich community, fed by its ever-growing base of alumni. 🏕 And, like camping, this journey into tech is primarily about gaining freedom and autonomy.
What were Le Wagon’s branding needs before getting in touch with us?
Before reaching us, Le Wagon was at that point where it had grown enough to have something like 4000 alumni across 28 cities, and some 300 teachers. It had a logo — just a logo; no brand system. People around these 28 cities didn’t know how to use the brand, apart from the logo. 🌎 They didn’t know exactly what colors, shapes, font rules and patterns to use when building visuals. Without a clear brand system, there’s a risk of spreading in various directions and losing consistency. Le Wagon had identified a need for strong branding, so as to really showcase the success of the school.
What solution did we come up with?
To help Le Wagon step up its brand, we proposed a refresh of their logotype in order to give it a more modern touch and to make it easier to use. But just introducing a new logo was not going to be enough, given that Le Wagon was keen to homogenize the brand throughout its 28 cities. So we decided together to rethink the identity to make any marketing tools clear and more effective. These changes were examined very closely and discussed intensely with the team. A new branding would be a strong tool for building a consistent internal communication, as it would for the external communication and the marketing plan. It would definitely help Le Wagon to make itself known and become a name of reference. 🔥
To van or not van? 🚐
Kicking off the brand refresh was quite difficult. We explored many avenues — and some wrong directions and false starts! It wasn’t easy to help the team at Le Wagon know exactly what they wanted, and what corresponded best to their needs. We drew a lot of vans and wagons, in a range of different styles.
We finally settled on a solution and a logo, thanks to the continued streamlined and transparent communication between Le Wagon’s team and ourselves. And the result? A font that is aligned with the design of the new van, which is a more modern logo that everyone loves.
A new visual identity
The new brand had to be a tech journey, just like the bootcamp itself is. In the first iterations, we presented abstractions, whereas in the second ones, we focussed on presenting illustrations.
The team at Le Wagon mixed up our iterations, and ultimately chose to use illustrations on subtle backgrounds and to focus on student pictures.
The color system has been inspired by the syntax-highlighting effects found in text editors. It is:
- impactful;
- a nod to Le Wagon’s dev background;
- easy to apply and scale to the 30 cities where Le Wagon has a school.
And… are they happy?
You bet they are! And so we are too are: we were really driven by our passion for the project and desire to find the branding that suits them best. In their own words, the team said about Muxu.Muxu:
“Sometimes you’ll find that they understand your brand more than you do”
Each instance of Le Wagon is now able to communicate according to a clear and shared branding system that everybody can appropriate easily. They have a key asset in their hands to drive Le Wagon to the moon… or even further! 💫
Written by Floriane Fontaine & corrected by Emily Fiennes. ✨
