Studio Avenir’s identity for BSJ treats labels like filing documents

The Brand Identity: The label looks like something pulled from a roastery’s back-office filing system. Net weight ticked off in three options. Grind selection laid out with hollow checkboxes. Origin field. Reference number. A sheet of perforated stamps, each one a self-contained product form waiting to be torn off and applied. For Brulerie Saint Jacques, a speciality coffee roastery operating a travelling barista and catering service across France, Paris and Lyon-based Studio Avenir has built an identity that borrows the visual logic of technical documentation and lets it carry the brand. The decision to lead with utility is unusual for the coffee category.

Speciality coffee tends to dress itself in warm browns, hand-drawn marks and analogue craft cues that signal artisanship through softness. BSJ says no to that. The label functions as a form, with the variables a roaster needs to communicate arranged with the structural clarity of a logistics document. “We designed the label in a way that emphasises the expertise of the roastery, drawing on technical layout conventions,” explains Clementine Cornu Thenard, Art Director & Co-founder at Studio Avenir. Anchoring the system is a modular BSJ monogram that exists in three distinct forms. A bold, condensed wordmark handles primary identification.

A hatched, line-filled version reads as a textured, almost printed-on-paper variant that animates labels and tape. A geometric badge mark, set within a soft polygonal outline, behaves like a stamp or seal. Each appears in different contexts. “There are indeed several ways to write BSJ, which allows for a more expressive and flexible identity, while enabling both the old and new lettering styles to coexist,” Clementine notes. “All of these lettering variations also help showcase the research and exploration behind the work.” “We worked with two very different typefaces: one modular, and a more rounded script style," Clementine explains.

“The client wanted to highlight the modular and adaptable nature of their event offering, while also giving the brand a new identity that feels more institutional and authoritative. We aimed to balance the rigid, angular aspect of the modular lettering with a more rounded typeface that feels accessible and authentic.” Colour reinforces the dual logic as well. A dusty blue-grey sits as the primary tone across cups, saucers, sleeves and label stock, paired with near-black type and uncoated, textured papers.

The palette was steered by the client’s preference for soft pastel tones, balanced by black to assert the brand’s more formal, authoritative register. The textured stock pulls the system back from clinical territory and gives it tactility. Scale is an active variable throughout the project. The same BSJ mark that sits as a discreet badge on a porcelain cup expands to fill an entire poster, where COFFEE and BARISTA stack at heights that consume the page and the script tagline – Une expérience itinérante, soignée et profondément humaine – tucks in at the foot of the composition as a quiet caption.

“The play on scale and contrast among the identity elements brings a playful and graphic dimension to the brand,” Clementine says. The compression and release between micro and macro applications give the system its rhythm. That graphic confidence is a deliberate response to category convention. BSJ operates events ranging from 30-person seminars to large-scale activations of several thousand, and the brand needed to read as a professional infrastructure suited to those clients.

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The article discusses a unique branding approach in the specialty coffee sector that could influence design strategies, making it significant and relevant for brand professionals while also presenting a novel perspective on identity design.