PARIS – For Puig, a new era comes with a new look.
One day before the 110-year-old beauty and fashion company launches on Spain’s stock exchanges, the group revealed on Thursday that it has an evolved visual identity.
“For more than 20 years, we have run this private company as if we were a public company,” said Marc Puig, chairman and chief executive officer of Puig, in a video. “Now, our intention is to run this public company as if we were a private one. We will run thinking on the long-term, on the health of our brands and on maintaining our culture. We will try to make this transition as smooth as we can, but some things will change.
“Going forward, we are also going to be more outspoken about Puig,” he continued. “Up to now, most of our communication efforts were directed towards promoting our brands. But in the future, we will also talk more about our company: Who we are, what do we do, what do we stand for. We will talk about Puig as a home of creativity, a place where brands can shine and where people can go.”
The company, which makes beauty products and fashion for Rabanne, Carolina Herrera and Jean Paul Gaultier, is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year, and is sponsoring the first Puig America’s Cup and has become naming partner of the women’s event, taking place in the group’s hometown of Barcelona, Spain.
Rabanne’s 1 Million fragrance.
Courtesy Photo
“And for all that, we are changing our logo to express these ideas and at the same time dig deeply into our roots,” said Puig. “You will be seeing progressively a transition from our current logo towards a new one.”
The company will use its new logo for the first time at the bell-ringing ceremony at the Barcelona Stock Exchange on Friday.
The logo was created with art and design agency M/M, based in Paris, and riffs on the original dreamed up by Yves Zimmerman decades ago.
Rather than Puig’s logo of today, which resembles four stacked half-moons of mounting sizes, the new one has a vertical, more curvilinear shape. It resembles a fingerprint or the idea of blossoming, with a sense of movement, and comes in shades of gray and white. The M/M executives also conjure up the form’s link to heraldry.
There is a bespoke typeface, called Paralelo, which reinterprets the Méridien typeface from 1955 that was dreamed up by Adrian Frutiger and which Zimmerman then established for Puig over a half-century ago. Paralelo has an asymmetric design with angles and curves as it spells out Puig.
Playing a key role in the new design, as well, is the swirling line symbolic of creativity, which was inspired by a Joan Miró triptyque, called “Painting on White Background for the Cell of a Solitary,” from 1968.
A model walks down the runway at the Spring 2004 Jean Paul Gaultier show in Paris.
M/M founders Mathias Augustyniak and Michaël Amzalag delved into Puig’s legacy, visiting the Puig Tower headquarters in Barcelona, the group’s perfumery laboratory and the Disseny Hub Barcelona, which holds Zimmerman’s archives. For more than 40 years, Zimmerman had overseen Puig’s graphic identity, working in collaboration with industrial designer André Ricard and Antonio Puig, son of Puig’s founder.
In the 1990s, the logo created by Zimmerman shifted from natural symbolism toward a more sober, corporate look. Augustyniak and Amzalag sought to make the logo more about Puig’s ethos of creativity.
“I hope you think it reflects who we have become: Puig home of creativity,” said Puig.
