Le singe qui tricote

Some knitting, a wool ball, a skillful and focus monkey, here are the foundations of the new identity of “Le singe qui tricote” (“The knitting monkey”). With the help of Marion Hermet (a creator from Lyon) and illustrator Nono Ampuy, we thought about an identity which could renew the image of knitting and represent the studiousness necessary for crafting it. This relaxing, manual, and creative activity needs an identity which stimulate the desire to launch into it!

The monkey represents the creator comfortably snuggled up to shape her new creations. The rounded ball of wool serves as a body for the hidden monkey and emphasizes the importance of the ball of wool which is the raw material to realize multiple creations. The monkey tail is shown by a simple thread going out from the wool ball. The whole thing is sober and draws its inspiration from traditional Japanese elements like the seals (hanko/inkan), or the bow belts (taiko musubi/obi) in order to adapt later the content to various format.

To avoid the pitfall of typefaces classically used for knitting and to revisit its image, we have opted for a non-gender-oriented visual sense, and used two typefaces:

To give a new image to knitting and give it more character, we have chosen Viksjø by Monokrom. This typeface is mainly of architectural inspiration, but also includes a research directed towards bringing some round shapes to severe and stiff lines. By using it only for its’ warm and original shapes we take somehow the opposite view. To complete the identity and bring real comfort to the reading, I used a traditional Elzevir (a serif font), Spectral by Production Type, including characteristics which allow the typeface to be rendered perfectly in a website. The typeface is inspired from François Rabelais’s book The most horrific life of the great Gargantua, father of Pantagruel (1534).