Marathon du Mont-Blanc
Complete brand guidelines for the Marathon du Mont-Blanc: brand platform, posters, signage, banners, official store and art direction.
The brand’s DNA
In March 2023 we started from a blank page. Not a decorative brief, but a real brand platform. With one simple question: what is the DNA of a trail-running event rooted in the Chamonix valley? The answer fits in three words: Nature, Human, Challenge. The colours are pulled straight from the landscape. Chartreuse Yellow isn’t there to look pretty; it’s the only shade that truly pops outdoors, on a race bib, a banner, a tarp at 50 metres. The logo carries a double meaning. Turn it 45 degrees and you read “IF”, “What if”. The pioneering spirit. Going beyond. It’s subtle. It’s intentional.
The headaches
Because guidelines that live mean they rub up against reality. And reality is an organiser who knows every ridge of his mountain by heart. On the 2024 poster, the runner’s head was hiding the summit of Mont-Blanc. Unthinkable for the Chamonix Sports Club. We shift, we raise the mountain, we let it breathe. On the 2025 poster it gets harsher. V1 looks too much like 2024. The chosen runner didn’t even finish the 42km. The little graphic checks don’t work. Back to square one. V2 starts again from the “human facing the magnificent mountain” concept. Everyone loves it. Except the Dôme du Goûter is in the wrong place. When you work with people who live at the foot of these summits, every pixel of relief counts. It took six versions and a complete photo change to reach the final result, approved in February 2025.
What the project confirms
Brand guidelines aren’t a PDF you deliver and forget. They’re a living organism. Neither too rigid, so they don’t turn industrial, nor too loose, so they don’t dilute the brand. The real work of art direction is right there. In the 47 back-and-forths. In the hyphen we forgot that comes back at every review. In the mountain pixel that isn’t in the right place. It’s thankless. It’s slow. And it’s exactly what separates an identity that lasts three months from one that lasts ten years.