Blowing fresh air into a stale category.

Brief

Baluga is a 100% aluminum sailboat based in Royan on France’s Atlantic coast. It’s owners came to us with a name and sketches of the boat that was being built, and asked for an identity that would help elevate the sailing experience for themselves and guests who charter the boat for adventures along the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts.

Audience

Charter guests, who judge a boat by its details as much as its specifications, and sailors, who think about the specs first, but appreciate the polish of a thoughtful, clever identity.

Opportunity

Sailing has a genuinely good visual language. Navy and silver, engraved serifs, badges and burgees, a formality that comes from a long tradition of doing things properly. The problem is that the category has been repeating it without thinking for fifty years, so every boat ends up looking like the one moored beside it. The opportunity was to create an identity that was on par with an evolved sailing community. To create something that felt more like a hospitality experience than a salty old sailing cliché.

Concept

The name is the first bit of cleverness. Baluga, a play on Beluga, contains the letters ALU, which are borrowed from aluminum, the very material the boat is made of. From that seed, we created AL, a whale mascot, and a system of precise curves and hard edges that mimic features of the boat itself. Elements of sailing tradition are present, but reimagined in a modern, fun, and comforting way.

Design

The core of the system is built on a single piece of geometry. The same ovals can be found in the ‘B’ monogram and the mascot, creating an almost unconscious familiarity between the two. The 45° angles in the serif logotype finds its way into the corner cuts of photography. Repeated horizontal lines of type shift in imitation of the waves below, and traditional maritime colors like navy, silver, and gold are brought up to speed with a rich, reef orange and seaweed green.