La Scène de Bayssan is the Hérault department’s new cultural center, located 70 kilometers from Montpellier and close to Béziers, on a site steeped in history. It’s a place for sharing, offering everyone the opportunity to savor the cultural and artistic events on offer, as well as the green setting that is staged for the sensory pleasure of its visitors.

Where nature and culture converge, the area boasts a concert hall, theater and museum, as well as a Mediterranean garden and several sports trails for young and old.

Bayssan, between Nature and Culture

Scène de Bayssan is part of Hérault-Culture, a public establishment (EPIC) of the Hérault department, which develops a high-quality artistic offering for all audiences. The project is led by a team of professionals who implement an artistic season that includes theater, circus, music and various cultural and festive events. Guided by the environment in which it is located, the venue showcases both the cultural heritage of the Mediterranean region and its rich natural surroundings. This relationship between culture and nature, and the porosity between these two domains, marks the uniqueness of the site, where performance halls rub shoulders with a unique Mediterranean garden.

Scène de Bayssan’s current visual identity, designed for the general public, represents and embodies both a cultural and a natural landscape, and combines a civilizational, artistic, intellectual and landscape approach with a Mediterranean art of living. Focusing on the relationship between nature and Mediterranean culture, Bayssan’s graphic image draws on recurring notions from these two fields: ornamentation, seasonality, chromatic range, etc.

Architecture as the starting point for visual identity

On the site of today’s Scène de Bayssan was Sortie Ouest and its big top theater. The architecture of the new buildings (theater, amphitheater, restaurant, etc.) makes reference to circus architecture and the former big top.

Scène de Bayssan’s visual identity takes shape through the two concepts that give rhythm to its communications: culture and nature. Firstly, culture, by reappropriating and reinterpreting the site’s circus architecture, including the singular lines of the buildings, composed of triangular and radiating shapes. Then nature, with an acronym built like a flower made up of petals, again reminding us of the poppy (used in Sortie Ouest’s communications) and all the poetry it tells.

A Mediterranean chromatic range

The cultural and natural identity of the place (architecture, history, flora and landscapes) served as the starting point for the chromatic range and identity. For the historian Braudel, the Mediterranean landscape is marked by three main elements: vines, wheat and olive trees. For him, these elements form the Mediterranean triptych.

This triptych or triad inspired the visual identity of the site. The color palette was drawn from Mediterranean landscape paintings by painters such as Braque, Gauguin, Cézanne and others. It also echoes the history of the site and the poppy previously used by Sortie Ouest.

Typography inspired by the Mediterranean

Baissano is a typeface inspired by the Mediterranean and the nature/culture duality strongly rooted at Domaine de Bayssan. First of all, it’s a typeface with resolutely Mediterranean characters, in that their shapes are inspired by alphabets found all around the big blue. But it’s also a typeface that expresses the manifesto of the Scène de Bayssan, for which it was specially designed, namely the nature/culture duality: a strong, geometric shaft expressing the notion of culture (carved by the hand of man), then lines and curves that draw more sensual shapes, which seem to come from nature.

The combination of these two styles creates a singular, poetic typography. Through the design of its letters, Baissano illustrates all the emotions of the Mediterranean, while also referring to the Mediterranean typographic landscape.

Functional secondary typography

Faktum is a font designed by Berlin type designer René Bieder, and an exploration of geometric linéales, a genre inspired by mid-century modern architecture and design.

This typeface combines clean lines, organic curves and geometric shapes in a contemporary design. Faktum is available in 8 weights and 4 variants, offering great flexibility for the layout of publishing materials.

A system of ornamentation inspired
by Mediterranean civilization

To complete the graphic universe, a series of ornaments inspired by Mediterranean culture was created. This system of geometric and graphic ornaments can be found in many civilizations around the Mediterranean: Spain, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Turkey, the Orient, etc.

The motifs can be used to dress up the various supports of the Scène de Bayssan, while underlining its new image. By associating an ornament with a color palette, it’s possible to conjure up different graphic universes, and consequently different civilizations, as well as different moods based on the 4 seasons that punctuate the year.

The golden ratio as a layout reference

The golden ratio symbolically unites the notions of art and culture, just as the Scène de Bayssan will bring them together materially. Some botanists, such as Jean-Marie Pelt, even describe the golden ratio as “the ruler of the harmonious proportions of nature and architecture”.

The proportions generated by the golden ratio become the foundation of Scène de Bayssan’s communication materials. The composition grid and future graphics may also make reference to them.

The use of formats based on the golden rectangle also makes it possible to create harmonious, singular editions that stand out from the widely used standard media, as this document demonstrates.

Event communication: the seasons

The cultural seasons, which are based on the calendar seasons (summer, autumn, winter, spring), are marked by a series of diverse events. Each season is announced by leaflets highlighting a series of highlights. Each of these highlights is announced by an extensive communications campaign (posters, social networks, etc.).

Graphically, each season is marked by a visual atmosphere in keeping with the season it represents (cold tones for winter, for example). Each of the highlights features a unique motif, which is integrated into the overall universe of the season through the use of the same chromatic range.