An identity and shop signs for a bakery that opens at seven

The brief

Pell is three neighbourhood bakeries in Rotterdam, all baking on site and opening at seven every morning except Monday. When Ahmed Pelleboer took over from his father in 2022, the shops had three different signs, two of them lit plastic boxes from the nineties, and a logo that existed only as a low-resolution file on the old till.

Ahmed wanted signs people could see from the tram stop, materials that would age well, and bags and boxes that didn’t cost more than they had to. He also had a firm budget and couldn’t close a shop for more than a night.

What we did

We drew a new wordmark with rounded serifs, based loosely on the lettering on a photo of the first shop from 1974 that Ahmed found in the family’s albums. We drew it for painting by hand: no hairlines, generous counters and joins a brush can follow at fascia size.

The signs are traditional on purpose:

• painted fascias in two colours, by a sign painter we have worked with since 2017
• a double-sided enamel blade sign for each shop, projecting over the pavement
• gold-leaf outline lettering on the main window of the first shop only, where the budget allowed it
• removable vinyl for opening hours, so changes don’t mean repainting

Painting happened at night. The sign painter and two of us worked from closing time to five in the morning, one shop per night, so the bakers could start on time. All three shops were done within a week.

Packaging was the cheaper part. We moved from a two-colour printed bag to a one-colour stamp on a stock kraft bag, and designed one cake box in two sizes instead of four. A one-page website lists the day’s bread and each shop’s hours, and the bakers update it from a phone before opening.

What changed

All three shops were re-signed in one week without closing. Weekday sales at the first shop, the one with the gold leaf and the most visible corner, were 12% higher in the following year. Ahmed puts part of that down to a new bus stop nearby, which is probably fair.

Bags cost 9% less each than the old printed ones. Three years on, the painted fascias have needed one touch-up, after a delivery van clipped the corner of the second shop.