Studio Frith’s identity for Jolene Bakery embraces childlike anarchy — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

Jolene arrived in north London in 2018 with a clear philosophy – food exists to nourish us physically, mentally and spiritually, not merely to fill our stomachs. The bakery and restaurant, founded by Jeremie Cometto-Lingenheim and chef David Gingell as their third venture after Primeur and Westerns Laundry, centres itself around regenerative farming practices and a circular economy. They mill grains from wildfarmed sources, prioritising suppliers who farm responsibly, and every loaf of bread or pastry purchased becomes an active contribution to soil regeneration.

When Cometto-Lingenheim approached Studio Frith to create an identity for this new space, his brief pointed in an unexpected direction. He wanted something that would embody the bakery’s forward-looking ethos and commitment to preserving soil for future generations. Frith Kerr, the studio’s founder, translated this request into the idea of children representing the future and hope for a better world – she asked her six-year-old son to write the word Jolene on large sheets of sketchbook paper. The exercise yielded several variations. Kerr gave minimal direction, asking him to write it as he wanted, then requesting normal lowercase and uppercase versions. They deliberately avoided overworking any of it. “I remember asking Frith to come up with a logo which would reflect this idea and for it to look naive,” Cometto-Lingenheim recalls. “When I received the draft, hand drawn by her then six-year-old son, I could not have been happier.”

The final selection mixes upper and lowercase letters in a sloping, unmistakably childish hand. Kerr chose it for what she describes as its inimitable spacing and the way the letterforms build towards a crescendo. What could have read as merely cute or gimmicky instead carries a specific quality – open, hopeful, unfinished in a way that aligns with Jolene's rough-hewn plaster walls and simple bentwood chairs.

The challenge with building a complete brand system around a child’s handwriting centres on preventing it from immediately telegraphing ‘written by a child.’ Kerr and her team solved this by reframing their approach. “The tension in the brand system was resolved when we realised it works like an illustration,” she explains. “As soon as we considered it an image it became a shape with its own easy rules. It works as a logotype and an illustration.” This dual nature gives the mark flexibility across applications. It appears embroidered onto window curtains, stamped onto daily menus, printed on canvas totes and paper carrier bags. The handmade quality means it doesn’t feel out of place whether sewn into fabric or loosely printed on paper. Rather than fighting against the mark’s informal character, each application leans into it.

For a recent brand extension, Studio Frith developed J-Marques and animations that maintain this same sensibility. “We wanted the animations to also be child-like, simple and non-hierarchical,” Kerr notes. “Childhood has a kind of anarchy to it, before you get bogged down in too much ‘knowledge,’ the rules that adulthood puts upon us.” The approach deliberately resists hierarchy, reflecting Jolene’s open, egalitarian ethos.

The supporting typography needed to provide structure without constraining the identity’s inherent looseness. Design Director Claire Koster selected Karla, a grotesque sans serif by Jonathan Pinhorn, as the primary typeface. It’s universal, freely available and simple – practical attributes that suit a working bakery and restaurant website. Alda, designed by Berton Hasebe, serves as the secondary typeface, offering sharpness tempered with warmth that complements Karla’s straightforward nature.

For the product photography across the new e-commerce shop, Studio Frith collaborated with Clare Shilland, whose work brings what Kerr describes as a rare combination of warmth and sharp chic. This pairing of qualities – care and humour, approachability and sophistication – threads through the entire identity, from the child’s handwriting to the carefully lit product shots.

The identity’s success lies in how it sidesteps the expected visual language of artisan bakeries – no faux-rustic letterpress, no sepia-toned nostalgia, no overwrought craft signifiers. Instead, it uses genuine naivety to express something forward-looking. The handwriting doesn’t mimic childhood; it is childhood, preserved in its original form with all its imperfect spacing and mixed cases intact.

Jolene’s customers seem to recognise themselves in this approach. The bakery has built a following among people who share its non-hierarchical values and commitment to considering everything as part of a future ecosystem. The identity doesn’t perform authenticity – it simply is authentic, created through a process that trusted a six-year-old’s hand to capture something essential about hope, simplicity and the future.