Les Frivolités Parisiennes, a logo that looks like a comic opera!

Created in 2012 by Benjamin El Arbi and Mathieu Franot, the Frivolités Parisiennes Opera Company brings the public to rediscover the French lyrical repertoire of the 19th and 20th centuries: comic opera, “opéra bouffe” and musical comedy.

“Les Frivos” orchestra wants to be the spiritual heir of the orchestra of the Opéra Comique which disappeared in the sixties. Depending on the project, it is a chamber orchestra with between 14 and 40 instrumentalists and is composed of musicians who are curious and specialists in this repertoire.

In starting this project, the challenge was to find the right positioning between a light, joyful and even “frivolous” approach, and a more professional approach emphasizing the qualities of these exceptional musicians. It was a bit like creating a graphic union between a “Bel Canto” from the Third Empire and a “Diva” from the 1940s. On the one hand a form of joyful sauciness and on the other a form of refined elegance.

Concept

The logo we have come up with is one of those polysemic signs that everyone will be able to interpret differently. If the letter “F” is obvious, some may read a face, a musical note, the silhouette of a violin, a brass instrument or a gramophone. Geometric rigour is matched by the freedom of curves. The strength of the solids and the dice and the strong contrasts evoke the typographic tradition of the end of the 19th century.

Graphic universe

One of the interests of this logo is that it is impactful enough to include images. It then becomes the central element of the graphic charter. All that remains is to play with shapes, images and colours.