Iulia Gorneanu—a gentle person, a treasure, a unique project
Branding (strategy, visual identity) | Website
Beginnings and on Beauty
Beauty attracts beauty, and that’s how we make the world a better place—that’s a belief we hold here at Toud. We met Iulia through the wonderful team at La Blouse Roumaine. Around 2014, we discovered these wonderful people through the Pure Romania project. All of these projects have contributed—and continue to contribute—to the revival of authentic Romania and its traditional values, as well as to adapting them to the present and its customs.
I knew Iulia through our collaboration with La Blouse Roumaine and, above all, through the unfortunate experience she had gone through in her life. In the midst of life’s turmoil, with a multitude of projects underway or in the works, she suffered a liver failure that was cured by a liver transplant—a procedure with very slim chances of success. I met her in person this spring, and it was easy for me to understand why her transplant was a success: God doesn’t take the gentle and kind ones from us; He leaves them here to soften our hearts as well and to bring us light.
Iulia is like a field of flowers; through her gentleness and her secret connection to the traditions of these places, she brings you a smile and a sense of peace, no matter how loud the noise in your mind or soul may be.
A person’s actions speak volumes about him, which is why I will stop here in the description I began above.
The Iulia Gorneanu Project
Together with the La Blouse Roumaine team, we had the opportunity to be the ones who laid the groundwork for this wonderful project. In order to pass on the knowledge, experience, stories, and—above all—the power to create and develop projects, the Iulia Gorneanu brand needed a visual identity and a platform accessible to everyone.
We started with the values that define the brand and settled on ancient symbols. We chose the circle because it is the symbol of the sun, of the spirit that nourishes matter, of light; it expresses cyclicality, the eternal return. It was the element that perfectly matched Iulia—her projects, her energy, her story—and I would even go so far as to say her purpose.
We tried pairing hundreds of fonts with this symbol, but without much consistency or balance. Below you can see part of the creative process and some of the initial proposals. Just when we hit a dead end, Andreea (La Blouse Roumaine) came up with a brilliant idea: she insisted that Iulia’s font was the best one. Nothing could be truer or more profound.
That’s how we arrived at this logo, designed to fully illustrate Iulia Gorneanu’s story.
We then moved straight on to the website. We ran into the font issue again—one we’d managed to avoid by taking that detour. Thanks to the curation by La Blouse Roumaine, we found the right balance here as well.
We wanted the site to be profoundly simple, allowing it to showcase Iulia’s projects, portfolio pieces, stories, and information—collected and organized into seven themes—as well as to facilitate interaction with Iulia.
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