Natura Camping case study: the logo of a campsite and gites in Belgium’s Luxembourg province

The logo of a campsite and its gites in the Ardennes, drawn as the test for my first agency job, from the pencil sketches to six propositions around a deer and a tent.

Logo · 2015

The context

In 2015, fresh out of my studies, I applied to a web agency. After a first phone call about my skills, they wanted to see me at work, with a test in two parts, a logo first, then a web exercise on site. The role was for a graphic designer and web developer, and I would later join the team.

The agency was based just over the border, in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and its founders came from the Belgian countryside, where nature is everywhere and holiday campsites are plentiful. The brief imagined one of them, Natura Camping, a fictional campsite in the Ardennes, at the heart of a large natural area.

The brief

  • Yellow and green, the colours the client saw for the logo
  • A deer, the symbol of nature
  • A tent or another typical camping object
  • A natural side, clearly visible
  • Something new and modern, with a breath of renewal
  • One constraint on the shape, nothing square
Pencil sketch of the antlers inside a hexagon
Sketches of the antlers in a hexagon, next to the mechanical pencil
Sketches of the antlers in a circle and in a hexagon
Sketches of deer whose legs form a tent

In pencil first. The sketches opened many ways into the project, and three main directions came out of them, each with a few variations.

The propositions

Natura Camping logo: the deer's antlers forming yellow tents in a rounded hexagon, natura in bold and camping in a light weight
The deer's antlers forming yellow tents on green, in a rounded hexagon, natura in bold and camping in a light weight. My favourite.
Natura Camping logo: the antlers in a circle, the name on one line in two greens
The same antlers and tents in a circle instead of the hexagon, the name on one line in the two shades.
Natura Camping logo: a deer whose legs draw a tent, NATURA in capitals above camping
A plainer proposition. A deer whose legs draw a tent, NATURA in capitals above camping.
Natura Camping logo: a tent carried by the deer's antlers in a green circle
A tent in a green circle, carried by the deer's antlers.
Natura Camping logo: a deer drawn in lines, carrying pines and tents on its back, leaping over the name
The deer drawn in finer lines, carrying pines and tents on its back and leaping over the name.
Natura Camping logo: the leaping deer over a hill that shelters a tent between two pine trees
The same deer in fine lines, leaping over a tent between two pine trees. Its legs form a long arc, like a hill.

The outcome

They loved the propositions and my creative process, and this opened the doors of my first agency as an employee, because I could handle both the web and graphic design. I stayed a year and learned a great deal, then joined an agency closer to home, for a better balance between work and private life.

More than ten years later, I still start my logo creations the same way: a brief, a mechanical pencil, and several directions to compare.