Ultra Bike France® — Cycling Event Branding, Art Direction & Marketing Strategy

The events were solid. The brand needed to tell that story to a wider audience.

UBF had been running for four years with a loyal rider base that came back every season. The concept was set, the courses demanding. To reach a new level and open up to an audience of adventurers beyond the ultra endurance circle, the brand had to speak to exploration as much as to performance, to the discovery of a territory as much as to the finish line.

Before touching a single pixel, we analysed 15 ultra-cycling events across France and Europe. The fastest-growing ones shared two things: a promise readable in five seconds, a registration path that took two clicks. For UBF, the roadmap was clear: reposition the narrative from "cycling event" to "adventure you can picture yourself in", centralise the digital experience, and build a modular visual system that could carry the challenges as a series.

An event icon needs to hold on a jersey, on a race bib, on an Instagram avatar, on a sponsor deck. Before solving for scale, we solved for meaning. The icon encodes three ideas: a forward arrow for speed and the road ahead, a checkered flag for the finish line, a cyclist's helmet abstracted.

The construction follows the golden ratio, two circles derived from Fibonacci proportions. The four internal shapes mirror the four (now five) annual challenges, creating a direct link between the brand architecture and the event calendar. And if you look closely, the letters U, B and F are all present in the negative space.

The typographic system uses TikTok Sans in three variants: ExtraExpanded for headlines, SemiExpanded for subheadings, standard for body text. A balance between condensed impact and open readability that mirrors the brand: intense but accessible.

The colour architecture is the heart of the system. Each challenge carries the colour of its landscape: Cévennes in forest green, Alpes in mineral blue, 24h d'Altitude in twilight grey, Pyrénées Catalanes in warm terracotta, Provence in sun-bleached ochre. On digital, print and signage, the colour tells you which territory you're in before you read a word. This modularity turns the calendar into a collectible series: riders don't just sign up for a race, they start collecting experiences. Adding a sixth challenge just needs a new colour and a new territory.

The new website was built with one priority: get someone from "I'm curious" to "I'm registered" in the fewest steps possible. The homepage opens with the concept, shows the five challenges with dates and CTAs, and integrates the registration flow directly.

A countdown to the next event creates urgency, testimonials from past riders build trust, and the FAQ answers the most common questions before they're even asked.

The marketing strategy was built on a simple shift: stop talking about kilometres, start talking about what those kilometres feel like. Social media is structured around three content pillars (inspiration, information, marketing) with templates the UBF team publishes without waiting for a designer.

Scarcity mechanics (limited bibs, early-bird pricing, countdowns) replaced passive announcements. The sponsor deck presents UBF no longer as a cycling race, but as an adventure platform with a defined audience and visual standards.