Benzar gas station

MOSCOW OBLAST, Russia

Benzar gas station

Unique gas station with Zaraysk vibe

Let's be honest, gas stations are typically one-size-fits-all places, that you can hardly remember and that's how we used to take them. On the contrary, we can remember Baranka — a set of cafe next to gas stations in Vologda Oblast, that represent a location they're placed in. One of our earliest experiences had been working on the brand of a gas station in Zaraysk, that acted like a tourist information center.

Client: Entrepreneur from Zaraysk town

Work: branding, design, type, map, exterior & interior design

2014

Zaraysk is a small town in the southern part of Moscow Region. When the project just began in 2014, its condition was still deeply depressed, no info for tourists, mini-Kremlin in a ruined state. Zaraysk loyal resident, who owns the gas station, wanted to change that and begin with his own business.

Ancient mini-Kremlin is what Zaraysk is famous for.

It all began with my concept of tourist development that I had been presenting to the administration of Zaraysk. We had a talk with deputy head of administration, who was interested in developing town he has a true love with. Later, he left administration and became working on his own business. We had an idea to start changing the town around from what we had — and we had a gasoline station.

Natalia Rybalchenko

BRAND STRATEGIST, CONCEPT CREATOR

It meant to be a gas station that would both serve the purposes of fuelling cars with the best gas and fuelling those interested in tourist information with maps, local products made-in Zaraysk, merch, food and recommendations.

Benzar

CEO

Benzar & Bison

Title was meant to sound alike the Bison — a famous small bonecarving figure of a cute bison found in Zaraysk. We came up with Benzar, which is short for Бензин Зарайска.

Benzar logo

Colors

Blue stands for gasoline, green is predictably for ecology and all the green trees, while the vivid orange is for Kremlin and red brick architecture, related to the tourist town center.

Blue
is for transport, roads and gasoline
Orange
is for Kremlin and red brick buildings
Green
is for fresh air and green trees

Benzar font

This is the only gasoline station that has its own font probably. Its primpary usage is across merch and communication in social networks. The display type represents the aesthetic of roads and traffic. So does the icons, provided for the use on tablets.

Benzar Display type

Map

Used in the interior design on walls and on paper, as well. All the sightseeings are presented on their places in the isometric view.

Map of Zaraysk

Exterior design

Let's be honest, people do need to trust the gas stations, when coming by at the first sight. Not speaking of crytical situations, when you're out of gas, ofcouse. When there're large recognizable brands around, you have to look trusted. That's what we aimed for designed the exterior look.a

There had been plenty of discussions

Interior design

The casual interior of a gasoline station had been designed to look Zaraysk-related. Our solution is easy to implement and not too decorative. We wanted it to look related to a person who live in Zaraysk and quite functional and not too alien for people from the outside.

Merch

Take out merch is relatively cheap and easy to produce and it makes even the casual souvenirs pretty.

Visiting Zaraysk

9 years later we've visited Zaraysk and had fuelled our car at Benzar. No questions to the tasty pastry, service and the gasoline quality. We were happy to get a quick glance on the people reviews on yandex maps.

I'd call it, that branding is used on low settings, less than half of its potential. Not a single sight of a font: how could've be if it's so awesome and wonderful? Just using it in communication could levitate the whole level of design up.