ibou: a brand identity for a search engine that shows its sources
ibou is an independent search engine built in France, with its own crawler, index and ranking. From June to August 2026, Moder & Co led its brand strategy, narrative framework, manifesto and visual identity. The goal: make a serious piece of web infrastructure feel clear, curious and human, without leaning on AI hype.
Client
ibou
Sector
Search engine · Web browser · AI · Tech
Scope
Audit and benchmark, positioning, narrative framework, manifesto, logo, mascot system, slogan, web, social and digital rollout, motion
Year
June 15 – August 30, 2026 (11 weeks)
The challenge
A strong promise nobody could see.
ibou had a clear conviction: search should leave you better informed, and the people who write the web should be able to live from it. The brand audit showed the problem. The promise was stated, never shown. The manifesto described a societal issue, the vision described infrastructure, and nothing described what a good search on ibou actually feels like.
At the same time, the company’s strongest proof was invisible. ibou owns its crawl, index and ranking, which very few “independent” search engines do. Its crawler, IbouBot, ranked among the top search engine bots on Cloudflare Radar while still a prototype [À confirmer : rang et date]. The brand told the story of a friendly startup and hid the fact that it runs real infrastructure.
The key decision
The reader is the subject, the infrastructure is the reason.
We did not rebuild the strategy from scratch. We challenged and sharpened the foundations ibou already had, in workshops with the founding team. One composition rule came out of it: the person searching is always the subject of the sentence, and the infrastructure only answers the question “why should I believe you?”.
We also clarified the words that blurred the message:
“Sovereignty” became a concrete fact: we don’t rent anyone else’s index.
“Conversational” and “agentic” became what they mean for people: we answer the question you asked, and we show where the answer comes from.
AI became a method, not a promise. ibou uses AI at every step, and never sells it as the benefit.
The approach
Core message: “Search better, see clearer.”
(in French, “Mieux chercher, y voir plus clair”). It puts the person at the center. ibou does not claim to think for you. It gives you better conditions to search and understand.
Five supporting messages carry it. The first three are benefits, the last two are guarantees, and guarantees never speak first.
1. Understand, don’t just receive.
2. Every answer has a source.
3. You should come across something other than what everyone else is looking at.
4. The web only lives if the people who write it can live from it.
5. What you find depends on who owns the index.
The framework also set a clear vocabulary. ibou says question, answer, source, author, publisher, index, discovery. It avoids “content”, “query”, “revolutionary”, “powered by AI”, and it never calls itself “the European alternative to Google”, because that lets a competitor set the frame.
The manifesto. We wrote ibou’s public manifesto as a set of ten commitments [À confirmer : le narrative framework parle de sept, la v3 validée en compte dix], addressed to two audiences: the people who search, and the people who make the web. It opens on one line: “We are building ibou for a simple reason: searching should make you more clear-sighted.” Every commitment is something the product can be held to, from citing every source to crawling at speeds that don’t strain publishers’ servers.
Rollout. We delivered a ready-to-use kit so the team could apply the brand without improvising: LinkedIn and X covers and avatars, a favicon and app thumbnail, personal LinkedIn banners for the founders, an A4 template, a five-slide presentation, a landing page direction, merchandise (cap, t-shirt) and an 8-second motion piece for LinkedIn.
For this project, Moder & Co worked in collaboration with Studio SAÖ (Aksel Öz).
What we delivered
Logo
A lowercase wordmark, “ibou”, written in capitals only where grammar requires it [À confirmer : description du logo].
Mascot system
The owl stays, as a guide rather than a gimmick. It comes with a set of expressions (happy, excited, sleepy, dizzy, sassy, jaded, stressed, in love) that let the brand show emotion without adding words.
Typography
A licensed display face for voice, a free text face for reading [À confirmer : noms des fontes].
Color
A primary palette built for screens first [À confirmer : couleurs].
The outcome
[À confirmer avec le client] Write two or three measurable facts here: launch date of the new identity, app store ratings or downloads since, press coverage, publisher sign-ups. If no numbers can be shared, use one quote from a founder.
Branding a product that uses AI is not about saying AI louder. It is about saying what changes for the person using it, then proving it. For ibou, that meant one simple line, five messages, ten commitments and an identity that makes a serious engine feel approachable.
“[À confirmer : citation d’un fondateur]”
[Nom], [Titre], ibou
Let’s connect
Ariane Moder
Brand Strategist & Creative Director
Denver, Colorado. Working Worldwide.