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Behind the design

“Brand Norway” is a many-years running development of the visual identity of Norway, specifically in its application abroad, for uses in tourism and industry. The entire project ranges from trade fair displays to web applications to tourism promotion, and so the typefaces needed to be multi-use, with a very simple set of rules for usage, and broad language support. After all, Norway has diplomatic missions in 84 countries, and it is only appropriate that we speak as many of their languages as possible.

The display style is as much graphic as it is typographic, and marries round and straight in a very visible way. It’s supported by a basic text set of four styles, which are optimised for use all the way from productivity software and spreadsheets to modern web design and video presentations. The strong graphic shapes of the display are toned down for the text, to focus more on legibility and a subtle playfulness.

Language support is very broad: for every country where Norway has a diplomatic mission, all the Latin script-based languages are supported. For scripts beyond Latin, a thorough fallback scheme was devised to pick the best fit for each script. But we didn’t want to stop there, so for all of these countries and languages, we also made a localised logo.

Behind the work

Designed and developed while working at Scandinavian Design Group. Visual identity team: Nicklas Haslestad, Ida Louise Andersen. Finished in 2018.