Petrobras Launch New Corporate Font Designed by Dalton Maag

Petrobras, one of the largest energy companies in the world, has unveiled a new custom font designed by Dalton Maag as part of its corporate identity.

The energy company has a presence in 28 different countries, and is a household name in Brazil, with more than 7,000 petrol stations across the country. This is the first time during the 60 year history of the company that Petrobras has had its own, unique font. The new font family ties the brand elements together to form a consistent whole, unifying their identity across the company.

Dalton Maag were approached by The LED Project, based in São Paulo, to help them with the typography for the new approach to the Petrobras identity. The Dalton Maag team in Brazil worked in collaboration with the London studio to produce a total of 40 concepts which were then discussed with the LED Project and narrowed down to six for presentation to Petrobras.The new font, Petrobras Sans, is a confident sans serif typeface with a firm construction that suggests the solidity of a multinational business, whilst including a softer human side. The terminals taper smoothly to create a more organic feel to the letter forms, which also adds individuality to the design. This difficult and interesting balance was created to reflect the human talent which Petrobras feels is one of the keys to the success of the company. Classic principles of typography were then used to make sure that every letter was legible even in the smallest sizes.

Fabio Haag, Creative Director of Dalton Maag Brazil, said: “All of us Brazilians at Dalton Maag are especially proud of being part of this project, and helping to create the new voice of Petrobras. The biggest challenge was to create a typographic concept with the unique personality of the brand, while keeping it extremely legible so that it would perform well at display and text sizes. It had to work for the complex range of applications used by Petrobras, from TV commercials to the gas stations and everything in between.”

http://blog.daltonmaag.com/

http://www.daltonmaag.com/

The Company You Keep worked closely with Dave Kerr on venue naming and branding, through development of collateral and signage of The Beaufort. A bespoke typeface reflecting iron dock cleats and American sporting insignia’s formed the basis of the identity.

You can see more work at their site — TCYK

Aktiv Grotesk eight new weights

Dalton Maag have today (18/01/13) released eight new styles/weights of the superb Aktiv Grotesk font: Hairline, Thin, Exta Bold and Black, with matching italics. The launch coincides with the font’s use in the English National Ballet brand new identity and campaign.

Dalton Maag Press Release Information

The English National Ballet are launching a radical new brand and advertising campaign that uses Dalton Maag’s Aktiv Grotesk for their new logo. The campaign, by creative agency The Beautiful Meme, features stunning photography of English National Ballet dancers wearing couture garments by Vivienne Westwood.

Dalton Maag’s Aktiv Grotesk was modified to create a unique logotype for the ballet company. The starting point was Aktiv Grotesk Bold, with the spacing and leading of the individual characters being refined to create the perfect typographic balance for the words “English National Ballet”. The most major modification was to replace the standard Aktiv Grotesk “g” with a new two-storey version for greater aesthetic appeal. Aktiv Grotesk was chosen for its clean lines and modernity, which challenge the traditional image of ballet.

Ben Haworth, Creative Director of The Beautiful Meme said: “The decision was made quite early on to deviate from any visual preconceptions of ballet predominantly including script or baroque serif typefaces. We wanted a brand typeface that would reflect and support Tamara Rojo’s artistic vision of communicating a core truth that everyone in the Company has something to say.

Aktiv Grotesk seemed the perfect vehicle to profess the English National Ballet’s new bold and confident position. It’s an exquisitely drawn typeface that has the creative quirks and character to distinguish from other more clinical grotesque fonts. Its clean and contemporary feel also has a degree of neutrality which is key for future collaborative projects across a wide range of the arts to enhance the vision of the ENB being the UKs most creative company.”

Bruno Maag, Creative and Managing Director of Dalton Maag said: “The dancers must take center stage, and the stunning imagery makes this clear. Our Aktiv Grotesk font supports this ambition clearly and cleanly. The choice of a bolder weight is inspired, as it avoids the fashion trap of using very thin styles so often seen in brands related to fashion and art.”

The brand campaign was was shot on location in London, East Sussex and in Holborn Studios by Guy Farrow working with the Vivienne Westwood team. The dancers were choreographed by English National Ballet’s Associate Artist George Williamson.

The Vivienne Westwood collections were chosen specifically to emphasise the non-conventional but classical image. The couture garments used within each image were specially selected from both Vivienne Westwood’s extensive archive and paired with pieces from the latest Spring-Summer 2013 collections to continue the idea of mixing modernity with tradition. Both the clothes and the images created symbolise this feeling of British avant-garde and are seductive and elegant yet commanding. They reference historical dress and British culture, whilst most importantly celebrating the human form.

In Vivienne Westwood’s own words: “My clothes allow you to project your personality, and are theatrical in the sense that they are real clothes, well-designed, and they give you a chance to express yourself.”New weights of Aktiv Grotesk are being launched today to coincide with the font’s use in the English National Ballet campaign.

About Dalton Maag

Dalton Maag was founded in 1991, and designs high quality fonts and logos for its clients. With bases in London, Vienna, Hong Kong and Brazil, the company now employs 39 people from ten countries, and handles a wide variety of projects, many of them large and high profile. Dalton Maag’s international clients have included such big names as Nokia, Ubuntu, the FA Cup, Toyota and BMW. A speciality of the company is our expertise in non-Latin scripts, including Devanagari, Arabic, Cyrillic and Hebrew.

http://www.daltonmaag.com/

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Thanks to Thalia Teasdale | Dalton Maag for the images and information

What prompted you to start your own type foundry?

This will be my fourth foundry now. Not many people know this, but I started out creating typefaces and doing design. My first foundry was CinaHaus in 1996 and shortly after I joined up with a couple of guys to start Test Pilot Collective. In 2000 I decided to go out on my own and I needed a place to sell my typefaces again. So I started up YouWorkForThem which I sold three years ago. Now that I am starting to release type again, I need a new home for the fonts. Matthew Desmond is also working with me on this venture.

What’s the initial idea behind the font Ramsey?

Ramsey began as just a sketch from some type I saw on an album cover when shopping. I kept redrawing it (I do this a lot) and adding in new characteristics. I never was too serious on it until 9 months ago I realized that there could be something there. So I kept redrawing and tweaking until I ended up with the final face. I feel it is solid and worthy to put my name on.

Working on fonts is hard because when you change one thing, often you have to change 14 other letters to ensure a consistent look. I wanted Ramsey to be really functional for all types of uses. I hate making fonts that have one use to them. I like to think of fonts like they are people, so they have unique characteristics and are multidimensional. I am a designer too so a lot of times I design the extra characters like they are part of something I would have fun using. I am doing this more and more.

Will Associated Typographics be a place you will showcase not only commercial fonts that our purchasable to the public but also custom typefaces?

Yes, that is the overall vision. The fonts will be primarily my solo fonts and faces and the ones I work on with Matthew Desmond. We will also be working together on custom typeface projects under Associated Typographics. We just finished the Disney project earlier this year and it had such a wonderful outcome. We compliment each other very well and have known each other since 1997.

And what’s next, any new fonts we should keep a look out for?

Yes, I have a lot in cue. I wish the day had more hours. I will have a muti-styled stencil family coming out at the beginning of next year. It will be loaded with a lot of little typographic toys. I have a lot of others in the works but I have been focusing on this one for now. I was thinking about taking a little time off this one to see how fast I could build out a font.

I do a lot of branding jobs through agencies and often I am drawing custom type for those projects. I enjoy it because it is just practice drawing new forms that I would not draw on my own. I am also working on some custom letters for a new project I am working on too. We will see if that turns into a typeface or not. It is pretty interesting at this point.

Ramsey can be purchasedhere

You can find out more about the agency and other work on their site, or follow their musings on Twitter.

Enjoy.

Logotype
Michael Evamy

Logotypes – wordmarks, monograms and single-letter marks – are where the verbal becomes visual; where elements that are usually designed to speed the eye across the page invite it to linger; where the choice of font is never less than meaningful; where spaces and spacing are significant; where the composition of words and characters carry weight; where letterforms and even fragments of letterforms can evoke attributes, atmospheres, emotions, events,places, personalities and periods in history.

Once it has become familiar, a logotype is registered by the brain in much the same way as a symbol: as a single, visual entity rather than a set of related verbal ones.

Featuring more than 1,300 international typographic identities, by around 250 design studios, this is an indispensable handbook for every design studio, providing a valuable resource to draw on in branding and corporate identity projects.

Examples are drawn not just from Western Europe and North America but also Australia, South Africa, the Far East, Israel, Iran, South America and Eastern Europe. 

Contributing design firms include Pentagram, Vignelli Associates, Chermayeff & Geismar, Wolff Olins, Landor, Total Identity and Six as well as dozens of highly creative, emerging studios.

Retaining the striking black-and-white aesthetic and structure of Logo (also by Michael Evamy) and Symbol, Logotype is an important and essential companion volume. Logotype will be available from September 2012.

*Competition*

Win a copy of Logotype

Typetoken are running a ‘reweet to win’ competition

Laurence King Publishing will randomly select from the retweets a winner of the book.

Keep an eye on + follow the typetoken twitter feed for details.

Follow on twitter here:  @typetoken

More Info

Laurence King

@LaurenceKingPub

Michael Evamy

@michaelevamy

The Photographers Gallery Identity | North

The new identity for The Photographers’ Gallery is constructed around the idea of framing. In designing the identity we knew we had to find a graphic device that could offer flexibility whilst holding the overall look of the gallery and and it’s communication together. We were inspired by the way sections of the new architectural scheme frame the building, the role of artists framing images and in turn The Photographers’ Gallery reframing the work.

The strength of the graphic meant we needed an equally strong choice of typeface. We settled upon Akzidenz Grotesk Extra Bold Condensed, set in all caps. It’s a well crafted classic typeface and lends itself perfectly to being the new headline font for The Photographers’ Gallery.

North design

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More Information

http://www.northdesign.co.uk/

http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/

Thanks to North design for the Photographs / information

AirW1 is a huge new development just off Regent Street between Golden Square and Piccadilly Circus. It’s one of the largest developments to come to the West End. The identity is a modern take on Art Deco, drawing from the architectural heritage of the building and its modern redevelopment. The clients are the Crown Estate and Stanhope.

dn&co devised the name and identity of the building, including a bespoke typeface called Art Deco. Production includes a book spec’d with a tailor-made debossed quilted cover and cold glue binding, and the installation of an Exploratorium; a unique marketing suite encouraging visitors to explore the building and local area through interactive elements and augmented reality.

Thank you to Joy and Simon at dn&co for the high res images and help putting this together for us.

http://www.dnco.com/
Follow dn&co on Twitter