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Different instances of the OKRA logo with its constantly moving lines.
The fun part about adding samples to the FontShop galleries is that we often come across work that somehow managed to slip under our radar. A tweet by Bart van der Griendt, creative director at branding firm Idity led me to the Koeweiden Postma website and online portfolio. Their visual identity for OKRA won them a red dot award for outstanding design in the category Corporate Design. A total of 26 Dutch design practices were recipients of the award in 2009, amongst them Edenspiekermann for the Utrecht City Theatre which I reported about last August on The FontFeed.
On their website Koeweiden Postma explain the concept behind the OKRA logo and visual identity. The meandering lines for OKRA Landscape Architects symbolise the ever changing landscape that the bureau works with. OKRA continually aspire to flexible designs that take into account social and ecological changes. The lines represent the liveliness and adventurous attitude of the bureau, and create an image that is both intriguing and distinctive.
OKRA is specialised in the creation of plans and designs for public space in urban environments, and urban-related outer regions. The bureau based in Utrecht, The Netherlands was founded in 1994, and has since grown into a 25 strong renowned bureau operating internationally.
After 13 years it was time for a new visual identity matching the expansion of the bureau to its current status and size. Besides the play of lines, colour is a crucial component of the OKRA house style. A palette of strong, saturated colours with a natural character was developed to that effect. The diversity of those colours contributes to the richness and dynamism of the visual identity.
OKRA business cards in different colours and configurations.
The OKRA visual identity is designed using Bryant 2 exclusively. This rounded geometric typeface – a creation of Eric Olson for his Process Type Foundry – is based on the Wrico lettering kits that were very popular amongst draftsmen and amateur sign makers in the 1960s and ’70s. The original Bryant series was initially released in 2002 as a simple family of four fonts. A couple of years ago Bryant was completely re-drawn and updated to an expansive family, which now includes the long-requested italic, plus Condensed and Compressed widths. Amongst the many OpenType features the character set includes small caps, several figure sets, and spurless alternate glyphs for the lowercase a, m, n, u, w, and y that lend this face a Bauhaus-like feel.
The concept for the OKRA project book covers is very simple. For project plans the top half of the cover consist of an image, and the bottom half is a colour pane with tekst. Bureau documentation covers have a flat colour with text and the typical lines.
Bryant is one of many soft, rounded sans serifs that have become very popular these past few years, and are commonly associated with the Web 2.0 graphic style. Whereas formerly the options of graphic designers were quite limited, now they can choose amongst a wide variety of friendly designs. Those range from rounded tech faces like FF Netto and Chevin, over geometric faces like Co, Tondo, Estilo, and Houshka Rounded, to humanist faces like the delicate Tempera Rose. Other sought-after styles are the soft sans serifs with blunt corners, and sophisticated sans serifs with curve-to-corner finials.
OKRA advertisements.
With more than 12,000 submissions from 60 countries, the international red dot design award is the largest and most renowned design competition in the world. Awards are given in three categories – red dot award: product design, red dot award: communication design, and red dot award: design concept. The award-winning entries are presented to an international public in the red dot design museum. Last year 471 projects were awarded a red dot: communication design award, from a total of 6,112 entries from 42 countries. The awards were selected by an international design jury which also included Michel de Boer from Studio Dumbar and Niels Schrader from Mind Design.
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