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Visual Identity for Leeuwarden

Client: Municipality of Leeuwarden, NL

Project: Development of the CI design, stationery, brochures, manual, advertisements

Year: 1990

Creating the visual identity of a municipality requires a great deal of preparation: Since municipalities are complex in structure and serve many functions, their visual identity should be correspondingly flexible to echo this multifaceted identity, and evoke a range of qualities, from austere and objectively minded to lighthearted and playful, from distant to accessible. The logos of the individual departments are visually based on the logo for the municipality, but also function independently. We selected the Formata bold font for the municipality logo and Formata regular as the typeface for the departments. The stepwise shift in the “L” in “Leeuwarden” serves as a heraldic “shield” that establishes a connection with the department logos. It is also used in the advertisements, brochures and posters. The lion (which recalls the city’s coat of arms) is presented in the form of a sketched layer with varying levels of visibility; sometimes only parts of it are visible, sometimes we see it very clearly, and sometimes it is not visible at all.