City of Oslo Identity

Place Branding norway Destination Branding branding system grid city identity nordic City of Oslo Scandinavian geometric

A unifying identity for Oslo

Creuna Norway (now Knowit Experience) has helped connect the citizens and government of Oslo, with a new brand identity. Oslo is a thousand years old, yet thoroughly modern with world class municipal services. Over the past 20 years, clutter had built up in the city’s identity, and about 250 logos were in use. As a result, Oslo’s residents didn’t recognise much of the good work that their government actually did. In addition, it was estimated that this fragmented approach cost the municipality over $5 million each year to maintain all the different logos and identities.

Our solution to this challenge is a new visual identity in which the City of Oslo communicates more holistically and with one logo. The result meets universal design requirements, so that it can be used by everyone. The solution also aims for simplification, flexibility, and greater efficiency.

A simplified and modernized logo

With the solution, all businesses in the Oslo municipality have been gathered under a common identity with a single logo. This makes it easier for citizens to understand everything the municipality does and contributes to. The new City of Oslo logo shows Saint Hallvard in symbolic format. This new logo is based on Oslo's current city seal designed in 1924, which itself is the latest iteration of a long series of Oslo city seals since the middle ages. The representative drawing of St. Hallvard is simplified and modernized, but still carries the same iconic story. The line weight and details were designed to work in all sizes – from smart phones to big signs. Oslo's city seal will continue to be used in traditional and historic contexts.

A flexible system

The new visual identity is unified yet allows for flexibility in communication. We created a dynamic system inspired by shapes from Oslo’s streetscapes and architectural details. Infinitely reconfigurable, the shapes can also spell “Oslo” as a word picture. Our new custom typeface, Oslo Sans, inspired by generations of city street signs, supports universal design requirements.

Oslo Digital Design Assistant

To help reduce the barriers, and costs of benefitting from good design, we created the Oslo digital design assistant. Any of the 53.000 City of Oslo’s employees can chose a template style, input some basic information, upload photos, and the tool automatically generates a range of design layouts and options for them. The designs can be exported to PDF or other formats.

Motion and animation

Movement is a central part of Oslo's identity. A dynamic motion pattern is defined, that makes the identity easily recognizable when it comes to life in various media formats.