As part of the new brand iden­tity of the Dutch gov­ern­ment Peter Ver­heul designed a cus­tom type­face for all forms of visual communications.

Cur­rently there are over 200 depart­ments and min­istries which all have dif­fer­ent logos and uses dif­fer­ent type­faces as their brand iden­tity. In a pitch held by the Dutch gov­ern­ment stu­dio Dum­bar won this com­pe­ti­tion and intro­duced a new logo and 1 brand iden­tity: 1 Logo.

Type­face: Rijksover­heid Sans / Serif

From the begin­ning of 2008 Peter Ver­heul was asked by stu­dio Dum­bar to take his type­face Versa and trans­form the type­face usable for a larger audi­ence. He changed the look and feel of the Serif ver­sion of Versa Serif and cre­ated a com­plete new set of let­ters for the Sans ver­sion. The fonts are named Rijksover­heid Sans and Rijksover­heid Serif. The name of the type­face is rec­og­niz­able as “gov­ern­ment” and will be used in every way of visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The Rijksover­heid Sans will be used mainly for head­ings of text and in sig­nage or wayfind­ing sys­tems. The Rijksover­heid Serif is used as bread let­ter for read­ing text. In just under nine months Peter Ver­heul man­aged to final­ize the fonts and released them in four dif­fer­ent vari­a­tions, from Reg­u­lar, Italic to Bold.

Design­ing the Rijksover­heid typeface

Dur­ing the time of cre­ation Peter Ver­heul did not have much time to take pic­tures (as said in his intro­duc­tion speech) but he kept a note book full of draw­ings and notes of cre­at­ing and design­ing the type­faces. After fin­ish­ing the type­faces he donated them to Bij­zon­dere Col­lec­ties, a Dutch impor­tant col­lec­tion of valu­able work from Dutch graph­i­cal, typo­graph­i­cal– artists. The Bij­zon­dere Col­lec­tions hosts the book­let, first print­outs and every­thing that is related in cre­at­ing the type­face Rijksoverheid.

Let­ter­ijk book

Let­ter­rijk Book is a story about the birth and why of cre­ation the type­face Rijksover­heid writ­ten by Math­ieu Lom­men, pub­lished by De Buitenkant Pub­lish­ers. The book­let cov­ers every­thing from the start of the project and the com­bi­na­tion with project 1 Logo, a story about how the typog­ra­phy started work­ing together, with many drawn exam­ples of early stages of let­ter design. It also cov­ers the com­plete glyphs of the type­face vari­a­tions, with over 700 glyphs each this type­face is multi-language proof. With the design of the type­face sev­eral key fac­tors of demands where given to Peter Ver­heul and Stu­dio Dum­bar. The type­face should be easy to read, should not be too wide in order to reduce print­ing costs, it could be used for all forms of visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion of the Dutch Gov­ern­ment and every depart­ment will use it there­fore it will reduce the costs of dif­fer­ent type­face licenses. The type­face will func­tion as a bridge between soci­ety and gov­ern­ment, a type­face that every­body will feel com­fort­able with.

Rijksover­hei­d­Sans

In this exam­ple above you can cleary see the use of Rijksover­heid Sans, an easy to read type­face with a large x-height. This allows max­i­mum leg­i­bil­ity for head­ing text, sig­nage, wayfind­ing and other forms of visual iden­tity. In the intro­duc­tion speech Peter Ver­heul men­tioned that he was impressed by the way the Sans ver­sion would be used for bread let­ter. He is inter­ested to see the fur­ther devel­op­ment of Rijksover­heid Sans in this field.

Rijksover­hei­d­Serif

In the exam­ple above the Rijksover­heid Serif is the bread let­ter for read­ing text, I have read the book­let a cou­ple of times and it seems to be a very leg­i­ble type­face. Which will form the basis of the whole brand iden­tity of the Dutch Government.

Project: 1 Logo

The Dutch gov­ern­ment brand iden­tity was not con­cise or con­sis­tent, with over 200 depart­ments and min­istries costs were ris­ing of each depart­ment hav­igd their own logo, type­face, print mate­ri­als, sig­nage and every­thing that involves the visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion of that depart­ment. There was not a direct link to soci­ety and con­fu­sion about the iden­tity the gov­ern­ment wants to presents them­selves. Project 1 Logo was born to bring back all brand iden­tity of the Dutch gov­ern­ment and give one sig­nal to soci­ety about what the gov­ern­ment stands for. In a pitch sev­eral design stu­dios par­tic­i­pated in order to cre­ate 1 Logo, 1 brand, 1 iden­tity, 1 way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing between soci­ety and gov­ern­ment, com­ing all together as 1 gov­ern­ment. From 2009 until 2011 every depart­ment should use the new logo and type­face in all forms of visual com­mu­ni­ca­tion, a huge oper­a­tion which involves many par­ties. I believe there will be a brand guide­line from stu­dio Dum­bar to lead every­thing into the cor­rect, con­cise and con­sis­tent use of the brand identity.

1 Logo Signage

We have been pleased to work on a mock-up sig­nage name­plate for 1 logo project, the Rijksover­heid logo was engraved into an stain­less steel nameplate.

Rijksover­heid Sans / Serif

Related infor­ma­tion

• Stu­dio Dum­bar, the designer of 1 Logo identity.
• Dutch gov­ern­ment web­site about project 1 Logo, Com­mu­ni­catieplein.
• Web­site of designer Peter Ver­heul

Com­ment and win Let­ter­rijk Book

I have a free copy of the Book Let­ter­rijk wait­ing for you, just com­ment in this post and ran­dom I will select one per­son who wins a copy of Let­ter­ijk Book. Clos­ing in one week, Fri­day Novem­ber 21st.