Description

This site represents four of Sweden’s public bodies, responsible for culture, tourism, business and government. The design of the site is part of a branding effort that unites many of the country’s official bodies when they communicate on behalf of the nation, both internally and abroad.

Typographically, the tone is set by a custom face developed in collaboration with the branding agency, Soderhavet, by Swedish type designer Stefan Hattenbach. Used mainly in the most prominent positions as top level headlines, Sweden Sans was developed by the team at Soderhavet to evoke classic, Swedish design minimalism – it’s a slightly condensed monolinear grotesque with a few simple details, such as the cross bars on the capital I and the closed loops of the capital S, that distinguish it from a more minimal swiss sans serif and give it a bit more punch and individuality.

Rather than use Sweden Sans throughout, the designers have elected to support their headline brand typeface with Bitstream’s Zurich (essentially Univers under another name) for any extended text settings and, for a bit of counterpoint, DSType’s Acta Display for article titles.

Zurich Condensed allows the designers to create these bold displays of figures and data. Long strings of numerals especially benefit.