Never the same: In Aton’s rebrand, a custom typeface and adaptable wordmark always keep things fresh — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design
Things have been changing at Aton, a Reykjavík-based strategic communications and design agency. For example, the company welcomed former Jones Knowles Ritchie Design Director, Siggi Odds, as Creative Director. To ring in this change in leadership, the agency decided to reimagine its own brand.
When the team began looking for a design route, they found an answer in a custom typeface designed by the agency’s own Type Designer, Hólmfríður Benediktsdóttir. A typographic direction made sense, as the identity had to be able to flex to talk about both their clients and the agency. “Most of a creative agency’s identity primarily focuses on talking about work for clients,” Odds tells us. “Sometimes it must take the back seat and let the work speak, but often we want our ideas to spark excitement, for our clients to feel driven to action by the words on the screen, and typography is a great tool to aid this experience.”
The custom typeface, Nota, does just that – its boldness makes you take notice, but at the same time, it has the subtlety to move into the wings and let the work take centre stage. Its most notable character is its variable, expressive counterforms, “representing both the diverse voices the agency contains, as well as the multiple ways of speaking to different audiences.” And it’s fun too! The counterforms change from circles to squares, and there’s also a jagged one that looks a bit like a crocodile bite.
“As a company that builds distinctive toolkits for our clients, we wanted to do the same for our own identity. Therefore, we wanted a bespoke typeface that could both be bold and dynamic in its natural form, but also function as an expressive tool,” adds Odds. “We based the bold, extended character on the fat face and breite fette type traditions, and made its overall character quite square, but with circular counters, making for a confident and contemporary version of some of these historical references.” The team balanced Nota’s look-at-me energy with a warmer counterpart with STK Bureau Serif Light from Smuss Type Kiosk and chose Dinamo’s Monument Grotesk as the workhorse sans.
Even with the playful typeface in place – used in the wordmark and throughout the brand – there was more fun to be had. Aton wanted its logo to be as expressive as it could be, so Odds and his team decided to incorporate dimensional imagery within the counterforms of the letters in the wordmark; think a 3D flower set within the ‘A’ or a croissant in the ‘n.’ This gave the agency a bit of a playground – with the imagery they could speak directly to the brands they were working with, or trending topics.
“We wanted to be able to use our logo as a metaphor for our collaborative spirit. By using our conveniently short wordmark as a platform for incorporating imagery like a product from our client, or a character from an illustrator, we make them feel at home from the moment we press ‘Share Screen,’” explains Odds. “It also serves as a platform for us to talk about current events, awards, and just stupid fun internal stuff like our karaoke nights.”