Custom Typeface for NRK

Brief rewritten mid-project: one family replaced two separate typefaces

Typotheque designed a bespoke typeface family for NRK, Norway's state-owned public broadcaster, as part of a brand refresh led by Oslo agency ANTI. Commissioned in autumn 2019, the project evolved away from an initial brief calling for separate sans and serif families toward a single family spanning extreme weights and widths. The design prioritises legibility at small sizes while remaining distinctive at headline scale, and supports all Norwegian languages including Sámi. NRK Visual Identity received a D&AD Yellow Pencil in 2023.

Set in NRK Sans

Insights

Content analysis of NRK's output prompted the shift from a paired sans/serif brief to a single family with extreme width and weight range suited to motion and animation.
The wide design space — from compressed to super-extended, thinnest to heaviest — was intended to serve both high-legibility text settings and high-impact animated titles within one family.
Prototypes were evaluated in real production contexts before final refinement, involving NRK's internal design team, Typotheque, and ANTI throughout.
Language support was explicitly scoped to include indigenous Sámi languages, beyond standard Norwegian orthographies.