Within the field of awareness raising, visual images play an increasingly important role. It had become clear that the Northern Dimension needed a logo to improve visibility and to underline Northern Dimension as a joint Northern agenda in Europe. Therefore, in its Reykjavik meeting in June 2019, the Northern Dimension Steering Group commissioned the NDI to produce a logo competition. The NDI produced the competition in cooperation with the Aalto University Visual Communication Department.
The competition call was launched in summer, with 2000 eur prize for the winner. The competition was targeted to selected universities in the Northern Dimension area with visual communication study programs. The students were asked to design a long lasting logo that should give the Northern Dimension policy a clear identity in communication and in related media publications. The logo should also signify Northern Dimension’s four thematic areas and symbolize equal collaboration.
The competition was a great success with 43 suggestions, from which design experts pre-selected 14 finalists for the jury to decide the winner.
The jury consisted of design experts and official representatives of the EU (Audrone Perkauskiene/EEAS), Russia (Igor Kapyrin/Ministry for Foreign Affairs), Iceland (Emil Breki Hreggvidsson (Ministry for Foreign Affairs), Norway (Göril Johanssen/Ministry for Foreign Affairs ).
The decision of the jury was clear: the winner is Mr Jacob Stewart from the Aalto University.
Jury Comment:
A jury made up of international representatives of Northern Dimension and design experts from Aalto University’s Department of Media, consider that the winning entry of the competition cleverly combines Nordic aesthetics, the notion of an equal collaboration, and an original, perceptive idea. The logo offers possibilities for variations and is well suited for animation. Based on the logo and its design language, it is possible to create icons, which represent the organisation’s constituent areas of operation. The styling of the logo is fresh, modern, and suitably simple, and gives good potential for the realization of an interesting, working visual identity for the Northern Dimension.
The new logo, Jacob Stewart, the “founding father” of ND Paavo Lipponen and Riitta Kosonen from NDI
