Hasta La Ideas

In autumn 2007 Koeweiden Postma pitched for a new logo and housestyle for the Dutch government. They made it to the final round but didn’t get the job: here’s what the Dutch could have had

It’s a constant frustration to us here at CR that, due to client confidentiality clauses, design studios and ad agencies are seldom allowed to show the projects that didn’t make it. So often, they are more interesting than the ones that finally get the nod.

Last week at the Designyatra conference in Mumbai, Hugo van Bos of Koweiden Postma showed his studio’s pitch for the Dutch government’s new identity. They proposed two routes.

Route one drew on the Dutch landscape and its characteristic Polders of reclaimed land.

The idea was to translate that familiar gridded landscape into an identity featuring the Dutch royal lion and a reference to the national flag

The identity would be flexible enough to work with all the government departments, using the red and blue device to separate information

It would work like this on a letter

And it could be used on signage like this

Route 2 would reference the coats of arms of the different Dutch regions and cities

Again using the lion, the logo could look like this

Which was refined further to this

Which would then work like this

The squares would vary according to the department or subject

So it could work like this on a letter

And this on signage

But, after reaching the last two, the Dutch Government went with an identity by Studio Dumbar which looks like this

You can see the whole Koeweiden Postma presentation from Designyatra here