Tank Design

FUB (the Committee for Parents of Kinderdarten Children) aims to strengthen engagement from parents with kindergarten-age children by providing them with information and guidance. Tank had the pleasure of designing their first major brochure. The illustrations came from Mille, Max (both aged 5) and Markus (aged 2), donated willingly by parent/designers at Tank. This resulted in a colourful, lively report which emanates happiness whilst presenting the more serious content.

Our client said: “Our brochure about collaboration between home and kindergarten has been laid out beautifully and complements the content effectively: use of colour, children’s drawings and images indicate that this report is about children, yet it has been put together in an organised and inviting way”.

What is the situation really like in Norwegian schools? How much does the quality of teaching vary across schools, local authorities and counties? How do we use our resources? Utdanningsspeilet is an annual publication from the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training and reveals the state of primary education in Norway.

Tank has worked on concepts, design and illustration since December and the report has just been published. We are proud of the result – a colourful report full of data visualisations and facts about Norwegian schools. All presented in an inviting and easy-to-read way.

Norway hosted the conference for the management of Europe’s forests in June 2011, and representatives from 46 countries participated. Tank developed the visual identity for the organisation and the conference, as well as additional editorial material. The principal document for the conference was “State of Europe´s Forests 2011″, a report which outlines the current status and trends within sustainable forest management in Europe today.

We prepared a clean template which enabled us to present large amounts of information whilst also retaining an overall sense of dynamism. The 348-page report is packed with tables, maps and graphical visualisations which represent the underlying messages in the lengthy text. The identity’s colour palette was put to use to give each chapter its own identity, and conscious typographic choices both reinforce the identity and make the report inviting and easy to read.

This is the third year Tank has designed IT Fornebu’s annual report. It’s a comprehensive 80-page report which makes use of advanced printing techniques like block foiling, two kinds of paper, a UV varnish and cut-outs. The result is an attractive and elegant report with poetic winter photography from Espen Gees.

Morpol is the world’s largest smoked salmon producer, and has delivers smoked, marinated, fresh and frozen salmon to customers all over the world. For their 2010 annual report Morpol wanted to portray a growing company, focusing on vriety and quality in their production processes.

Imagery constitutes a large part of the report, visualising what Morpol do yet also giving the reader a snapshot of a working day at Morpol. We used uncoated paper and black and white imagery to soften the overall masculine and business-like look of the report.

Norsk VVS is a specialist magazine which covers energy and the environment, and considers itself to be the industry’s favourite magazine for updates on indoor air quality, energy, ventilation and sanitation.

Norsk VVS has had the same design for many years and the editorial team thought a redesign was long overdue, since the magazine was neither contemporary nor flexible. The client asked us to completely redesign the magazine to make it more inviting, with enough dynamism and seriousness to reflect the varying professions and competence the magazine represents. Tank has developed a tight yet flexible template which gives the content a natural logic of its own, whilst the new design livens up the reports and articles as well as providing lots of visual breathing space.

“Tank Design have done a professional and solid job which we’re very happy with. They have addressed our needs very well, and the new design sets us clearly and beautifully apart from our competitors, says editor Kari Nylund. We now have a layout which takes our need for advertising space into account, whilst also making the editorial content both clear and tidy.”

Norwegian greenhouse gas emissions will be considerably reduced by 2020. Klimakur 2020 (“Climate Cure 2020″ in English) have been evaluating the actions and measures required to achieve this goal. The report “Tiltak og virkemidler for å nå norske klimamål mot 2020″ (“Measures and actions to improve Norwegian climate targets by 2020″) forms the basis of a governmental review of climate policy. Tank developed the visual identity for the report, then designed the report itself. A flexible yet strict grid template was required, and the four parts of the report were given their own distinct colour. Special attention has been paid to graphs, tables and illustrations which are both well-structured and well-executed. Clear titles and the use of colour and icons help to make this weighty report more accessible.

The report contains over 60 graphs and is perhaps the heftiest editorial work Tank has ever attempted. With its 316 pages the report weighs in at 1.3 kilos.

The brief: Development of name and design of the new knowledge reform set in motion by Kristin Clemet. Solution: A combination of illustrations and photographs which create a modern vision for the new school. Result: The name has entered the Norwegian language and has since been adopted by Trond Giske, among others, as “Kulturløftet”.

Concept development and design of annual reports is a core part of Tank’s business. As with other areas of editorial design, this is about systems, consistency and variation. For each project we design the information architecture based on a fundamental grid, then develop the colour palette, photographic style, graphic elements and typographic hierarchy. From this basis we develop a holistic visual concept for the report which a harmonic relationship between consistency and variation. The core idea is presented through carefully-selected visual elements which form a unique design.