The Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU) provides advisory services and risk capital to companies wishing to do business in developing countries and emerging markets. IFU has committed investments of 202 Billion DKK across over 100 countries around the world.
IFU wanted to reposition their fund portfolio and sharpen the strategy of delivering capital for sustainable investments. We helped them simplify the brand architecture and refresh their visual identity to activate this important mission.
The new brand identity is a story of bold Scandinavian simplicity juxtaposed with the vibrance and spirit from the emerging markets where they invest.
We simplified the core identity using mainly a signature red colour, globe symbol and a custom headline typeface. This allowed the brand expression to feel uniform and able to deliver the SDG fund proposition with more impact and coherency.
Type explorations with Playtype Foundry
We helped their marketing team with the full brand roll-out and delivered guidelines, templates, website design and brand governance support.
‘As part of discussing the attributes of the new typeface with IFU's CEO, we explored the nitty gritty details of each glyph. As a result, all technical discussions were brushed aside, leading to the following remark to coin the brand's essence: "this feeling of Scandinavian Samba is really what we're all about!". Thus, 'Samba Sans' became the working title throughout the process. Eventually, 'IFU Headline' was deemed a more fitting name for a typeface as it carries the voice of sustainable investments across the globe. That said, the spirit of the 'Samba' typeface lives on.’
Frida Setterberg
Head of Studio, Copenhagen & Aarhus
The new fund launched with big media coverage and a 5bn DKK capital commitment and is well underway to reaching the goal of 30bn DKK.
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