Brand design agency Werklig, based in Helsinki, have produced a new mark for Finnish design. It was commissioned by the Association for Finnish Work who grant permission to use the official mark to companies who “invest in design and understand the value of it as part of their business strategy.”

The clean, strong blue of the background and the simple white graphics echo the Finnish flag and the containing circle, like that of the Iittala logo, works at various scales - either as part of a larger label or as a small, stand-alone stamp or tag on items like drinking glasses or tableware.

Looking at the Werklig site they have undertaken some interesting projects since they formed in 2008 including the design of a new font for Altai glassware; a travelling exhibition to showcase the work of Pekka and signs and information panels for the Design Museum in Helsinki.

When I saw that work in the museum I appreciated how the combination of strong plain colours and straightforward, stripped-down graphics works well with the architecture, including historic features such as architraves and cornices and so on, without competing or dominating. In fact the large information panels enhance the spaces and gives the architectural features a stronger rhythm. The architectural fittings of the interior merit retention because they are part of the original building but are actually rather plain: the building dates from 1895 and it was a school until taken over by the Association of Applied Arts so it is not surprising that the architecture is robust but not elaborate. The nearby building of the Museum of Finnish Architecture dated 1899 is much more sophisticated in terms of major fittings such as an elaborate staircase and in the treatment of the sequence of spaces.

The photographs of graphic work in the Museum of Design have been taken from the Werklig web site.

Werklig

This post started simply because I have some good photographs of shop signs in Copenhagen. These signs are clever, well designed, well made and couldn’t be further from the signage that most major national/international companies put up as part of their corporate image - the sort of logos and name plates that simply ignore their surroundings and use the visual equivalent of shouting to attract customers.

Then what I realised, as I walked around Copenhagen on my last evening there, was that one of many things I like about the city is the lack of street signs - or at least the restriction of street signs to the places where they are necessary if there is a lot of traffic going through that particular area.

I like that and the well thought-out surfacing for roads and pavements ... again of a very high quality and in a range of materials but these are thought through so that appropriate finishes are used in the right places: lines of cobbles define areas, neatly kept gravel covers larger areas and shallow water features stop all but the most stupid from cutting across where they shouldn’t cut across.

Shop owners are proud of their shops but also take pride in the street frontage, putting out flowers and seats.

Copenhagen isn’t perfect - the area around the central railway station is still pretty grim and there are scruffy areas - but it comes close.

But Copenhagen isn’t a coy film set slavishly preserving the past or reconstructing a past for the tourists. New architecture here can be edgy and very controversial and if you have a design savvy population then potentially you have lots of articulate critics.

Maybe good, high-quality urban landscape is one reason why Monocle magazine in their July issue, in the seventh year of their annual survey, have just decided that for this year Copenhagen comes top of the list of the 25 best cities to live in in the World. It is also pretty significant for this blog that Helsinki came in at 3 and Stockholm at 7 out of the top twenty five.

The Monocle team judge important things like infrastructure, crime rate, health care and political and social openness. However, their big question was “how do you make your city a place where people want to live?”

All along the water front in Copenhagen there are seats or swimming platforms or small parks with large sand sculptures that have not been vandalised. There are curiously few waste bins but virtually no litter; there are few yellow lines but virtually no one parks on the pavement; there are no barriers between the quay side and the water of the harbour and few people seem to fall in or cars drive in.

A couple sat on the edge of the quay with their feet out over the drop to the water and chatted in the low glow of the last of the warm evening sun. And I realised Copenhagen is confident and comfortable and a grown up place for grown up people.