Overtone®’s identity gives Christiansborg Palace a historic yet modern edge

Built, destroyed and rebuilt many times over, the Christiansborg Palace in central Copenhagen is still very much a part of Denmark’s cultural fabric. With a layered history, the palace and government building is a seat for historical events, welcoming over 500,000 guests into its hallowed halls. As such, the palace is both a sentinel of the past and a place where modern Danish life unfurls. Capturing this dichotomy was important for Aarhus-based design studio Overtone® when they took up the task of creating an identity for the palace. 

“As part of the design process, we established a strategic foundation for the identity. The palace has great historical significance but is also well-known in modern Denmark, as the Parliament is located in one wing, and the royal chambers are used for official state visits and major royal events, such as the proclamation of HM King Frederik X’s accession to the throne,” says Founder & Creative Director Nicolaj Bak. “The strategic foundation is based on the idea that history is written in the present – ‘History happens here.’”

To capture this duality of the palace’s identity, the team documented the rich Neoclassical interiors – with their elaborate ornamentations – and began distilling this aesthetic through a contemporary lens, ultimately arriving at a custom-designed, classical serif typeface. The resulting style, as Bak points out, “is more aligned with high-end fashion brands than with what one typically associates with a historical palace.”

The luscious fluidity of the ornamentation is felt in the construction of the custom typeface. However, at no point do the stylistic echoes feel heavy – there’s a subtlety about the construction of the letterforms. The references to the ornate interiors are quiet, but ever present, such as the rounding curves of the ‘a,’ ‘f,’ and ‘&,’ that look almost like curling tendrils. “We took hundreds of photos of the palace’s interiors and tested various details in the typography, ultimately arriving at a simple stylistic interpretation of the floral origins of the ornaments in the characters’ terminals,” says Bak.

A royal palace, as Bak reminds us, needs a royal crown. When the team began designing the icon of the crown, they were aware that “In a monarchy like Denmark, there are hundreds of crowns across the parliament ministries and old company logos,” says Bak, “but the royal crown is for the royal house and the parliament only.” Overtone®’s interpretation of the crown was born from a keen understanding of heraldic rules, and the shapes of King Christian V’s crown from 1671; the final design also had to be reviewed and approved by The Danish National Archives. At once detailed, yet simple enough to scale at various sizes, the icon of the royal crown is as contemporary as the custom typeface – a mark of history that’s been reimagined to fit in perfectly with the taste and the demands of the 21st century.