Dalton Maag designs 'solid but human' font for energy company rebrand

Dalton Maag has created a custom font as part of a new identity for Petrobras, one of the largest energy companies in the world.

The energy company has a presence in 28 different countries, and the new font family will be used across the company. It's the first custom font to be designed for Petrobras.

Dalton Maag were approached by The LED Project, based in São Paulo, to help them with the typography for the new approach to the Petrobras identity. The Dalton Maag team in Brazil worked in collaboration with the London studio to produce a total of 40 concepts which were then discussed with the LED Project and narrowed down to six for presentation to Petrobras.

The type design firm describe the new font, Petrobras Sans, as a 'confident sans serif typeface with a firm construction that suggests the solidity of a multinational business, whilst including a softer human side'. The terminals taper smoothly to create an organic feel to the letterforms, which aims to reflect Petrobras's statements that it is its people that have made it successful. Dalton Maag than worked on ensuring that every letter was legible even in the smallest sizes.

"All of us Brazilians at Dalton Maag are especially proud of being part of this project, and helping to create the new voice of Petrobras," says Fabio Haag, creative director of Dalton Maag Brazil. "The biggest challenge was to create a typographic concept with the unique personality of the brand, while keeping it extremely legible so that it would perform well at display and text sizes. It had to work for the complex range of applications used by Petrobras, from TV commercials to the gas stations and everything in between."

Type sheets from the development of Petrobras Sans