One year after its implementation, the visual identity of Luxembourg is experiencing a good level of success. On November 9, the campaign won the City Nation Place Award 2017 in the “Best Expression of Place Identity Through Design” category.
This ceremony honoured initiatives – in several categories –that, “have helped to give a country or place and its values long-term visibility, which in turn help to engage its people and to attract talent, business and visitors,” as the agencies Binsfeld and Vidalegloesener, creator of this branding, explained.
On 10 October 2016, Secretary of State for the Economy Francine Closener unveiled Luxembourg’s new visual identity: a tricolour “X”, right at the heart of the word Luxembourg and written in a font that has already proven its worth (it is the same one used by the Guggenheim Museum, for example), all supported by a simple yet inviting baseline: “Let’s make it happen”.
Since then, the Luxembourg strategy on “Nation branding” has come a long way, to the great satisfaction of Ms Closener who affirmed in an interview published in Paperjam that “the implementation of the Luxembourg signature has been a tremendous success.” The passage of the Tour de France cycling race at the beginning of July – an event that was followed by 7.5 million viewers worldwide – was able to show Luxembourg in a very different light.
An an animated film to come in January 2018
The first leg has been encouraging, but there is still a long way to go to make this image a reflex in the minds of citizens, whether in Luxembourg or abroad.
To make the message even more attractive, a call for projects was launched to create an animated film to promote the country and its values of openness, dynamism and reliability. 11 projects were shortlisted by the jury chaired by Guy Daleiden (President of the national support fund for audiovisual production), whose final selection was Laurent Wiltz (Zeilt Productions). A great endorsement, given that in 2014 this director won the Oscar for best animated short film with his film “Mr Hublot”.
The end result of this animated promotional film is expected in January 2018.