A serpent biting its own tail gave Studio Oker the NORSmaterials mark — The Brand Identity – Home of the Greatest in Graphic & Brand Design

NORSmaterials makes moulded, custom polymer components for heavy industry, across maritime, energy, aquaculture and defence. For more than 40 years, the Norwegian company traded as Strukturplast – a name that means structural plastic, but it had outgrown the category and a rename had become necessary. “We had talked about changing it for a long time. It was about growing internationally,” explains Marketing Manager Hanne Øren.

Øren got in touch with Studio Oker based on a friend’s recommendation, leading to the Stavanger-based design studio taking on a project that included brand strategy, naming, identity, web design and social media. “We wanted a partner, not just a supplier. Someone we could work closely with, who would take the time to get to know us and the company,” Øren tells us. She told the studio that the company needed to get it across to the market that NORSelast® is one of the world’s strongest materials, and that the “website and marketing had just ticked along for years with no focus.”

Several workshops followed, with the whole organisation involved from the beginning. The name came out of those sessions. NORS already sat at the front of NORSelast®, so customers recognised the word. Raising it from the material to the company put the product range into a hierarchy under it at the same time. The company delivers materials, so NORSmaterials naturally stuck. “It’s a short prefix, so it attaches cleanly to any product without getting clumsy, and every name that carries it relinks to the parent automatically,” details Studio Oker’s Senior Designer Petter Skogheim.

Studio Oker discovered Midgardsormen, a serpent from Norse (NORS with an ‘e’) mythology, and knotwork, a traditional interlaced pattern. “It gave us the story for the logo more than the ornament itself,” designer Matteo Mastromoro explains. “A serpent that encircles the world and bites its own tail, holding it closed. That’s what we kept: the closed loop and one continuous line. We dropped the decorative detail of traditional knotwork.” The loop concept first resolved into an infinity form, then simplified into an ‘N’ that is both a symbol and a letter. Its geometry draws from the materials as well, soft at the eased edges and hard at the cut ones.

For the typography, Studio Oker selected an existing typeface – Schick Toikka’s sans serif Phonic. “The letterforms have a mechanical precision that felt native to the NORSmaterials world, and that speaks to both the products and the way they’re made. Rounded where a mould softens an edge, flat where it cuts clean,” Mastromoro tells us.

Manufacturing brands lean towards blue, but the palette here is yellow, which started from the RAL colours used across maritime and offshore work for subsea visibility and safety. Studio Oker extended that base into a wider range of shades – bold through muted, so the colour works as both a strong accent and a background.

The website has three material families, four services and five industries within a single layout framework. “The product hierarchy decided it. Once NORS sits at the top and everything inherits from it, that structure can do the work of the layout too,” Mastromoro notes. One base pattern serves every category, so there is only one thing for a visitor to learn. It also keeps the site modular for the client: a new material, service or industry drops into the pattern rather than taking a page type of its own.

Studio Oker briefed photographer Einar Aslaksen to cover the production from every side: the exacting technical work and the people and creativity behind it. “We have collaborated with Einar before and really admire his ability to bring precision to a rough industrial environment without smoothing away the texture,” Mastromoro details. Most of the shoot took place at NORSmaterials’ production site in Sandane, Norway. “We also photographed and filmed the nature around the facility, which carries the same toughness as the brand and grounds the whole system in a real place,” Mastromoro continues. NORSmaterials sees the identity most on its website, which it uses as a sales tool. “It has also been well received internally. We stand stronger together and we work for NORSmaterials with pride,” Øren notes.