Siggi Odds rethinks Icelandic logotypes using Futhark runes

“In this project a certain alternate real­ity or a parallel universe is presented, which imagines how Iceland’s most well-known and loved brandmarks would look if we had never taken up the Roman alphabet and only used Futhark runes as we did be­fore Christianity was established in Iceland,” says Sigurður Oddsson, AKA Siggi Odds. Reykjavik-based Siggi works in the fields of art direction, illustration and design spanning branding and identity design for clients in the music and culture industries and web design.

The project, created “first and foremost for fun”, takes Iceland’s best known logotypes and presents them using runes. “Hopefully it manages to remind people of this somewhat forgotten piece of national history,” says Siggi. “It began as an exploration of converting existing typefaces into runic ones after I made a runic logo for the band Sturla Atlas, I’ve been working with them with their visuals for a while and this is something that I thought could be relevant for them, to make their logotype, which is set in Eurostile Bold Extended into a runic version of that font. After that I tried doing it to other commercial Icelandic logos and was showing it to some of my friends, and they encouraged me to take it further.”

The project includes runic interpretations of brands familiar to Icelandic people such as Bjornsbakari and Iceland Air and was turned into a zine for a recent exhibition. “The result is a semi-educational series of remade logotypes for Iceland’s most beloved brands – it works best for Icelanders or people who have visited because they will be able to easily decipher the runes and learn to know the Latin alphabet counterparts to the runes,” explains Siggi. “It sort of works in the same way as when you see the coca-cola logo in Arabic script or Cyrillic, you know what it says because the brand is strong and the translation is well executed across the different alphabets.”