German designer creates Portugal Space logo
Anett Krase is the designer whose logo proposal was selected to be the logo of Portugal Space, the new Portuguese Space Agency. The new image of the Agency resulted from a contest that attracted over 300 entries from around the world.
Open to designers worldwide, Portugal Space’s new brand competition received 271 submissions from more than ten different countries, including Ireland, Romania, France, Singapore, Australia or the Philippines.
than ten different countries, including Ireland, Romania, France, Singapore, Australia or the Philippines.
The jury, chaired by Chiara Manfletti, president of Portugal Space, selected a set of ten proposals, eventually choosing the visual image created by the German graphic designer based in Lisbon. Anett Krase, who graduated in Digital Media Design and has a Master in Communication Design and New Media and has been working since 2016 with studios in Portugal and Germany, won a prize of 1,500 euros.
The Dean of IADE – Faculty of Design, Technology and Communication, Carlos Rosa, the professor and member of the Scientific Council of the European University, Ana Margarida Ferreira, and Elena Damato, Creative Brand specialist at ESA – Space Agency European completed the jury.
To Ana Margarida Ferreira, the “Logo can, by its geometric purity, translate the beauty and complexity of the universe, from particle to cosmos.”
With two circles, setting the association of two planets or astronomical bodies, the Portugal Space logo can also be recognized as the moon orbiting the Earth. Anett Krase explains, in the descriptive memory of the project, that she sought inspiration from the armillary sphere, a scientific and astronomical instrument with a strong presence in the history of Portugal.
“For centuries it was used to study the sky, to observe celestial bodies, to calculate distances and to navigate through the oceans. This object, which is showing the movement of the sun, the moon and the planets around the Earth, is strongly linked to Portugal identity and represents Portugal importance during the Age of Discovery until today”, Anett writes.
Evoking that the armillary sphere was the personal emblem of King Manuel I, the designer recalls how the monarch “transformed it from a simple personal symbol to a national one, representing the kingdom of Portugal and used it for official documents, monuments and flags”.
Anett Krase wanted to create for Portugal Space a “direct and informal” but at the same time unique and memorable” signature. Developing an image that “communicates structure, organization and cohesion”, it included “basic efficiency features like simplicity, originality, memorability and longevity”.
The blue of the original version, which begins to be lighter and ends in a thick blue, “symbolizes loyalty and professionalism, while signifies progress, technology and nature, cleanliness, worldliness and reliability”. On the other hand, the light-dark transition “intensifies the image of depth, infinite and boundless space”, the lack of boundaries of both space and knowledge.
The designer also proposes the use of the logo with other colour combinations, allowing to highlight the different activities developed by Portugal Space, such as Earth Observation, Telecommunications, Navigation, Agriculture or Fisheries, among others.
About Portugal Space
The Portuguese Space Agency is an organization created by the Portuguese Government, in close coordination with the Azores Regional Government, that has as its primary purpose to promote and execute the “Portugal Space 2030” strategy, stimulating and managing the development of national space-related infrastructures, initiatives and programs.
Portugal Space main goal is to promote and strength the space ecosystem and value chain in Portugal for the benefit of society and economies, through a number of focus fields, namely Earth Observation, Telecommunication, Space Safety and Space Transportation, and to enable that, by 2030, Portugal is widely recognized as a global authority in the science and economics of Space-Earth-Climate-Oceans interactions, making particular use of “double-use” technologies for Earth Observation, in special concerning the emerging formats of the so-called “New Space”.
