KPMG identity (2015 redesign)

2015 KPMG Annual Review

“KPMG, the massive consulting and accounting firm, somehow decided on Giorgio Sans as the new voice of their brand, which was a really bold choice, and really makes their identity so much more interesting than you would ever expect from a multinational accounting firm. [Giorgio Sans] is a fashion typeface, originally drawn for a fashion magazine and here it is in PowerPoint presentations about how Brexit is going to work.” — Christian Schwartz

2015 KPMG Annual Review

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ProtoFuse 2016 (Eric) (2)

4 Comments on “KPMG identity (2015 redesign)”

Choo Kwang Zhee says:
Jul 2nd, 2016 12:06 pm

Typeface used is Univers Next. See ampersand.
Stephen Coles says:
Jul 2nd, 2016 6:18 pm

Hmm, which ampersand do you mean? On the WEF Live website and KPMG PDFs I’m seeing only the standard digital version of Univers and its conventional ampersand. The Univers Next ampersand looks like this.
Florian Hardwig says:
Jul 3rd, 2016 12:51 pm

There are ampersands in the “Top Tweets” slide. This form that looks like a ligature of a cursive ‘E’ (mirrored 3) and a ‘t’ was not introduced with Univers Next. It was also present in the original version, and in Bitstream’s digitization, Zurich. I guess KPMG use various versions of Univers. I’ll add Univers Next to the credits.

From Adrian Frutiger – Typefaces: The Complete Works (Ed.: Heidrun Osterer, Philipp Stamm), p97:

My ampersand was adopted by the European typesetting systems; only when Linotype took over my Univers for photosetting for the American market did it get swapped for the looped ‘meat-hook ampersand’. The Americans were radical, they didn’t want my ampersand at all.

On p30, Frutiger discusses his approach to ampersands in general, and for Initiales Président in particular:

I was never keen on the classical shape, I found its lines too complicated. I wanted all characters to have the same style, and eventually discovered this special new shape. […] For me the whole thing was above all a question of the counter shapes. These were supposed to be comparable to those of a B. I wanted the & to have a discreet and almost strict design, whereas for Hermann Zapf for example, being a type designer and calligrapher working at the same time as me, it provided a great chance to let his fantasy run free.
Stephen Coles says:
Jul 3rd, 2016 1:37 pm

Thanks, Florian! I missed that image. Yes, now looking again at the embedded fonts in the official KPMG PDFs I see both Univers and Linotype Univers (which is essentially the previous version of Univers Next), so your guess is correct.