Köln-Bonn Airport
“CGN”, in the middle of the two cities Cologne and Bonn, is a rather small airport in the very west of Germany but it’s making a name for itself with the unique and daring corporate design by Intégral Ruedi Baur. The idea was to position the airport as a friendly place where the majority of people will start into their holidays, although a large percentage of passengers are businessmen and governmental employees flying between Bonn and Berlin, but why shouldn’t they feel relaxed at the airport, too.
Already proven practical since 2005, the design and signage still feels as fresh as if it was installed just yesterday. Everything is built around a customized version of the typeface Simple by Swiss design studio Norm for which a large set of special pictrograms was designed. Simple esthetics, casual atmosphere, and stroke thickness of fonts and icons match perfectly. The colorful backgrounds of the large icons are offset from the thick black outline gives an informal, “handmade” impression or one of imprecise printing.
The project is very well documented on Integral Ruedi Baur’s website, so check out more images there.
This is Stephen and Laura on their way to Sardinia.
3 Comments on “Köln-Bonn Airport”
Nice one, Indra! Can’t believe this gem was not on Fonts In Use already.
The typeface used for this project is SimpleKölnBonn (or Simple-Airport), a customized version of Simple that Intégral Ruedi Baur had commissioned from Norm. Manuel Krebs and Dimitri Bruni talked about the modifications at the Raabs symposium 2008:
Yes, but since the typeface is still very close to Simple, I preferred to keep it simple and searchable with a standard specimen.
Sure thing!