Noah’s Ocean
Noah’s Ocean – stylized as Noah*s Ocean – is a Swiss premium swimwear brand that views style and sustainability as inseparable. The designs are created in Zurich and produced in a small manufactory near Porto, meaning that the company has a deliberately short supply chain. The outer fabric is made from 100% recycled post-consumer PET making the material quick-drying, velvety soft, durable, and resource-efficient. The collection currently occupies a previously unoccupied niche, the father-and-son collection and is currently being developed for the whole family.
Behind Noah’s Ocean is Robert Fritze, founder of the Zurich-based design studio Kreativfritze. With over 16 years of leadership experience in agencies and consulting firms, he describes himself as someone who combines a business mindset, design thinking, and a hands-on spirit. At Noah’s Ocean, he has consistently put this approach into practice. He’s responsible for design, development, marketing, and the online store—in other words, almost everything. The brand is managed by his wife, Vanessa Fritze. Vanessa and Robert have dedicated the brand to their son, Noah. A project for the next generation.
For every product sold, Noah’s Ocean makes a donation to selected marine conservation programs that are dedicated to protecting sea turtles and marine ecosystems. The brand identity is encapsulated in the Love Turtle, which captures the essence of their love for the ocean. The brand shares its commitment with one of its closest typographic partners: the Pangea typeface by Fontwerk. Pangea’s designer, Christoph Koeberlin, always donates 25 percent of his royalties to support the conservation and reforestation of the rainforest. Both projects demonstrate that sustainability, in the context of design, need not merely be a marketing promise, but can in fact be structurally embedded.
To complement Pangea, Robert Fritze drew upon Jan Fromm’s Nice Collection, a contemporary serif family with four optical sizes that combines clarity, personality, and readability. Fritze: “The combination of Pangea and Nice—or as I call it, ‘Nice Pangea’—conveys both Noah’s Ocean’s premium positioning and its commitment to sustainability.”
‘Nice Pangea’ appears wherever Noah’s Ocean meets its customers. At the point of sale at Jelmoli in Zurich, in the Swiss retail chain Duett Boutiques, but also at partner beach resorts, in Zurich, Küsnacht, and Germany. Billboards, shopping bags, packaging, flyers, and wet bags for swimwear carry the brand’s visual identity into everyday life. A unifying element is the slogan “Reternal Love,” a play on “eternal love” where the prefix “Re” stands for Recycle, Reuse, Refurbish, and Repair.
