Project
Viga
Corporate identity
Stationery
2025
The brief
Viga is 26 engineers in Porto who design bridges, footbridges and the steel roofs of stations, mostly through public tenders in Portugal and Spain. Their bids were strong and their paperwork wasn’t: tenders went out in ring binders from the stationer, cards and letters came from three different templates, and a jury reading forty bids had no reason to remember theirs. Viga wanted an identity that looked as engineered as the work, ready for a tender for two river footbridges in Valencia in September 2025.
The idea
Every steel bridge starts as a beam, and every beam reaches site in the same red-oxide primer before it is painted. So the mark is an I-beam section, and the identity has one colour, that primer red, on white board and steel grey. Nothing is decorated: a card, a folder or a report carries the section, the name and the facts, the way a drawing does.
Cards
Red-oxide fronts with the section and the name; white backs with the engineer’s name, discipline and number. Printed on 600 gsm board so they survive a site visit.
Tender folders
White board folders for bids, with the section printed large on the cover. A jury reads forty bids in a week; this is the white one with the red beam.
Reports
Steel grey covers with a red band, one per bridge, holding the calculations and drawings for the client and the checking engineer.
Tape and boxes
Red-oxide tape for drawing tubes, and a plain white box for the 1:200 models some juries ask for.
What changed
The Valencia tender went in on 15 September 2025 in the new folders and was won in November. New engineers’ cards and every new bid’s covers now come from one set of templates, so nobody in the office waits for a designer.
Credits
Okapi: Tomás Reis (lead designer), Ana Pires (print), João Antunes (templates)
Viga: Ricardo Paiva (founding partner), Marta Soares (bids)
With: printed in Porto on 600 gsm board; photography by Rafael Costa
