Det Radikale Venstre (the Danish Social-Liberal Party) was founded in May 1905.  It is at the centre of the Danish political spectrum, co-operating with both the ‘left' and the ‘right' sides of the Folketing (the Danish Parliament).

Part of their 'grass roots' politics is that no-one is forced to use the official design or even logo and as a consequence only 5% were using the previous identity as it was generally disliked. They looked unorganised and disjointed - this lost them a great deal of seats in the last election. We were asked to help reinvigorate them internally, generate support for the new revised policies and identity to achieve consistent communications.

The two largest opposing parties, Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterne) and, Denmark's Liberal Party (Venstre) are coloured red and blue. As Radikale Venstre position themselves between the two, the choice of colour for Radikale Venstre was precisely between the two on the light spectrum - magenta.

A series of five colours support magenta to accentuate particular political themes

Red - Foreign policy
Blue - Economics
Yellow - Education / Science / Health / Social / Culture
Green - Environment
Orange - Immigration

All Danish parties are designated with a letter which alphabetically lists them on ballot papers. Det Radikale Venstre's letter B is integrated as part of the identity as a constant reminder of the party's ballot paper position.

The softly rounded, lowercase letterforms coupled with the uppercase B produces a logo that is idiosyncratic to the Danish Political forum. Its simple clarity ensures the logo supports all communications, without overpowering the main message.

The percentage using the new identity has now risen dramatically from 5 to 86%. Donations since campaigning and using the "Tag Ansvar' leaftlet has risen from 1000 Danish Krone (£118) per month to 130000 Danish Krone (£15,370) per month. In the polls, Radikale were at 3.6% in August 2009 and at the end of 2010 they were 6.3%.

On 15 September 2011 Denmark held a general election and Radikale's share of the vote doubled to 9.5% which made them the 4th largest party and is their best result for 38 years. Together with the Social Democrats (24,9%) they formed the next government.

The campaign was also considered to be the best designed by the Danish public with a 67% approval rating.

Creative direction Howard Wakefield
Design Maria Farrugia and Simon Griffin
Project management Sarah Parris