Heydays and Goods partner to craft a software-led identity for waste management company Carrot

Oslo-based sister studios Heydays and Goods have partnered on the strategy and identity for Carrot, Norway’s emerging waste management software that seeks to take on the two-billion-tonne global waste disaster through the collection of data. This statistical approach to the issue, backed by Carrot’s innovative technology, begins by tracking the place and time of waste disposal, resulting in tactile insights into reusing, repurposing or recycling the refuse. Bringing together the general public and private waste management companies to create incentives for waste reduction and sustainable behaviour.

With the notion of incentivisation in mind, the design duo began with the naming of the brand as Carrot – inspired by the encouraging sentiment of a carrot on a stick – embodying the brand’s role as a social motivator. This duty is captured through a harmonious combination of illustration, composition, colour and type – with the duo opting for Klim Type Foundry’s Signifier and Colophon Foundry’s DM Sans to satisfy the latter. “Signifier was just a perfect font in our eyes,” Heydays’ Design Director Lars Kjelsnes tells us, recalling the decision behind choosing Klim’s serif. “It adds an elegance to the project, but is rooted in a lot of the same thinking we had,” he adds, “especially the digital tool we used for creating illustrations,” recalling the grid-based drawing software developed to produce the illustrations – including the carrot logomark.

This unique software not only provides Carrot with a humanising playfulness and punch, but also conceptually contributes to the strength of its story. “Whenever something becomes trash, it usually loses all its data,” Kjelsnes explains, “Carrot adds data to these resources, so we thought it was interesting to see trash not as ugly, crushed items, but as something iconic and important.” This led to creating a restrictive system that provides both consistency and expression, referencing the fixed and flexible data points of Carrot’s service, whilst providing a distinctive iconography. “The black silhouettes make the ‘trash’ items iconic,” Kjelsnes suggests, “but also very rational, like they’re all kind of seen as equal.”

With the task of categorising and characterising waste on their hands, Heydays and Goods’ approach to handling hierarchy came down to both the brand’s typographic rigour and execution, as well as its colour palette. “We were originally inspired by soil, petiole (leaves) and the carrot itself,” Kjelsnes recalls, referencing the green, brown and orange hues within the identity. “We looked at old botanical posters to find colours that had warmth and nostalgia,” he explains, “but we wanted to shy away from the typical leafy green of the surrounding industry,” opting for the greater contrast offered by having a lime-green-yellow as the primary colour. “It’s a colour that’s been used a lot, especially in sportswear, over the last few years, but felt refreshing in their industry,” he concludes, “it also serves as a nice contrast to the earthier tones, while it still could come from an early stage petiole before it's turned fully green.”

Heydays

Goods

Carrot