Dietary Guidelines
The project:
Every ten years the Directorate of Health refreshes its dietary guidelines. These science-based recommendations emphasise a varied diet and give people an up-to-date practical foundation for their everyday eating habits. Our task was to bring the new advice to life, give it a clear visual voice, and share it with the public.
Project outcomes:
Hand-drawn illustrations
A redesigned circle of nutrition
A printed brochure and poster series
Social media content
Outdoor ads
Our role:
Analysis
Diet can be a loaded topic. People care about their health, but it’s hard to know what advice to trust. In recent decades, public conversation around diet has often been extreme, dominated by fad diets and strict rules that aren’t necessarily evidence-based.
The media landscape has changed dramatically since the previous guidelines were published in 2014. The volume and speed of information have increased, with health and nutrition tips often contradicting what we heard just yesterday.
So our goal was clear: share solid, trustworthy research in a way that helps people feel calm about their own eating habits and inspires healthy change. This required communication that felt balanced, positive, steady, and trustworthy.
"The idea was to convey a quiet sense of joy and ease—something everyone could use amid all the noise and contradictions around food."
Strategy
The circle of nutrition poster is a cultural icon in Iceland. Most of us remember it from classrooms in elementary school, and it remains central to the guidelines. That built-in familiarity gave us a great starting point. To reach people today, we needed to present it with an updated, modern look.
We aimed for balance and warmth: bright, cheerful illustrations paired with concise, sensible messaging. The idea was to convey a quiet sense of joy and ease—something everyone could use amid all the noise and contradictions around food.
Execution
Calm, joy, and trust guided every step.
The content expressed balance, while the visuals burst with vitality. We captured this in the design concept “Life in Balance”. We collaborated with food illustrator Fanny Gentle, who hand-painted all the illustrations in a bright and lively style.
Our color palette drew from the Directorate’s design standards, softened with warmer tones and earthy hues to tie everything together. Typography nodded to classic cookbooks, while the clean sans-serif typeface Favorit kept the essential information crisp and readable.
The project’s core deliverables were the updated guidelines themselves, designed for easy use, and a new circle of nutrition for the next generation to look back on. Both were published as a printed brochure, posters, and social media assets.
Outdoor ads and social media placements quickly caught attention, so when the Directorate unveiled the new guidelines the audience was already listening. The printed materials were designed to feel special: a brochure to keep and flip through, a poster to stare at in a bustling classroom.
The launch and communication campaign achieved notable results: a Gallup survey showed a significant year-on-year increase in fruit and vegetable consumption.
