I designed the brand identity for Klimabonus, Luxembourg's national climate-incentive programme: logo, visual system, illustrations, icons, and exemplary interfaces. The identity launched nationally in 2022, from posters in the street to the programme's website.
Luxembourg was preparing a major reform of its climate subsidies: one national programme covering housing renovation, renewable heating, solar, electric mobility, and forestry. Generous incentives only work if citizens know them, understand them, and feel invited by them; government programmes rarely look inviting.
The brief: create an engaging, recognizable identity that would make participation feel positive rather than bureaucratic; a brand citizens would trust on a poster, a leaflet, and a subsidy portal.
Sensity, a Luxembourg/Cologne design consultancy specializing in citizen participation, hired me as the designer for the project. I designed everything shown here: the logo, color system, illustration and icon language, brand guidelines, and the exemplary interface designs.
The scope was deliberately split: I delivered the identity and exemplary applications; Sensity carried the guidelines into implementation with the government. Designing for handoff meant the system had to be unambiguous enough to survive other hands. The guidelines were the product.
The logo embodies Luxembourg's green energy program through two core elements. An arc symbolizes the encompassing nature of climate, while a plus sign represents the incentives offered by the government. The plus is cleverly constructed from two mirrored "L" shapes, simultaneously alluding to Luxembourg and the reciprocal relationship between people and the environment.
My goal with the Klimabonus interface was a clean, intuitive experience that makes sustainable choices feel accessible and engaging. I chose a bright, optimistic palette over institutional government tones, trading some gravitas for approachability, and used the friendly illustration system to make the programme's areas digestible at a glance.
The layout prioritizes key information and calls to action, guiding citizens through the available subsidies. Because subsidy content is inherently dense, the balance to strike was between detail and a user-friendly feel: anyone, regardless of comfort with government paperwork, should be able to navigate the site and find their benefit.
The identity shipped as designed. The programme launched publicly in May 2022 with the brand carried across every medium: posters printed and in the streets, the programme website built on the system, and the visual language running through the public communications. The client was thrilled.
The programme was later folded into Klima-Agence, Luxembourg's national climate agency, where elements of the brand remain in use today, the kind of partial survival that is the realistic afterlife of identity work inside government.
Programme launch: guichet.lu · current home: klima-agence.lu