New Work: Lextra

Justus Oehler and his team have designed the identity for Lextra, a new brand of foreign language instruction and dictionaries. The name Lextra was created and is owned by Cornelsen, one of the leading publishers of educational books and materials in Germany. The objective was to position Lextra as the “blue brand” on a par with the product category’s two major incumbents, PONS (green) and Langenscheidt (yellow).

The idea for the logo came quickly: a stylized speech bubble, containing the word Lextra, that symbolizes communication and gives the Lextra products instant visibility and recognition. In order to add an academic and phonetic appearance to the logotype, a colon was inserted to separate the two syllables, lex and tra. A vertical version of the logo was developed to be used on the spines of books and dictionaries.