A serpent biting its own tail gave Studio Oker the NORSmaterials mark

NORSmaterials makes moulded, custom polymer components for heavy industry, across maritime, energy, aquaculture and defence. For more than 40 years, the Norwegian company traded as Strukturplast – a name that means structural plastic, but it had outgrown the category and a rename had become necessary. “We had talked about changing it for a long time. It was about growing internationally,” explains Marketing Manager Hanne Øren. Øren got in touch with Studio Oker based on a friend’s recommendation, leading to the Stavanger-based design studio taking on a project that included brand strategy, naming, identity, web design and social media. “We wanted a partner, not just a supplier. Someone we could work closely with, who would take the time to get to know us and the company,” Øren tells us. She told the studio that the company needed to get it across to the market that NORSelast® is one of the world’s strongest materials, and that the “website and marketing had just ticked along for years with no focus.” Several workshops followed, with the whole organisation involved from the beginning. The name came out of those sessions. NORS already sat at the front of NORSelast®, so customers recognised the word. Raising it from the material to the company put the product range into a hierarchy under it at the same time. The company delivers materials, so NORSmaterials naturally stuck. “It’s a short prefix, so it attaches cleanly to any product without getting clumsy, and every name that carries it relinks to the parent automatically,” details Studio Oker’s Senior Designer Petter Skogheim.