Step aside Patrick Bateman, Jens Nilsson has crafted a logo-business-card hybrid for ODD Company

“We’re the pearl in your clam. We’re the ketchup on your soy sausage. We’re the dot over the ‘å’. We’re the treasure at the end of the rainbow. We’re the ones that will make you become the rock star you deserve to be,” reads the motto of ODD Company. One thing’s for certain – ODD doesn’t conform to the typical look and feel of a communications agency. And their business card is no exception! Designed by Stockholm-based designer Jens Nilsson, the playfully defiant attitude of the Malmö agency is channelled into a unique design for their logo and business card, which, much like their approach, rejects the default expectations. What started as a request for a simple logo and identity gradually transformed into something more innovative – a logo that also functions as a business card. Nilsson’s approach was straightforward, guided by the shape of the letters themselves. “Sometimes you don’t need a highly conceptual solution or a theme for a type solution, it can just be the circumstances of how a certain letter looks, or how certain letters look when they are seen and placed next to each other,” he says. “In this case for ODD, the ‘D’s with their half-circled look, looked nice as an echo or repeated extension of the initial ‘O’.” Because of this overlap, the aspect of ‘dimension’ could be explored in print. “And this is why it felt like a spot-on treatment for the business card,” he adds. “The best part of this project was to push the limits of what’s really doable for a business card like this.” Produced by the team at the Stockholm-based print studio Norrbacka Tryckeri, the card was realised as a die-cut, double embossed, and letterpress printed business card on a 540gsm Pale Grey Colorplan paper. The clean mono-style Menœ Grotesque, designed by Adam Katyi, compliments the identity and gives it a technical feel.