Seeline
A calmer identity for the lake ferries
Year
2025
Discipline
Identity, Wayfinding
Sector
Public transport, Zürich
Duration
14 months
Overview
Seeline runs eleven passenger ferries on Lake Zürich. We rebuilt its identity around a single ring-and-wave mark and a timetable system that works on a phone, a pier and a paper fold-out.
- Identity system
- Wayfinding
- Timetable design
- Livery
The challenge
Seeline had grown out of three older operators, and it showed: four logos, two typefaces on the same pier and timetables that changed format from boat to boat. Tourists missed the last ferry home; regulars ignored the signs altogether. The brief was to make one ferry company out of three, without losing the warmth people felt for the old boats.
01
Identity board: the ring-and-wave mark, wordmark and four-colour palette.
02
Pier signage puts departures first and everything else second.
03
Summer timetable poster for the piers and the old town.
Approach
-
01
Audit every touchpoint
We photographed all 23 piers and catalogued 412 signs, tickets and notices. Two thirds carried information that was already out of date.
-
02
One mark, one grid
The ring-and-wave mark reads at 8 mm on a ticket and at three metres on a bow. Everything else sits on a single eight-column grid shared by print, signs and screens.
-
03
Timetables first
We designed the departure board before the logo. Times are set large in tabular figures, with the last boat of the day marked in buoy orange.
Results
Complaints about missing the last ferry, first season
−38%
Piers re-signed in one winter shutdown
23
Grid shared by print, signage and the app
1
“People tell us the boats feel newer. They are not. They are just easier to understand now.”
Andrea Lutz, Head of customer experience, Seeline
Credits
Noemi Imhof, Selin Karaca, Céline Odermatt — for Seeline, Zürich, 2025.
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