Swisstopo

On behalf of the Federal Office of Topography (swisstopo), we had the opportunity to bring Switzerland’s mountains and cities to life in miniature form. The goal of the project was to create distinctive points of reference—known as landmarks—for the official swisstopo app that would immediately catch the eye on a smartphone screen despite being drastically scaled down. The visual challenge was to develop a highly abstracted style that preserves the characteristic features of famous landmarks—from the Matterhorn to Bern Cathedral—without visually overloading the digital map.

Through extensive testing and the iterative development of various versions, we defined exactly the right level of detail that works best for the app. We created custom illustrations of the landmark icons and documented the design guidelines and color scheme in an accompanying design manual. We would like to extend our sincere thanks to swisstopo for the wonderful collaboration!

→ Preview of the base map with all landmarks