Store Norske Samvirke - Typeface inspired by Oslo Samvirkelag store signage, available in three styles for branding and editorial.

Store Norske Samvirke Font Typeface Store Norske Samvirke.pdf Buy License


About

Store Norske Samvirke takes inspiration from the lettering of the Oslo Samvirkelag store in Oslo’s Kampen district. The original signage featured gold-leaf letters in two shades, applied to glass windows to create a three-dimensional effect that mimicked the look of stone carving. Several grocery stores merged in 1916 to form the Oslo Samvirkelag, also known as the Oslo Cooperative. This cooperative later became the predecessor to Coop Norge, now one of Norway’s largest supermarket chains. The initial sketches for Samvirke originated from the ‘Skrift i Oslo’ exhibition, a project that showcased original Oslo signage and highlighted the city’s sign painting tradition. The project featured Samvirke to illustrate how modern type design could help digitally restore Oslo’s visual identity. The typeface eventually evolved into a complete functional alphabet and now offers three distinctive styles: Karva, Solid, and Open. Karva features prominent shadowing and refined detailing to closely mirror the original sign. Solid presents filled letterforms for a bold, clear, and impactful look. Open displays only the outer contours of each letter, creating a light and airy appearance. Samvirke has proven popular in branding, posters, and headlines in editorial design.

Store Norske Samvirke is designed by Arve Båtevik.

Technical information

For full technical specifications and character overview, please see the technical section at the end of the specimen PDF.

Language support

Samvirke supports a compact Latin display character set covering selected Western European, Nordic and basic Latin language use.

Supported languages include Afrikaans, Albanian, Bemba, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greenlandic, Indonesian, Latin, Luxembourgeois, Norwegian, Somali, Swahili and Swedish.

Character set

Samvirke supports a compact Latin display character set with uppercase and lowercase letters, selected accented Latin characters, figures, punctuation, quotation marks, spacing characters and combining accents.

OpenType features

Samvirke includes OpenType features for access to alternates and stylistic alternates.

The font software has one stylistic set: ss01 for alternate IJ/J forms.

Feature tags: aalt, ss01.