NATO Poster Vector File Assets

After we shipped a whopping 1,000 NATO Phonetic Alphabet posters, we thought to ourselves, What should we release next after this massive success? The next logical step was to release the individual assets from the poster. So we created three individual vector downloads and decided to use the poster as a guide for what the asset pages would look like.

Just like we did with design of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, we sought to build something that met the following constraints:

• Helvetica typeface
• Flat design
• Clean presentation of the essential information
• Practical and useful for many purposes
• Nerdy and fun
• A strong defense for each design decision and element

The three vector file documents contain their respective “meta data”: semaphore flags, International Morse Code, and code of signals in the aircraft gray rectangles with their corresponding letter of the alphabet directly below. They also share common typographic elements, including Helvetica typeface and similar leading/kerning attributes.

We faced the challenge of creating 3 documents that share these attributes, yet contain different imagery (Semaphore flags, International Morse Code, and Code of Signals) that affects the impact of each poster. While the International Code of Signals flags were bright, engaging and effective in communication, the International Morse Code design was bland and ineffective on its own. We realized that given the variety of imagery between the three, it would be necessary to alter the typographic elements of each document to best complement and support the imagery, even if it meant losing some shared identical elements.

We find it so important to give back to the community and so we built these asset documents to be available to any and all at no cost. Enjoy. We look forward to seeing what you create!