Lisbon’s Smart Marketing Campaign Turns Its Tram Lines Into New City Font

Lisbon has come up with a smart marketing campaign to market the city, using its iconic tram and the electric lines. It has created a new font, called LX Type, based on the criss-crossing tram lines over the city skyline, where each alphabet and number stands for an attraction visitors can go to, using the public tram in Lisbon.

The site for LX Type has the font available for free download, and each letter has a city attraction attached to it as well.

It’s easy to see how this campaign, for now just an online font, can be extended in many ways, including involving visitors to the city taking photos of the tram lines, creating their own creative letters out of them, and using social media to share them. Then other merchandise like t-shirts and other creative souvenirs built around this font.

The campaign description from the city:

The iconic trams of Lisbon do not go unnoticed to anyone. Neither they nor the wires that provide them with energy and that are spread across the city’s most charismatic neighborhoods. Still, Leo Burnett Lisboa looked at these in a different way and saw a typography in its complex mesh. And like that, with the support of the Lisbon City Council, the official font Lisbon was born. On the website lxtype.pt, where it can be explored and downloaded for free, everyone can test the font and find out a place associated with each letter, transforming words in spontaneous and personalized guides of the city. To spread the idea, a film was created and directed internally by Hugo Lage and with a soundtrack kindly provided by Dead Combo.

This video showcases the tram, font, and, of course, Lisbon:

Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Lisbon, Portugal
Executive Creative Director: Luciana Cani
Head Of Art: Nuno Salvaterra
Copywriter: Jaime Nascimento
Art Direct: Guilherme Nunes
Photography: Guilherme Nunes
Head Of Digital Production: Nuno Frade
Direction and editing: Hugo Lage
Collaborators: Freddie Brando, André Mota, Joana Bruno, Natasha Hellegouarch
Music: Dead Combo