Brandient designs the first identity of the National Football Team
Bucharest, November 2017
One year ahead of the modern Romania’s centenary, Brandient created the first visual identity for the National Football Team, which would also celebrate its first 100 years in 2022. This identity establishes the relevance of one of the most important nation branding vectors — the national football. The logo, inspired by the aesthetics of Romania’s coat of arms — following the custom used by most national football teams around the world — symbolizes the unity of the country’s historical regions around the football, and implicitly, the strength of the most popular sport in Romania; from another perspective, it may be interpreted as Romanian loyalty towards this sport.
The project was completed in 2016 as part of the change management programs coordinated by the young management team of the Romanian Football Federation — the only national entity that can represent Romania in international football competitions. A strong brand identity increases the success chances of the change process, through the alignment of resources, vision, ambitions and people, around the same ideology. While other national football teams have employed, for a while now, their own identities featuring elements of the national identity, Romania could no longer ignore the emotional advantage conferred by this approach. Moreover, the perpetual neglect of a coherent nation branding strategy has left the burden of representation to institutional, sectorial and even commercial brands, and this brings also increased responsibility on the matter.
Therefore, Brandient designed the visual identity of the National Football Team by calling upon generic heraldic elements, and originally stylizing them in a modern aesthetics, fit for a national representation entity, all the while taking into consideration the sports’ showbiz dimension. This visual identity clearly conveys “Romania” — and at the center of the composition, the pentagon suggests the football itself, as an affirmation of the ardent passion that Romanians express towards this sport. In this way, the values that lay the brand’s foundation are expressed without compromise and ambiguity: national unity and loyalty, pride and patriotism, optimism and boldness, creativity and fairplay.
The graphical solution is geometrized, using linear colors, in order to facilitate the coherent implementation in a wide array of applications, from official equipment to merchandising, from the official team bus to television animations.
This blazon confers power, as well as responsibility to the players that have the honor of wearing it close to their heart— and it contributes to consolidating national loyalty through sports.
We heartfully hope that this brand identity, created with love and passion, will serve as inspiration for the victories that will surely come — and will contribute to elevating the nation brand of Romania.
Brandient is a mobile taskforce of multidisciplinary experts specialized in brand innovation on Eastern markets.
About Brandient
Brandient is an independent brand strategy and design consultancy founded in Bucharest in 2002 by Aneta Bogdan, Cristian Kit Paul and Mihai Bogdan — never part of a global network, working directly for the owners, CEOs and boards of its clients, with an all-senior team and category exclusivity. In over two decades the firm has created or rebuilt more than 300 brands, 279 of them published as case studies at brandient.com/work — from Romania’s national leaders to brands carried worldwide. The firm has been active in Southeast Asia for more than a decade. The work has earned 84 international awards and distinctions — most recently a Red Dot (2025) and two Graphis Golds (2026) — 64 documented mentions in international design books and publications, and, in 2015, a place among the inaugural inductees of the REBRAND Hall of Fame, alongside Interbrand and MetaDesign.
About the Romanian Football Federation
The Romanian Football Federation (FRF) is the national governing body for football, with roots dating to 1909 — a FIFA member since 1923 and a UEFA member since 1955 — running the national teams and competitions from Bucharest. Brandient rejuvenated the federation’s brand in 2018–2019, after rebuilding the National Team and Romanian Football Cup identities in 2015: the FRF case, the National Team case, the Football Cup case.