The Hochge­birgsklinik in Davos, Switzer­land, is vis­ited by lung pa­tients from all over the world. The re­sult­ing lin­guis­tic di­ver­sity places great de­mands upon the ori­en­ta­tion sys­tem. Moni­teurs de­cided to work en­tirely with­out lan­guage: friendly pic­tograms show the way to each part of the clinic. Moni­teurs cre­ated al­most a hun­dred pic­tograms, many of them spe­cial­ist sym­bols. Since some spaces are used for mul­ti­ple pur­poses, the sys­tem has to be as flex­i­ble as pos­si­ble. There­fore, staff can print out the pic­tograms as and when needed and place them into the ex­ist­ing frames. Floor plans and an ex­plana­tory leaflet in seven lan­guages sup­ple­ment the pic­togram sys­tem.

Médecins sans Fron­tières is a No­bel Peace Prize win­ning emer­gency med­ical or­gan­i­sa­tion that op­er­ates in con­flict zones around the world. Since 2000, Moni­teurs has been re­spon­si­ble for the cor­po­rate de­sign of the Ger­man branch. The year 2014 has seen the or­gan­i­sa­tion sharpen its im­age: clear, in­de­pen­dent, pro­fes­sional – these are the es­sen­tial at­trib­utes. Moni­teurs’ task is to re­flect these at­trib­utes in print. The cor­po­rate de­sign is kept open in or­der to be able to speak specif­i­cally to the dif­fer­ent tar­get groups. The colour red and the con­cise ty­pog­ra­phy, de­vel­oped for Médecins sans Fron­tières by Moni­teurs – a “rough” head­line cut, based on the font Fago – have be­come im­por­tant dis­tin­guish­ing fea­tures for the or­gan­i­sa­tion.