In the beginning of 2019, the Estonian Police and Border Guard Board started to issue ID cards, residence permit cards, digital IDs and diplomatic ID cards with a new design. The design of the cards and the safety elements uses many visual elements of brand Estonia – Aino typeface, boulders, icons, and photos. The design process was a collaboration between IDEMIA, PPA, and EAS.
Police and Border Guard Board development department main expert Eliisa Sau describes the work process:
“The first design draft by the manufacturer used well-known symbols of Estonia: sparrow and cornflower. This was of course good for maintaining consistency between different generations of ID-cards, but as we had the opportunity to use several new and innovative security features, we also wanted to add other things related to Estonia. We looked at the brand Estonia web page to find ideas, we could use on the cards. We also consulted with EAS if we needed to make changes to the existing graphics or icons. If the previous ID card had a poem by Paul-Eerik Rummo in miniature type, then this time we wanted to emphasise the beautiful nature of Estonia. For this we found ideas from the Brand Estonia extensive photo gallery. For example, we used nature photos on the ID card (Viru bog), the card carrier (Soomaa), and security elements folder (forest). There are facts and sentences about Estonia and its nature hidden on the ID card.
For the Digital ID EAS came up with a bold idea and presented their own design. They of course considered our initial idea (the map of the world) and the end result is indeed commendable.
We can be very pleased with the end result, during the long process of working on the design of documents and info materials, we really considered every detail and element.
Digital ID is also issued to all e-residents. The packaging of the e-resident card and reader also received a design update.
