Responses by Gijs van den Berg, creative director and partner, KesselsKramer.
Background: The assignment from the Dutch government involved creating the main narrative for the Netherlands’s participation in Expo 2025 Osaka, held in Osaka, Japan. This narrative had to serve as the foundational theme that guided all aspects of the Dutch participation, including programming, communication, and the design and construction tender for the Netherlands pavilion. It was targeted at the diverse audience of Expo 2025 Osaka, including partners and stakeholders involved in the Dutch participation, and essentially became the conceptual blueprint that shapes how the Netherlands presents itself at this major international exposition.
Design thinking: The Netherlands is a small country known more for our trade and networking qualities than for any single specific innovation. The solution was to focus on the power of stepping beyond individual solutions to global problems by finding common ground. Only together can we deal with today’s big global problems—and those of the future—in a sustainable way. We wanted to design the concept so it would be easy for partners and stakeholders to use.
Challenges: The challenge was ensuring the theme didn’t become too abstract. Common ground is something intangible; it’s not a specific innovation that you can see and experience. We also wanted to show the Netherlands without going too much into cliches. Also, while common ground is a familiar concept in many countries, the Japanese don't have a direct word for it, so we had some explaining to do.
Favorite details: I’m most proud of how the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and the pavilion consortium fully adopted our design. The fact that our narrative and campaign concept informed the pavilion, rather than the other way around, is really special and created a truly integrated experience.
I’m also proud of the democratic approach we took with the design system. By creating extensive documentation, premade assets and custom design tools, we empowered our client and stakeholders to generate their own visuals within the identity style.
New lessons: We’ve done similar projects before, but the synergy between narrative, design, experience and campaigns really clicked this time. The success of this project came from working closely with our client and the consortium to create something genuinely special together.
Visual influences: The basic design draws from both Japanese and Dutch identities—the circle from the Japanese flag combined with Dutch royal orange. For the pointillized design system based on the logo, we took inspiration from Wim Crouwel’s work for the 1970 Expo in Osaka.
Time constraints: We started in 2022, three years before the 2025 opening, but it wasn’t a linear process. The foundation and narrative had tight deadlines since they were used to brief the architects. Next, we collaborated with the consortium on a pavilion teaser, leading to a great partnership with artist Rogier van der Zwaag. Finally, we focused on building the design system and helping the consortium implement it into the experience.
Specific project demands: With a project like this, you never know if it will resonate with stakeholders—yet its success depends entirely on their excitement. We invested heavily in crafting the narrative and created video explainers about what common ground means for both the Netherlands and Japan: to get everyone on board.
Alternate paths: Honestly, I’m quite satisfied with how this project unfolded. The organic timeline and collaborative approach led to genuine breakthroughs, and all the pieces fell together. However, with so many stakeholders and applications, it was a very hard project to document properly. We’ll need to come up with a solution for this next time.
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