Volvo’s quest for safety has resulted in this new, ultra-legible in-car typeface, Volvo Centum

Volvo will celebrate its centennial in 2027 and the company is already starting to ramp up the celebrations. Last year saw the opening of the World of Volvo in Gothenburg, a vast circular timber structure designed by Scandinavian design specialists Henning Larsen.

2026 will see another significant design upheaval, albeit on a much smaller and less obvious scale. The arrival of a new brand typeface, Volvo Centum, manages to combine the company’s obvious love of modernist design with its obsessive pursuit of safety.

The work of London-based type design studio Dalton Maag, the new typeface is designed ‘to improve readability, sharpen attention, and promote a calmer, safety-focused driving experience.’

With so much information conveyed via screens – especially capacitive touch screens – legibility and clarity have become an essential component of a modern car’s HMI. Volvo Centum is a sans serif of exceptional clarity and simplicity, designed for what the company calls ‘glance-driven environments.’

The first car to be installed with Volvo Centum is the newly revised XC60 mid-size SUV and its upcoming all-new EX60 electric sibling. Over-the-air updates will then be used to roll out the typeface across millions of other cars.

If there’s been one criticism of Volvo in recent years, it’s that the company has off-loaded huge amounts of information and driver input onto a central touchscreen. Volvo was ahead of the curve in adopting Google’s Android in 2017 and were a key partner in the development of Android Auto. How this system dovetails with the new typeface remains to be seen.

Dalton Maag faced a formidable challenge in ensuring Volvo Centum worked across the brand’s many platforms, as well as being legible in all driving conditions and in 35 different languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean.

By creating a set of distinct character shapes, the studio has striven to avoid any unintentional misreading, with clear spacing and a scaling system that simplifies detailed elements to retain legibility.

The studio, founded in 1991 by Swiss typeface designer Bruno Maag, has worked across a number of industries, including media (BBC, Netflix, USA Today), transportation (Ducati and Korean Air) and technology (Vodafone and Wix), amongst others.

DaltonMaag.com, @Dalton.Maag, Volvo.com, @Volvocars