Novo Nordisk changes its name, its mark and its culture

Three changes, one announcement

On 14 September 2026, at 09:05 from Bagsværd in Denmark, Novo Nordisk publishes a press release making three changes at once. It shortens the name it uses day to day from Novo Nordisk to Novo. It puts a new line at the centre of its brand, "Lasting Health Starts Now". And it introduces four cultural principles under the name "The Novo Way".¹

The release files all three under one heading, and the order of that heading is the argument: the company "enters next chapter to bring better health to more people, supported by 'Novo' rebrand and updated corporate culture". The chapter comes first; the brand and the culture support it.¹ Tania Sabroe, executive vice president, People, Organisation and Corporate Affairs, states the relationship: "Brand and culture work together: culture shapes how we reach our strategy and how we work, while brand shapes the value that people attach to our products and services, and how our company is perceived around the world."¹

The half of the name that goes

Novo Nordisk A/S remains the legal global company name. Novo becomes the working name.¹ What drops out is the half that records a merger. Nordisk Insulinlaboratorium was founded in 1923 by August Krogh and Hans Christian Hagedorn, after Krogh returned from Toronto with the insulin technique. Novo Terapeutisk Laboratorium followed in 1925, founded by the brothers Harald and Thorvald Pedersen, who had worked at Nordisk. The two combined in 1989.²

The surviving half is the younger one. Design Tagebuch, reporting the relaunch on 21 September, dates the company to 1923, the founding of the half being retired from daily use.³ Novo's own boilerplate avoids a year and says "For over a century", a formulation that holds for either predecessor.¹ Its heritage timeline is less coy, marking 2023 as the year "Novo turns 100", counting from Nordisk.⁴ The company dates itself by one predecessor and names itself after the other.

The bull turns

The mark that carries across is the Apis bull, and it comes from the same 1925 company. Novo publishes its own account of it, a chart headed "The evolution of the Novo Nordisk logo" running by decade from the 1920s, with the NOVO wordmark added in the 1930s.⁴ In every version on that chart the animal faces left. Novo describes the new identity in terms of continuity alone: it "includes the Apis bull logo rooted in Novo's heritage, while giving the brand a contemporary and future-fit expression". The release names no designer and does not describe what changed.¹

The changes are catalogued elsewhere. Design Tagebuch records that the bull now stands ahead of the wordmark, where the two were previously stacked and centred; that the animal faces right rather than left; that "novo" stays in lower case but is now set in a geometric sans; that the primary blue gives way to a saturated ultramarine; and that the corporate typeface changes from Noto Sans and ApisForOffice to a face called Novo.³ Measured against the company's own chart, the turn is the first reversal of the animal in a hundred years. The house typeface, meanwhile, now carries the same name as the company.

Apis was a sacred bull in ancient Egypt, held to be the embodiment of Ptah and later a manifestation of Osiris.³ A company whose case rests on science keeps a religious animal at the front of its signature and calls it heritage.

Four principles, named as behaviours

"The Novo Way" is built around four principles, each glossed as a sentence about conduct rather than left as a value word: Customer Obsession, Competitiveness, Clarity, and Care and Integrity. Clarity reads "We create focus and speed through clear priorities, simple ways of working and decisive action"; Care and Integrity reads "We care for our people, show respect, and never compromise on patient safety and ethics".¹

Novo describes the set as building on century-old strengths "while setting out the behaviours and ways of working needed to innovate and lead in a faster, more competitive and increasingly consumer-driven market".¹ Two of the names, Customer Obsession and Competitiveness, are the vocabulary of consumer business rather than of pharmaceuticals, and the release says why. Mike Doustdar, president and chief executive, puts it as a requirement: "Healthcare must become more responsive, relevant and easier to fit into everyday life."¹

The identity arrives before the strategy

Doustdar draws a line around what is not changing: "Our brand and culture are strategically important and will enhance how we operate and compete, but the reason we exist will not change."¹ The sequence is worth noting on its own. The release ends by pointing to a Capital Markets Day in London on 21 September, where Novo says it will set out the updated strategy in detail.¹ The name, the line and the four principles arrive a week ahead of the strategy they are said to support, and the website is relaunched on the new identity in the same period.³

Novo gives its own headcount as over 67,000; Design Tagebuch gives around 69,000, in roughly 80 countries.^{1, 3} No colour specification for the new ultramarine appears in the company material read, and no design agency is named in either account.^{1, 3}