World Food Programme Brand Guidelines: A Wreathed Hand, a Blue Ribbon and a 2020 Nobel

A three-year trial that became permanent.

The World Food Programme, known everywhere as WFP, began as a trial. English Wikipedia says it was established in 1961 after the 1960 conference of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, when George McGovern, then director of the US Food for Peace programmes, proposed a multilateral food aid programme. Its formal start date is given as 19 December 1961. WFP launched its first programmes in 1963 on a three-year experimental basis, supporting the Nubian population at Wadi Halfa in Sudan, and in 1965 it was extended on a continuing basis.

That dual parentage still shapes the organization. WFP is headquartered in Rome and is governed by a 36-member executive board, with 18 members elected by the UN Economic and Social Council and 18 by the FAO. The executive director is appointed jointly by the UN Secretary-General and the FAO Director-General. The first, Addeke Hendrik Boerma of the Netherlands, took office in May 1962.

The work has grown well past shipping food. Wikipedia describes emergency relief, school meals, cash transfers, and support for farmers and supply chains. WFP leads the Logistics Cluster, a coordination body for humanitarian agencies, and manages the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service and the UN Humanitarian Response Depot, a network of hubs for emergency supplies. WFP relies on voluntary donations from governments, corporations and private donors, which Wikipedia says leaves its operations dependent on global economic conditions.

There is one naming point to keep straight. World Food Program USA, based in Washington, D.C., supports the agency but is a separate entity for tax purposes, Wikipedia says. Some American outlets, including AP, spell the agency’s name “World Food Program”; its own spelling is Programme.

A strict guide for a field organization.

The emblem shows, in the words of a University of the Fraser Valley faculty profile, a stylised hand clutching wheat, rice and corn, encircled by a laurel wreath. The same profile credits the design to Karin Jager, a faculty member there, and says she drew it more than 30 years before the Nobel.

WFP sets out its rules in a Visual Brand Guide, whose October 2025 edition is version 6.0. It names two logotypes: a corporate one, required on all visibility and communications materials, and a “UNWFP” supporter logotype for social media and fundraising. Blue is the core. WFP Blue is the primary colour, the logo appears in blue or reversed in white, and black is reserved for exceptional cases. A complementary palette is to be used with discretion, with a warning against a “rainbow” effect. The guide says flatly not to recreate the logo and strictly prohibits sub-brands.

Type follows the same logic. Open Sans is the corporate font, Halden the more informal secondary face for quotes, infographics and supporter content, and Tajawal and Lava stand in for them in Arabic. The tagline, “SAVING LIVES CHANGING LIVES,” is set in upper case in Open Sans Semibold with no punctuation between its two parts. The acronym is used globally and must not be translated, the guide says, ruling out versions such as PAM or PMA. WFP’s design system adds that the emblem has been restyled to read better on screen and in video at small sizes.

Much of the guide concerns physical objects. The WFP ribbon is the main design element on food packaging; on bags it is printed as a thinner line, to cut environmental impact and to stop ink seeping through to the food. Trucks carry vinyl markings and tarpaulins printed in blue on white. Light vehicles are plain white with a blue stripe running down the bonnet, and aircraft markings fall under a UN aviation standards agreement. For warehouse roofs, the guide allows the acronym alone at very large scale.

The rules reach as far as clothing, which is for staff only and must never be gifted to the people WFP supports. Private partners need a signed legal agreement before using the logo. Photography has its own brief: food imagery should always feature people, even if only hands holding grain.

Emblems, flags and field vehicles.

United Nations bodies share a family look that began with a single conference pin. The UN’s own emblem, a world map seen from the North Pole, was first set between crossed laurel branches and then between two olive branches, UN News recorded in 2009, and the General Assembly adopted a revised version in December 1946. Other bodies in the system have their own marks; English Wikipedia says the World Health Organization’s features the Rod of Asclepius, and it lists a family of agency flags derived from the UN’s.

Blue does much of the work. The UN Flag Code, issued in 1947 and amended in 1952, puts the white emblem on a blue field at fixed proportions, and the Code bars the flag from commercial use. On the ground the same marks appear on working equipment: UN News described the emblem on peacekeepers’ helmets, on helicopters and trucks carrying aid, and on leaflets. In refugee camps, English Wikipedia says, sleeping accommodation is frequently tents, prefabricated huts or dwellings built from local materials.

Paper is the other public face of these bodies. Reports, resolutions and flagship publications carry the name year after year: UNDP’s Human Development Report dates from 1990. Language is part of the system too. The UN’s six official languages are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, and some bodies change their initials with the language, as UNDP does with PNUD in French and Spanish.

Use of these names and marks is restricted. General Assembly resolution 92(I) of 1946 prohibits use of the UN’s emblem, seal, name and initials without the Secretary-General’s authorisation, in particular for commercial purposes, a UNOPS instruction of 2020 explains. This guide therefore sets out what can be checked about each body’s founding, name and visual history, and reproduces no emblem, flag or logo.

A prize, then a harder record.

In October 2020 the Norwegian Nobel Committee gave WFP the Nobel Peace Prize “for its efforts to combat hunger, for its contribution to bettering conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of hunger as a weapon of war and conflict.” The Committee called it the world’s largest humanitarian organisation addressing hunger and promoting food security, reaching close to 100 million people in 88 countries in 2019. It also cited WFP’s part in the diplomacy behind UN Security Council Resolution 2417 of May 2018, on conflict and hunger.

The record has harder chapters. In October 2019 Foreign Policy reported on a confidential draft survey of more than 8,000 staff, commissioned by executive director David Beasley. It described abuse of authority, harassment, discrimination and retaliation among senior leaders without naming individuals, and 28 staff said they had experienced rape, attempted rape or other sexual assault while working at the agency.

In June 2023 WFP halted food aid across Ethiopia, a day after USAID did the same over diversion of supplies. Bloomberg, citing documents it had seen, reported that donor food had been sold on private markets and in some cases exported, in a scheme allegedly run by federal and regional government entities, and that military units had benefited. Reuters reported that Ethiopia’s government criticised the halt and said it was investigating. WFP restarted distributions in parts of Tigray in August and for refugees in October 2023, after what it called major reforms.

Money became the next test. An internal memo told staff to expect cuts of 25 to 30 percent, about 6,000 jobs, NPR reported in May 2025.

For a design guide, World Food Programme shows how an identity can be written for sacks, truck tarpaulins and white vehicles as well as screens. Compare UNICEF, another UN agency that works in the field, and UNHCR, another UN humanitarian agency. For this guide we use a deep blue, cream and grain gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep World Food Programme’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.