Saab Brand Guidelines: Svenska Aeroplan, the Gripen and a Split From the Cars

An aircraft maker for a neutral country.

Saab was founded on 6 April 1937 to develop and build military aircraft for Sweden, the company’s history page says. Its full name was Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget, which gave the acronym Saab, and it began in Trollhättan, the company wrote in a 2018 story; The Guardian, in a short history of the car business in 2012, also traces Saab’s roots to Svenska Aeroplan AB. The company says it came about as Sweden, a neutral country, decided to build up an air force supplied by domestic industry, and it quotes a 1936 speech by Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson saying that Sweden had shipyards and armouries but no production of warplanes.

Saab’s timeline names its backers: the arms maker Bofors and AB Ars, part of the Electrolux group, with Marcus Wallenberg, Axel Wenner-Gren and Sven Wingquist among the founders. A rival already existed. AB Svenska Järnvägsverkstäderna, a Linköping railway-works company founded in 1907 by the brothers Carl Johan and Erland Uggla, had formed an aircraft department, ASJA, in 1930. In 1939 Saab bought ASJA out and moved its head office to Linköping, where, the company says, its largest operation is today.

During the Second World War, the timeline says, Bofors equipped the Swedish armed forces, and from 1942 Bofors, L M Ericsson and Saab joined a state-backed research effort on radar. In 1945 Saab opened an underground workshop in Linköping and flew the Saab 91 Safir, a single-engine trainer of which 323 were built. The company took the name Saab AB in 1965.

From Tunnan and Draken to Gripen.

Saab’s aircraft line runs through a series of Swedish fighters. Its timeline lists the first flights of the Saab 29 Tunnan in 1948, the Saab 32 Lansen in 1952 and the Saab 35 Draken in 1955, and names the Draken, the Viggen and the Gripen among Sweden’s largest industrial projects. The JAS 39 Gripen made its first test flight in 1988. In 2013 Saab signed an agreement with the Swedish Defence Materiel Administration for the Gripen E, and in 2014 a Gripen E contract with Brazil; in 2020 the first Brazilian Gripen flew in Brazil and local production of the aircraft began, the company says.

The group also grew by acquisition. Saab says it bought the Celsius group, including the old Bofors business, in 1999–2000, keeping missiles and light support weapons while Bofors’ artillery passed to BAE Systems. In 2006 it became sole owner of Ericsson Microwave Systems, which brought the Erieye airborne radar and the Giraffe and Arthur ground radars. After a letter of intent signed with ThyssenKrupp in 2014, it took over the submarine builder Kockums, whose ships and submarines are built at the naval yard in Karlskrona, a naval city founded as the base of the Swedish fleet at the end of the 17th century and, Saab notes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1998. Saab names the Gripen, the Gotland-class submarine and the Carl-Gustaf weapon system among its most recognisable products.

Other work came through partnerships. In 2018 the US Air Force selected the T-7A trainer developed by Saab with Boeing, and Saab delivered the first aft section in 2021; in 2023 it opened a radar production site at Fareham in England. Saab says its products are sold in more than 100 countries, that it operates in more than 30, and that it employed 26,100 people in 2025. Through Datasaab, it also built computer systems in the 1960s and 1970s.

How defence contractors present themselves.

Aerospace and defence contractors sell to a small number of governments and agencies, yet they still build public identities with care. Their brand work usually leans on engineering rather than on lifestyle imagery: aircraft photographed on test flights, ships on sea trials, spacecraft on the pad or in the clean room, each shown as a finished piece of engineering with the company name in plain type beside it.

People are the second pillar. Contractors of this size employ large engineering workforces, and their websites and reports give space to portraits of engineers, technicians and assembly teams, often in hangars and workshops. Careers pages, apprenticeship schemes and internship programmes carry much of the visual identity, because recruiting skilled staff is a constant task, and STEM outreach with schools and universities is presented as part of the same story.

Public appearances follow a familiar pattern. Air shows and trade exhibitions bring large branded stands, full-scale models and static displays, where a logo has to work at the size of a building and on a lanyard. Annual reports and sustainability reports, written for investors as much as for customers, are among the most consistently designed documents these companies publish, with set colour palettes, house typefaces and long heritage timelines.

Heritage itself is a recurring theme. Many of today’s large contractors are the product of mergers, and they present their predecessor companies, founders and historic programmes as part of their identity. This guide keeps combat imagery out and looks at names, marks, colour and type, and at how each company describes its own history.

One name, two companies, and only one still trading.

Many people still link the name with cars, and Saab has written about why. Its 2018 story says a car project, called Project 92 because 92 followed the Safir’s number 91, began in Linköping in 1945; the first car was shown there in June 1947, and production in Trollhättan got going in 1949. Saab’s timeline says Scania-Vabis was merged into the company in 1969, forming Saab-Scania AB.

The separation came in stages. General Motors took a half share and management control of the car business in 1989, the Associated Press reported in 2012; Saab’s timeline dates the new Saab Automobile AB to 1990, when aviation and car production were split, and says Scania became a separate company. GM took full ownership of the car maker in 2000. After GM’s own difficulties from 2008, ownership passed to the Dutch group Spyker, later named Swedish Automobile, and Saab Automobile filed for bankruptcy in December 2011, the Associated Press reported; in June 2012 the administrators said they had found a buyer. Throughout, the AP noted, the aircraft and defence company of the same name remained a separate entity. Saab AB does not make cars.

For a design guide, Saab shows a name that has to work for a defence group while a former car brand still shares it in public memory. Compare BAE Systems, which took over Bofors’ artillery business from the same Swedish restructuring, and Kongsberg, a Nordic neighbour in the same industry. For this guide we use a night ink, a fjord blue and a granite grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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