Europe Wants Its Label Back: Revising What ‘Made in Europe’ Means
Made in Europe by Dada Projects is a continent-scale design experiment disguised as a certification system. One year after Mario Draghi warned that Europe was slipping into economic irrelevance, this project poses a counterargument: maybe Europe doesn’t need to work faster; it needs to work truer. Developed by 21st Europe, the blueprint reimagines ‘Made in Europe’ not as a nostalgic badge, but as a living design system that merges materials, data, ethics, and manufacturing into a single visual language. The mark is engineered to exist everywhere, printed on packaging, embedded in code, etched into materials, functioning both as a certification and as a cultural symbol for products and digital services built on European principles of transparency and trust.
all images courtesy of 21st Europe and Dada Projects
Dada Projects and 21st Europe Build Traceable European Identity
Behind the aesthetics lies a deeply material process. The system builds on Europe’s regulatory backbone (CE-marking, sustainability reporting, Digital Product Passports) but translates it into a design-first interface: each certified object connects to verified data on its origin, environmental footprint, and ethical standards. In practice, that means the ‘label’ becomes a gateway, a scannable, traceable bridge between production and accountability. The collaboration between 21st Europe and creative office Dada Projects pushed the mark into speculative territory: designing for future materials, architectures, and interfaces. The result is intentionally adaptive, a visual identity that can scale across industries, from advanced manufacturing and clean energy to digital infrastructure and circular design. Ultimately, Made in Europe is less about a logo and more about a provocation: If Europe’s strength is trust, why isn’t it visible? And what would change if it were?
the ‘Made in Europe’ mark is designed as a visible certification of European ethics
the mark combines materials, data, and manufacturing into a unified visual language
the label is set to appear on packaging, in code, and etched into products
the design acts as both a quality label and a symbol of European identity