Nokia has kicked off its effort to rebrand the company not with a new phone, but with a new font.

The company is giving its old Nokia Sans font the boot in favor of a new typeface dubbed Nokia Pure, Nokia announced in a blog post.

“For a brand like Nokia, looking to reinvent and revitalize, the typeface literally sets the tone,” Nokia said, calling the new typeface and brand image “simpler, fresher and stronger than before.”

The new branding and font will appear on Nokia devices and advertisements this year.

Nokia Pure was created by London-based typographic designer Bruno Maag, who designed the font specifically for cell phones and other devices with digital displays.

The font is intended to indicate flow and movement, Nokia said, themes that will appear frequently in the company’s rebranding effort.

The new font is one of the first developments in Nokia’s brand overhaul, spearheaded by company CEO Stephen Elop. Through a tie-up with Microsoft, Nokia has essentially abandoned Symbian for its future smartphones in favor of Windows Phone 7. The company needs to create smartphones capable of competing with Android-based devices made by Motorola, Samsung and HTC.