Together with the world’s leading machinery and plant manufacturer Dürr, we were once again able to impress a jury with our joint performance – this time at the German Brand Award. The competition is considered one of the most important German brand awards and pushes the design-oriented economy even further.
Dürr’s new corporate design won the Excellence Award in the “Brand Design” category. “We are very pleased to receive this award, as it confirms our performance,” says Susanne Wacker, Founder and Managing Partner.
The Dürr company stands for strong expertise in the fields of automation and digitalisation. “In the new visual language, we wanted to combine Dürr’s many years of technical expertise with its future orientation and create recognisable and convincing design elements,” says Daniela Nett, project manager of the corporate design relaunch at Dürr.
“The newly developed design deliberately emphasises Dürr’s traditional strengths, but essentially highlights the company’s innovative strength,” adds Wolfram Schäffer, Founder and Managing Partner. The joint creative process between the agency and the company also contributed significantly to the result. The resulting corporate design manages to make the brand even more tangible and enables a visual, consistent presence in all channels – with a digital brand impact.
“Our new design has convinced internally and also externally, and often even inspired. At the same time, it conveys clarity and precision – for us as a globally operating technology group, this is a very successful combination”,Dr Sunia Lausberg, Senior Manager Marketing, Dürr Systems AG.
THE GERMAN BRAND AWARD
is a competition of the German Brand Institute and makes brand success visible in a unique way. The Institute was founded by the German Design Council and GMK Markenberatung to strengthen brand management as a decisive success factor for companies in the national and international competitive environment. It sees itself as a source of impetus for the German brand industry, bringing together the most important brand makers and stimulating dialog.
At this year’s Automotive Brand Contest, four projects receive an award from the renowned design competition. With the clients Porsche and Dürr, design hoch drei wins the “Best of Best” award for top performance in the “Corporate Publishing” and “Brand Design” categories. In addition, there is a prize in the “Digital” category for the Daimler Supplier Portal and another corporate publishing award with the Porsche Christophorus XL issue “The people issue”.
“We are very pleased that we were able to inspire and convince the jury in a wide variety of categories – this confirms our interdisciplinary orientation,” explains Wolfram Schäffer, founder and Managing Partner. For design hoch drei, the focus is always on the development of emotionally tangible and design-strong communication, whether for digital solutions or in overarching image communication.
Roads to Taycan
For Porsche’s first all-electric sports car, the Taycan, an illustrated book was designed that documents the various stages of vehicle testing in a clear and focused way – always with an eye for the right moment and the relevant detail. “Roads to Taycan” won the “Best of Best” award in the “Corporate Publishing” category.
The second award in this category went to the Christophorus XL edition “The people issue”, which impressed with its purist, personal and individual style. It was created in close cooperation with Delius Klasing Verlag.
The owner-managed agency was also able to convince with the new corporate design for the plant and machinery manufacturer Dürr. “As a traditional brand, Dürr is also a provider of digital solutions for Industry 4.0, and it is precisely this development that we wanted to make visible. We emphasize the known strengths and significantly highlight the innovative power of the company,” adds Susanne Wacker, co-founder and Managing Partner.
Another award went to the Daimler Supplier Portal – a digital platform in which more than 150,000 users work every day. It is the basis for collaboration between Daimler and its suppliers worldwide.
“We would also like to take this opportunity to thank our customers once again for their great cooperation and trust – that’s what makes results like this possible,” adds Susanne Wacker.
The Automotive Brand Contest is an international design competition for the automotive industry and rewards outstanding product and communication design. The focus is on the holistic staging of the brand across all media and products. The award is presented by the German Design Council, which supports the industry in achieving consistent brand added value through design.
The technological world is in a state of upheaval. And humanity remains in the long-practiced normal state of constant adaptation to new, groundbreaking technologies. Or in (at least perceived) denial. While the last decade was all about making the world as completely digitally available as possible in the form of data, the 2020s will be all about what to do with this actually incomprehensible wealth of information. What will be networked with what and who will draw what conclusions from it? This is where artificial intelligence (A.I.) comes into play. Intelligent software is about to revolutionize our lives. From mobility to the household to everyday communication – all areas of life will be affected, or have been for a long time. And yet hardly anyone knows what artificial intelligence is all about.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE RULES THE WORLD
In any case, the potential of A.I. is gigantic. Highly effective antibiotics, ultra-fast-charging batteries for electromobility, new methods to combat climate change, not to mention algorithm-based searches for the right partner. A.I. can also automate many corporate communications processes – from bot-guided customer dialog to evaluations of news flow or the identification of the currently most important influencers through intelligent, self-learning software.
German companies must participate in this development if they want to have a say in the world and economy of tomorrow. On this path, there are still some challenges to overcome from a communications perspective. Caution and mistrust of new technology have always existed. A.I. is no exception. One thing is clear: technocrats and sheer faith in technology alone will not get us anywhere. Not every new technology is “good” per se. Of course, it depends on what you do with it. Many companies have already recognized this with regard to A.I. as well. Bosch, for example, recently published its A.I. code, which is intended to strengthen customer confidence in networked and intelligent products and provide employees with guidelines.
In the delicate phase of unclear consumer acceptance of new technologies, transparency can be a clear competitive advantage for companies. This makes the question of external impact all the more urgent. Companies need to communicate as openly as possible to build trust and credibility. Even if not all problems have yet been fully resolved. Don’t promise too much and also take the skeptics seriously and pick them up. Good corporate communications then serve more than ever as a door opener to get people talking in as many directions as possible.
A.I.-COMMUNICATION MUST BE DESIGNED
Many companies that use A.I. also face the challenge of making their products and services understandable and emotionally tangible. Without being able to take them in hand, see them, feel them, taste them or smell them, just like products in the analog world. Even classic product photography is largely ruled out for obvious reasons. What standards will customers use at all when they evaluate or compare A.I. products? Will it be about relevance? About the naturalness of interaction, the degree of personalization, or the speed of machine learning? Or perhaps more about transparency, ethics and the consumption of resources? The examples show that consumers – like most companies – have yet to learn the language needed to evaluate A.I.-based offers individually.
All of this can and must be designed. That is also what we as a design and communications agency have to contribute to the topic of A.I.. To make complex products comprehensible and to stage them aesthetically and authentically. Because we firmly believe that design-oriented communication is more attractive, more memorable and creates more trust. Striking visualizations are just as helpful as a stimulating headline, a steep thesis or a longer text (for the time being still written by humans) that does not rely on the well-known self-praise of the advertising industry. Ideally, this is complemented by an attitude that provides guidance beyond the mere facts.
Some believe that aesthetics and beauty will play a subordinate role in the future and that functionality will be the most important factor. The opposite is the case. At the interfaces between humans and intelligent machines, the way A.I. confronts us will have a very significant impact on trust or rejection. For this reason alone, aesthetics and beauty must always be part of the strategy of future companies. Stefan Sagmeister put it in a nutshell: What good is the most functional apartment block if no one wants to live in it?
Let’s talk about AI
Is blind trust in A.I. advisable at all, despite all its beauty and convenience, even though it may know so much more than we do? What will happen to the diversity of opinions if artificial intelligence soon tracks, stores and evaluates every human utterance and decides what we learn about the world? What is relief, what is paternalism or even loss of control? Of course, we need to talk about such things.
Ethics do not have to be reinvented for the use of artificial intelligence. But every company must ask itself to what extent it should adapt its moral and ethical principles for the new technology and make this transparent for customers. Both have a confidence-building effect and thus provide a non-negligible economic advantage.
tl;dr: Hardly anyone knows what artificial intelligence actually does. Design-oriented communication and striking design can help companies to increase understanding and trust in their products and to get into the conversation.
