Professional Documents
Culture Documents
With the advent of mass production, products had to be labeled to indicate their origin, differentiate them from those of competitors and guarantee quality. These labels clearly reflected the times and cultural environments for which they were designed. Here the floral, late Baroque design contrasts with the rational world of technology.
The letters intertwine, symbolizing the equal standing of the merged companies. The forms have obviously been borrowed from ironwork motifs common at the time. When printed, the logo looks like an ex libris stamp of the kind used by contemporary booklovers.
Technical products look sober and impersonal. Forms taken from nature are intended to make products more appealing.
Siemens & Halske draft logos for the Berlin plant 1897
Prosaic production operations require a logo that reflects their character. Logos must be simple, clear and easy to understand.
Logos with enclosed forms have the advantage of being very stable and unaffected by their environments.
Open logos, especially those with filigree designs like this one here, are soon swallowed up by their environments.
This an astonishing design for the period. A simple, unadorned logo, far ahead of its time. It anticipates the era of the sanserif fonts with a clarity that reflects the thinking of engineers.
This logo had a long life. It was used until very recently for components that were too small for the present Siemens logo.
This logo design was cast into the metal surfaces of large industrial products.
The contrast between the contemporary design forms and the progressive logo is obvious. Since a standard Corporate Design has not yet been introduced, the logo can be varied slightly to meet different requirements.
Early advertisements
In 1925, Siemens & Halske merged with Reiniger, Gebert & Schall, then the market leader in medical engineering. This was the birth of today's Medical Solutions Group.
Early posters like this omitted the logo. Looking at the ad today, it is hard to see what S&H is actually trying to sell. However, the general public of the time would have known that the poster referred to electricity.
Title page of a brochure advertising a device for measuring flow rates 1897
Uniform typography with a standard company typeface has not yet been introduced. Ads use bold individual typefaces.
The Protos was manufactured from 1908 to 1927. The car's high quality was demonstrated by a first-place finish in the 1908 transcontinental road race. The 21,000-km race started in New York and went through California, Seattle, Siberia, St. Petersburg and Berlin before ending in Paris 165 days later.
Since there is still no consistent logo policy, Siemens businesses create a variety of different logos to meet their individual communications needs.
Retail advertising for a special Christmas promotion. The use of the S&H logo on a Christmas decoration is pretty original.
"Protos" was originally a brand name for Siemens-Schuckert cars. It was later transferred to household products because it belonged to Siemens and had a nice ring to it.
This ad focuses on the product name. The consumer finds the brand in the logo attached to the machine. The musical notes, which suggest that the woman is on her way to a concert, reinforce the message.
The S&H logo symbol is sufficient to identify the producer. The Protos logo has been omitted. The ad design suggests that Siemens & Halske, unlike its competitors, offers customers an entire range of radios to choose from.
The retailer is using two logos and two company names here. How are customers supposed to orient themselves?
The name "Protos" has disappeared. The headline refers to customer benefits.
A Siemens-Schuckert logo, a Siemens logo, a product name, four typefaces. "Protos" has now been transformed from a car name to an appliance logo to a product name.
The Siemens logo has become dominant, but continues to be supported by a group-specific logo. The name "Protos" is now superfluous. The Gothic typeface reflects the nationalistic mood of the time.
Advertising has become more incisive. Claims have been reduced to a minimum. Only one typeface is used.
Siemens in the U.K. was an independent company up until the 1950s, boasting its own distinctive Siemens logo.
Business integration and globalization are increasing. Ways are being sought to convey this complexity via logo design.
The logos of the various Siemens companies and production facilities 1938
Identifying particular Siemens businesses by means of a brand name coupled with a logo addition increases clarity.
A global presence requires a uniform worldwide appearance. The bundling of communications activities on a common platform requires a new logo. Now that "Halske" and "Schuckert" are no longer used, the focus shifts to the brand name "Siemens." "Haus Siemens" replaces the S&H logo addition.
In 1973, a consistent, standardized Corporate Design policy bundles all communications activities under one common brand name. The logo is austere in keeping with the technical approach then favored by Siemens marketing.
Changed markets and an unsettled zeitgeist in the 1970s and 1980s call for a redesigned logo. A variation in weight of type, an emphasis on round shapes and unusual coloring heighten the logo's emotional appeal.
But a global study of name recognition suggests that the Siemens logo of 1991 should be retained. One claim is adopted as a logo addition bracketing all of the various Siemens activities Global network of innovation
Ten years later global trends again force a change in logo appearance.
An overview of the entire history of the Siemens logo. This and the following examples taken from other companies show that branding is a never-ending process.
Siemens' traditional competitor is also forced to adapt its logo to the demands of the zeitgeist. The company goes bankrupt and is broken up. The AEG logo survives today as a group logo of the Electrolux company.
Few know that Opel started out as a bicycle manufacturer. The logo has passed through three phases: a brand name, a combination of brand name and symbol, a pure symbol.
The current logo clearly harks back to older motifs. The "sal ammoniac lozenge" of 1928 survives today in orange.
The two red versions are clearly oriented on Pepsi's archrival Coca-Cola. The change in Corporate Identity from red to blue in 1995 cost "a mere $500 million.
Conclusion