Dortmund: On the way to becoming Germany's strongest city brand

Dortmund - a city with history, character and a future. But how can all these facets be united in a clear message? A comprehensive branding process was launched with the aim of positioning Dortmund not only as a place worth living in, but also as a competitive city. This article shows how "One of a kind" is not just a promise, but the first step towards a strong city brand. It explains our thinking behind the new design system - and what else we believe is needed to make our vision, which is shared by many of those involved in the project, a reality.

The brand of a city? You mean a new logo? There used to be an advertising campaign. I think there was also a slogan? How did it go again?

This or similar reactions are often expressed by people on the subject of brands who otherwise have nothing to do with brands and brand development in their everyday lives. And that is completely understandable.

Building a brand is a complex undertaking and takes a lot of time, not unlike the development of large buildings such as cathedrals. Many people are involved, often changing architects and master builders, setbacks alternate with progress - yet everything follows a vision. Not everyone has to understand the building plans, let alone be able to draw them. And yet everyone can play their part in building the "cathedral" and make the vision a reality. This is all the more true when we are talking about the development of a city brand.

Whether city brand, product brand or corporate brand - the core of brands is about thinking about how and for what you want to be perceived and expressing this as clearly as possible. City brands follow three clear objectives: A strong city brand helps to attract new talent and thus increase economic strength, it helps to boost tourism and to promote people's pride in their city.

In today's competitive urban environment, no city can afford to leave the development of its brand to chance.

Our starting point in Dortmund: a proud history without the strategic development of the brand

Although the city of Dortmund has done many different things in its long and proud history to shape the perception of the city, there was no strategic process for developing its brand until the start of our project.

As part of an ongoing, more comprehensive process to make communication and marketing fit for the future, we launched our strategic brand development project in August 2023 together with the city administration's Marketing + Communication team.

The first step for us was to develop a focused and authentic brand platform - the basic strategy on which the city's brand should be based in the future.

Our process for this was based on a number of key principles for the development of brands: the combination of qualitative and quantitative formats, broad participation of the urban community and close involvement of representatives from a wide range of sectors. In addition, a brand board was set up as a social committee consisting of various Dortmund personalities and functionaries, as well as a political monitoring committee with representatives from all parliamentary groups in the council. These committees were used to provide dedicated feedback, evaluate developed concept proposals and critically scrutinize them from a wide variety of perspectives.

Dortmund's new guiding principle was presented to the public on May 25, 2024: One of a kind (Die Einzige ihrer Art).

It forms the core of the future brand platform. The narrative and Dortmund's DNA were also defined.

Each line of the narrative picks up on an aspect that makes Dortmund "One of a kind". A more detailed explanation can be found in the council bill of May 2, 2024.

Taken together, these three elements - central idea, narrative and DNA - form Dortmund's brand platform - a clear guideline for the development of the brand of this unique city.

 

What is a central idea? A central idea is an overarching promise on which the further development of the brand is based. "One of a kind" can also be a claim or slogan, but it does not have to be.

What is a narrative? The narrative is a kind of short story about the city that sums up key aspects of the city. It is intended to serve as a future guideline for communication.

What is the DNA? The DNA consists of a few attributes that sum up the character or personality of the city. The DNA defines how the city wants to be perceived in the future.

 

"One of a kind" - a strong guiding principle

"One of a kind": a self-confident statement and a clear message, authentic, genuine and straight to the point. A central idea that builds on key aspects of the city and its positioning in the competition between cities. It has deliberately not been articulated too specifically in order to leave enough room for individual interpretations and further developments - even in the future. Guiding ideas are not advertising slogans, but strategic statements that are intended to last.

Dortmund is located right between the few German cities with over a million inhabitants and the countless smaller cities across the country. It combines the advantages of cities with over a million inhabitants, namely an outstanding cultural offering, a diverse urban society and countless cultural and economic opportunities, with the advantages of many smaller cities, with their proximity and familiarity, their still affordable rents and a clear structure and overview. Dortmund offers the best of both worlds. This combination makes Dortmund the "only one of its kind".

"One of a kind" also stands for the kind of people who are self-confident but not arrogant. "We know who we are and don't need to look left or right. We are down to earth. We get down to business." - We heard these statements, or similar ones, repeatedly during our research.

"One of a kind" is just the beginning of a story

Strong central ideas are the beginnings of a wide variety of stories. Stories that are told in the most diverse ways and in the most diverse facets as part of brand development. Nothing tells the whole story. Individual parts of the brand emphasize different aspects. The brand, as an overall construct, is thus created from the sum of its parts. And if successful, it ultimately succeeds in ensuring that key parts of its story positively sharpen and shape public perception and that the brand thus contributes to people enjoying living, working and spending time in Dortmund.

Some people are certainly wondering whether a number of other cities could also claim to be "one of a kind". Some certainly could. Similar to Nike's slogan "Just Do It.", which Adidas could just as easily have used. In the end, however, there is only one city that can call itself "one of a kind". And that is Dortmund. Now it's a matter of filling this guiding principle with life.

Learning from the best: Nike also follows similar principles when building its brand

Nike's mission is: "To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete". The Swoosh, Nike's logo, looks like a wing and represents movement and speed. "Just Do It", Nike's slogan, emphasizes an inner conviction and is also an invitation to customers. Nike's colors, the visual language, the fonts used, but also Nike's products, what the company does for sustainability, who leads the company - all this and much more follows the goal of expressing Nike's mission unmistakably and thus contributes to building the brand. Strong brands create a system that speaks a unified language - guided by a vision or idea.

Even if Dortmund's guiding principle is not directly comparable to Nike's mission, "One of a kind" is nevertheless the common thread that should run through everything. In order to create a strong brand that contributes to making Dortmund more competitive and worth living in, it needs a consistent image, products, offers and services that contribute to the guiding principle of "One of a kind". Dortmund needs to start speaking one language in order to strengthen the city's brand and ultimately increase its economic clout.

The corporate design: the city's appearance

In February 2024, we began another important building block for the construction of the "cathedral" (brand) - to return to our example from the beginning: The development of a new, strong and authentic corporate design system.

A design system that consistently expresses the brand platform and builds on the city's proud history. A design that is intended to help the city move forward in the competition between cities and to promote the pride of its citizens - in short, a design for "One of a kind".

In addition to taking the strategic principles into account, three objectives were particularly important to us:

1. Building on the tried and tested: We wanted to build on the historical, as far as possible and sensible, while redefining the design system for today's requirements.
2. Strengthening recognizability: It was important to us to create a clear and unmistakable design language that might one day become iconographic.
3. Creating uniqueness: In addition to a strong logo, the focus was on creating new strong design elements in order to sustainably strengthen the perception of the city in the competition between cities.

In addition, there were of course various technical and operational requirements, which are not specific to Dortmund, but occur in every process for the development of complex design systems.

It goes without saying that this development did not take place in secret, but in close cooperation with the relevant experts from the city administration and in close collaboration with other stakeholders from politics and administration.

When you think about a design system, you often automatically think of a logo first. And even if the logo is the most central part of a design system, it is only one aspect among many. Later, a design should be clearly and unmistakably recognizable even without a logo, through elements such as colors, shapes, imagery and/or illustrative language that help express the brand platform.

Nevertheless, we also started with the logo and created what we believe to be a strong and unmistakable symbol. One that builds on the city's logo history, incorporates the city's strongest symbol, the eagle, and, in combination, represents the center of the new corporate design system.

The eagle was simplified and made more iconographic, "freed" from the shield and the shield was integrated into its shape. The DO is based on the old Dortmund logo from the 1970s and has also been reduced to the essentials. This makes it more striking and memorable at the same time.

In the future, the "City of Dortmund" lettering will be dropped and the combination of eagle + DO will become the city's main logo and identifying symbol (see image below).

More than just a logo: the Dortmund design system

In combination with four strong and self-confident colors, a characterful font, a flexible layout system and an authentic image and icon language, we are convinced that Dortmund is strongly positioned to create its own convincing appearance.

 

The colors, like the DO, are based on old Dortmund posters from the 70s and 80s, but interpreted in a new and contemporary way. Four colors for a self-confident and versatile appearance.

The Gill Sans Ultra Bold image font was omnipresent on posters and other media in Dortmund for a long time; it has a strong and unique character. During the process, we decided to build on this with "Gill Sans Nova Ultra Bold", as it fits this city perfectly.

The visual language, which will be finalized during the implementation phase, will focus on the authenticity, honesty and strength of character of the people of this city.

And the future icon language - shown in the overview above, using the peace pillar as an example - is also to be implemented in the same style: striking, reduced and without frills.

Last but not least, another important component of the Dortmund design system: the DO as a secondary design element (see image).

 

When developing the design system, it was important to us to reconcile a high degree of recognizability with the greatest possible flexibility in use.

In summary: A unique design for a unique city.

From vision to reality: the future of Dortmund's brand

On February 13, Dortmund Council approved the new design system for implementation with a large majority.

We are delighted that the city council is following this courageous path and has thus taken a major step towards the further development of the brand.

However, even with a powerful central idea and expressive design system, the city of Dortmund is still only at the beginning of a longer process. Although initial plans and some of the key building blocks are in place, there is still no large, impressive "cathedral".

You could say that things are really only just getting started.

Developing a strong brand for Dortmund will take time. It will need people to get involved, and it will take the conviction and perseverance of all stakeholders involved to implement the design and bring the brand strategy to life. The aim should be to continuously increase the value of the brand over the course of the process so that everyone can benefit from it in the future. The people of the city - because they can rightly refer to the city and its brand with pride, the companies, who should find it easier to attract workers, and tourism, because more people will come to Dortmund to experience for themselves what makes this city the only one of its kind.

How every citizen of this city talks about it, tells friends, strangers and acquaintances about it, plays a decisive role in how the image of this city changes. There are countless great stories to tell. The next time you write about Dortmund, why not talk about 'one of a kind'? Tell us what makes this city so unique for you.

It will only be possible to make Dortmund's brand what it can be if all stakeholders in the city's society get involved: The strongest city brand in Germany!

 

 

Three steps to realizing a strong city brand

In order to get closer to the above-mentioned goal, we now need to take three key steps:

1. The consistent implementation and holistic activation of the strategic brand platform and the new corporate design system across all contact points in the city, so that everyone can get to know and experience the new brand strategy and the new corporate design.
2. The seamless integration of brand and city strategy. Brands are not only created through a strong appearance, the activities, measures and focal points of the city strategy are also decisive for building a really strong brand. The aim is to plan brand experiences that are brought to life with the help of the city strategy.
3. Courage, perseverance and focus, because strong brands are not created overnight. The biggest mistake many brand owners make is constantly changing content. It takes time to build a strong brand that positively shapes people's perception and the image of the city.

We believe, as we did on day one of our project, in the immense potential of this city and look forward to following the further implementation and activation of the brand platform and seeing how Dortmund's brand comes closer to our vision step by step. In the spirit of what a truly impressive sportswoman once said:

"Never underestimate the power of dreams." Wilma Rudolph

We are convinced that Dortmund's brand has the potential to become the strongest city brand in Germany.

Dortmund: One of a kind.